led stage wash

[itie]

hello CB, at work all we have are S4 zooms to light the stage, and dont get me wrong I love them. The only problem I have is that we have no colored lights. When I try to gel the extra S4's we have they just get washed out real easily by the other S4 the only color I get that looks half good is red. I was wondering if there is a better way to get the colors to show up or if a 3 watt led light would work? The color wash would be at a 20 foot throw and the stage wash is from a 40 foot throw.

I was looking at this light but I'm open to anything. I have two 1 watt colorkey lights and when I put those up there the light output sucked.

thank you
Giovanni

 

[Footer]

The only LED light that would work in place of the S4 Zooms you have FOH MSRP for 3500 and are not even out yet. Overhead, the LED's you posted also won't even compete with what you own.

It might be time to review some basics of lighting and how to use color. What exactly are you trying to achieve that you are not?

 

[Pie4Weebl]

What kind of events do you do? How large is your stage? What kind of budget do you have?

 

[itie]

The only LED light that would work in place of the S4 Zooms you have FOH MSRP for 3500 and are not even out yet. Overhead, the LED's you posted also won't even compete with what you own.

I thought using an led was out of the question, but one can hope. Are my Colorkeys really that much better?

It might be time to review some basics of lighting and how to use color. What exactly are you trying to achieve that you are not?

Any good places to find this info (likes books you would recommend). What Im trying to achieve is to wash the stage with color, maybe a rgb wash but even two colors to change from would be nice. Right now with all the lights turned off the colors in front of the S4 look dull or not visible.

What kind of events do you do? How large is your stage? What kind of budget do you have?

Its used as a rental mostly, concerts, churches, and some theatre productions. The stage is kind of small the house only seats 300 people. I want to say the stage its 20 to 30 feet wide. We have no budget its really only spend what we need, but I been doing fundraisers for this and could probably spend around $500 per fixture.

 

[DuckJordan]

A good book to pick up would be "Light Fantastic" its used in my college course for basic as well as advanced lighting. With $500's to spend with each fixture I would look into using more levels of intensity with the use of gel, the biggest thing i see is the fact that you seem to only have one or two fixtures gelled, this wouldn't create a color wash like you'd want, although you will want to make sure you can still see actors faces and make everything else look good, is there a reason you need the whole stage washed with the single color with all your lights on?

 

[Pie4Weebl]

3 Watt fixtures should work as a top wash in your situation. Just plan on getting a whole lot of them! See if you can get one fixture as a demo and then give it a shot to see how well it fits your space.

 

[shiben]

Im personally in favor of buying PARs as opposed to LEDs unless you can invest and buy enough LEDs to make it worth it. For 500 bucks you can buy around 10 PAR 64s, so for the price of 10 LEDs you can have 100 PARs, which would be a hell of a lot brighter. Obviously you dont have the same color mixing ability, but they cost so little I think its worth it. My thoughts would be if you have the cash to buy 10 LEDs, I would get 20 PARs and spend my remaining 4k on scrollers or a lot of gel. Just my 2¢.

 

[len]

If you have enough output hitting the stage currently, why not consider a few scrollers. With a $500 per unit budget, you should be able to get scrollers, power supplies, cable, etc. for every unit.

 

[porkchop]

I may be reading this wrong here, so I don't mean to offend if I am, but I'm going to agree with footer here, I think that what you really need is to take a better look at what you have and how you're using it. What you might look into is getting someone from out side of the company to come in and talk to you a bit. If you're lucky and you or someone you work with know a lighting designer willing to come in and give you a few casual ideas about what you can do to create the look you're going for in your space that'd probably be a great start. If it's going to come down to spending money it'd probably be better spent on getting a professional lighting instructor (preferably from the area to keep costs down) to come in and give you a day of two talk on lighting than it would to buy LED fixtures. Especially with the price/output ratio being as high as it is.

 

[GWWWicked]

When our venue was designed, the installer wanted to use ONLY LED's. As a result, I have 96 American DJ Punch Pro's above my stage and front of house. After the installation, he found out that they really didn't have the punch to do general area lighting. So, now they're augmented with PAR's.

Here are my observations.

1. These particular LED fixtures have a very narrow beam angle. 25 feet from the stage floor, they only create a pool of light about 3' in diameter. As a result, I barely get consistent coverage across my stage, even with 96 of them. (Stage is 55'X35')

2. Because they are only RGB, and don't have amber LED's, it's very difficult to make shades of yellows and oranges without them turning green. Blues, aquas, and reds are gorgeous. (Also, my white is never a warm tungsten white, but a cool LED white)

3. An interesting side effect I've noticed is when they're running full blue, anything phosphorescent lights up like it was under blacklight. Great for spike tape.

4. Finally, my biggest frustration with these fixtures is that they take up too much space on the truss. I'm always running into them with my other conventional fixtures.

In summary, these are definitely a DJ fixture and act like one. However, for a deep saturated color wash, they do an acceptable job.

 

[BillESC]

ADJ Punch Pro's are most certainly the wrong fixture for your application. A fixture containing 36 X 3w diodes with RGBAW color mixing would fit the bill with a 45 degree beam spread.

This is me with such a fixture 20 feet away.

 

[porkchop]

oh dear, what a very questionable use of time, space, and money

 

[BillESC]

oh dear, what a very questionable use of time, space, and money

What does that mean?

 

[David Ashton]

If only LED lights were as good as LED light salesmen.