Fair enough in not needing 2/3 fixtures to do the same thing Broadway scale in doing the same thing. I'm as a past designer much more in smaller inventory scale... and before LED's looking at what I Install at times at smaller venues where the amount of lights is less than the full service three lights from each position + specials even main stage.
Let me just say this....for a while now I was relying on LED fixtures for most of my color because its community theater and time/available budgets and gel just weren't there.Mentioning to a tech in anothertheatre I was currently "Gelling" some cycs, he commented on how old fashioned. I'm guessing he was running multicolor fixtures.
According my scant knowledge LEDs produce very narrow emission bands. Looking a spetral scan one would see very narrow red, green and blues popping up around 600, 540 and 480nm without much in between.
This means colors on stage in between these might not get lit correctly e.g. a yellow shirt (580nm). A spectral graph of a tungsten bulb on the other hand has a very wided emission spectra thus lighting a wider range of colored objects.
I know we now have amber and white LEDs and even ones with lime in to help broaden spectra. So my question is: are LEDs ready to completelty replace more conventional tungsten stage lights?
Since you're on a budget... consider stocking up on all these excessed tungsten fixtures that are for sale everywhere, cheap, especially (if you have a need for them) edison based PAR cans. You can always install a LED PAR lamp in them, and get them from 2400 - 6000K colortemp. Also in narrow beam to flood. Also, they make mogul plug based LED PAR 64s, 56's, and 40's. Also in 2400K - 6000K colortemp so you can convert to some to "dumb LED" and save on power costs and get a lot more bang from your existing dimmers. Most of the lamps have no issues dimming down to around 5% before they get the DTs.Excellent. We are a volunteer, none profit local theater so low/no budget for the better LEDs. But al you said makes sense and If/When $$ is there I will propose something along the lines of the ETC Series 3. I've heard a grreat deall about them. Thanks for the input. We are always learning.
Therein lies the problem. It's not that extremely good LED sources aren't available - they are, but they ain't cheap. Dismissing LEDs in general on quality grounds because an RGBAW Sixpar doesn't cut it is missing the point somewhat. We have colorsource fixtures - not the most expensive fixtures by any means, but side by side with a tungsten fixture you're hard pushed to spot the difference except a the extremes (L120, L181 equivalent, for example). The more expensive fixtures add more subtlety to the gamut, but we use mixes of LED and tungsten sometimes and they just blend in.We have gotten used to the mediocrity of LED, at least the kind within most of our price ranges.
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