LED Houselights - first impressions

almorton

Well-Known Member
This week we finally got our LED houselights commissioned. We installed ETC/Arc system, and I recall some time ago when I mentioned this that there was some interest in how they compared to our previous lighting using 75-100W screw in PAR lamps.

The good news is, they compare well. At full brightness, they're pretty much the same as the old halogen PARs, and unlike d0m3st1c LED replacements, they do, of course, dim properly, smoothly and without popcorning, steppiness, flashing at low level or sudden off/on at low levels. The curve, as supplied, is a little different to the old halogen lamps, being lower at first then catch up at around 80%, but that can be addressed, and we can set the level of each fixture individually from the lighting desk, which gives us some interesting flexibility in using the houselights creatively during a performance.
 
This week we finally got our LED houselights commissioned. We installed ETC/Arc system, and I recall some time ago when I mentioned this that there was some interest in how they compared to our previous lighting using 75-100W screw in PAR lamps.

The good news is, they compare well. At full brightness, they're pretty much the same as the old halogen PARs, and unlike d0m3st1c LED replacements, they do, of course, dim properly, smoothly and without popcorning, steppiness, flashing at low level or sudden off/on at low levels. The curve, as supplied, is a little different to the old halogen lamps, being lower at first then catch up at around 80%, but that can be addressed, and we can set the level of each fixture individually from the lighting desk, which gives us some interesting flexibility in using the houselights creatively during a performance.
@Al Morton; An approximately 2K soft seater about 40 miles from me did a full installation in conjunction with ETC as a showpiece for the system's capabilities. An open house was held for anyone who was interested. All reports were impressed.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
 
We were looking at the fixtures the other evening thinking that they looked very convincingly like the old PARs they'd replaced, the (effectively, open white) colour just looked right.
 
One thing we did notice is more at low levels (and this is probably more an expectation) is that the lights look marginally colder, but at higher levels they look right. I guess there's no red shift built in.
 
I’m going to have to look into something like this eventually. A few years back without consulting me our physical plant manager decided to replace our halogen pars with LED pars for efficiency, with predictably bad results.
 

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