LED cyc light

[kicknargel]

I'm looking at some LEDs for the purposed of cyc lighting, like the ETC Vivid-R and Color Kinetics Color Blaze. My question is--it doesn't seem like any of these have an asymmetrical light output designed to put even lighting on a cyc from a steep angle, like far cycs do with a curved reflector and mini strips do with near/far beam spread lamp pairs.

Is anyone making an LED that really works for cycs?

 

[Les]

I'm looking at some LEDs for the purposed of cyc lighting, like the ETC Vivid-R and Color Kinetics Color Blaze. My question is--it doesn't seem like any of these have an asymmetrical light output designed to put even lighting on a cyc from a steep angle, like far cycs do with a curved reflector and mini strips do with near/far beam spread lamp pairs.

Is anyone making an LED that really works for cycs?

I don't know about asymmetric output, but the Altman SpectraCyc is the only LED fixture that I know if that is specifically designed for lighting cyc's.

 

[MNBallet]

I don't know about asymmetric output, but the Altman SpectraCyc is the only LED fixture that I know if that is specifically designed for lighting cyc's.

yea, the SpectraCyc is he only fixture I know that is directly marketed as only a LED cyc unit. I haven't had the pleasure to see one yet.

I've been using some 3-watt LED units for over 2 years now. Back then 3 watt unit were hard to come by, but now I see them all over the place, usually for around $400 - $600 on e-bay. I really liked them, but I had to have 6 of them to light up a 20' high by 40' wide cyc, lit from the second electric (about 15 feet away) and with lots of diffusion cyc silk.

I just replaced my inventory with some RGBA 3 watt units from Solaris. I find them a bit darker than my other 3 watt units but I take that is because I have less LED's per color in each unit. (12 red leds in the RGB units, but only 9 red leds in the RGBA units: 36 leds total in each unit)
I want to get some more (bring it up to 8 units) to make it brighter. That 4th amber color is worth it in my mind.

Here is a youtube clip from this past fall of some classical ballet with a plain cyc lit by my RGB 3 watt units:
Kenneth Pogin
Production / Tour Manager
Minnesota Ballet

 

[Esoteric]

American DJ also makes a really nice Cyc Silk for use with all sorts of units.

Mike

 

[JChenault]

If you are looking for good color, I would consider the Selador units. I just used them on an installation, and find that the range of colors they give is much nicer than the CK units ( we had both so I could compare).

As to you question re beam spread - One nice thing the selador does is to have lenses that can be put in front of the unit to control both horizontal and vertical spread. It does not have the asymmetrical feel that you are talking about, but it does give you lots of flexibility.

(As you can tell, I rather liked the Selador units. )

 

[derekleffew]

Although I've yet to see one, I'm hearing good things about the ChromaQ ColorForce. It's pretty much making the Color Kinetics ColorBlaze units (which I always thought worked pretty well, in the proper application) obsolete.

For optimum performance, optional accessories include a Cyc lens plate for lighting up to a 16ft / 5m drop and a Border lens plate for general-purpose wash applications.

 

[lorilights]

I saw the Altman's at a mini seminar - they got around the video issue by having a switch so that they either a) faded up smoothly or b) worked with video. Other mfg's had smooth fading ones that also worked with video (at the same time), so I wouldn't recommend the Altmans - does anyone have experience now? What brand would you recommend?

 

[BDS0111]

Like Derek said, be sure to add the Chroma-Q units to your list!!

BRANDON

 

[SteveB]

I recently demo'd a Selador Pearl, which is the white only fixture and one thing I was very impressed with was the lens system. They give you (probably as extra accessories) a set of plastic spreader lenses in 20/30/40/60 and 80 degrees as linear diffusion - think about a plastic version of Rosco 104/160 or Lee 228. Each degree comes in vertical and horizontal and you can mix two types in a fixture in 12" sections.

Having used L&E MR16 cyc lighting for 25 years, lighting a 30x50ft white cyc from a distance of 3-1/2 ft. using R104, I'd bet that the Selador or Chroma-Q with appropriate lenses would work very well in a similar application.

 

[soundlight]

I saw a demo of the aforementioned Chroma-Q Color Force units at work and I would actually recommend them OVER Selador units for lighting a cyc. The range of colors that I was able to get was insane. They use the same kind of amber as the Seladors - a phosphor-shifted amber - so it's much more of a white-amber than the red-amber or green-amber of some other units. I was able to get color with the amber and the magenta that were just mindblowing for LEDs - and the colormixing even at short distances was great. The dimming curve is the best that I have ever seen. Knocks the socks off of the Seladors, even. Put a Color Force and a Selador next to eachother, dim them on a 5-minute count, and you should see what I'm talking about. And with the number of 5:00 counts that I have used on cycs, this is a really nice feature. Both the cyc lens and the border lens were shown, and they are a great addition. That's the only thing that Selador has over the Color Force units - the lensing. For lighting people I would go with the Seladors due to the color rendition of costumes and skin and such - you want it to look like the color it appears to be in front of a 3200k blackbody source, and the selador will approximate that spectrum better than anything else (having taken astrophysics in college and studied blackbody radiations more than I ever wanted to, this makes a whole lot of sense to me).