PixelArc C (real world check)
- Thread starterJD
- Start date
JD
Well-Known Member
I am always amazed at how much fire and brimstone fly about when the subject of LED stage lighting comes up!
My original post only covered how impressed I was with the PixelArc C. Mind you, they were using 28 of them, and at $3600 each, that works out to $100,800 !! (Disney can afford to do those kind of things.)
LEDs are the future, and lamenting over the old incandescent and quartz fixtures reminds me of listening to my grandfather tell me that the only true locomotives were those powered by a wood burning steam engine.
Now, back to the real world: I can't afford them, so I have plenty of the old "Steam Engines!" I am not recommending them to anybody at the moment, but when I look in my rearview mirror, I see them catching up quickly and with enough speed to leave us all in the dust!
In this and every other business, we have to be looking a few years in the future in order to make the decisions we need make today. My visits to Disney always seem to give me a glimpse into that future! (Without having to spend all that money like I did on the computer revolution.)
My original post only covered how impressed I was with the PixelArc C. Mind you, they were using 28 of them, and at $3600 each, that works out to $100,800 !! (Disney can afford to do those kind of things.)
LEDs are the future, and lamenting over the old incandescent and quartz fixtures reminds me of listening to my grandfather tell me that the only true locomotives were those powered by a wood burning steam engine.
Now, back to the real world: I can't afford them, so I have plenty of the old "Steam Engines!" I am not recommending them to anybody at the moment, but when I look in my rearview mirror, I see them catching up quickly and with enough speed to leave us all in the dust!
In this and every other business, we have to be looking a few years in the future in order to make the decisions we need make today. My visits to Disney always seem to give me a glimpse into that future! (Without having to spend all that money like I did on the computer revolution.)
I am always amazed at how much fire and brimstone fly about when the subject of LED stage lighting comes up!
My original post only covered how impressed I was with the PixelArc C. Mind you, they were using 28 of them, and at $3600 each, that works out to $100,800 !! (Disney can afford to do those kind of things.)
LEDs are the future, and lamenting over the old incandescent and quartz fixtures reminds me of listening to my grandfather tell me that the only true locomotives were those powered by a wood burning steam engine.
Now, back to the real world: I can't afford them, so I have plenty of the old "Steam Engines!" I am not recommending them to anybody at the moment, but when I look in my rearview mirror, I see them catching up quickly and with enough speed to leave us all in the dust!
In this and every other business, we have to be looking a few years in the future in order to make the decisions we need make today. My visits to Disney always seem to give me a glimpse into that future! (Without having to spend all that money like I did on the computer revolution.)
Exactly! The technology is just inches away from being as good or better than incandescents. The price has a long way to go until we can all afford it, but the way that works these days something that would cost $10,000 now will be a $500 product from the major manufacturers in three years and sold by ADJ and Chauvet for $150 the year after that. There's nothing particularly complicated about LED technology that will keep the price from dropping once the manufacturing process gets rolling. It's not like intelligent gear that has hundreds of tiny moving parts and will always be expensive because of that.
As for Allthingstheater's concern about a smooth cyc wash. I've seen it done with Selador lights on a real stage in a private demo. I've also seen a good wash with Color Kinetic lights in a demo... I'm not quite as impressed with their color mixing technology. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture and all the videos on their website don't seem to use their spreader lenses. They have a collection of plastic lenses that snap in and allow you to alter the beam angles independently in both left to right and top to bottom. For some reason their website is obsessed with showing you chase sequences without the lenses. But I'm telling you I've seen them work just fine. Yes it's technology that will cost your around $3000 per foot of cyc that you are lighting... but it works great. I've also heard of people buying their short 2' units and using them with the spreader plates and down and back light very effectively. Again that's a $3,000 light but it works great.
It will not be long.
That's funny gaff, because I had the opposite experience earlier this month when i got to see a demo of the Selador strips. It amazed me how confined the beam was from a strip light, and it seemed that dropping in the lenses cut down on the intensity quite a bit. Some of the lenses didn't seem t help much as they just turned the beam 90˚ without really breading it out.
On the other hand, I thought the color mixing was pretty good. I don't think though that even if I had the budget to to buy such fixtures that they would really be as effective as even the MR-16 zip strips that I own at the moment. I do think that Allthings as a point, the current cyc light technology does a really good job, and I haven't been impressed by LEDs yet.
As for LED profile fixtures, sure, Chauvet has a moving head LED fixture, but it could barely light up my living room with the amount of light output it has. And what is the cost? For what I would pay for that baby moving light I could get a bigger one with a decent output and more features.
So, sure the people with money, the mega corporations and mega churches can invest in LEDs, and they can afford to get enough to make them effective. But most theatres don't have the money for that. I think we have quite a ways to go before LED because the viable option for replacing the fixtures we have today.
On the other hand, I thought the color mixing was pretty good. I don't think though that even if I had the budget to to buy such fixtures that they would really be as effective as even the MR-16 zip strips that I own at the moment. I do think that Allthings as a point, the current cyc light technology does a really good job, and I haven't been impressed by LEDs yet.
As for LED profile fixtures, sure, Chauvet has a moving head LED fixture, but it could barely light up my living room with the amount of light output it has. And what is the cost? For what I would pay for that baby moving light I could get a bigger one with a decent output and more features.
So, sure the people with money, the mega corporations and mega churches can invest in LEDs, and they can afford to get enough to make them effective. But most theatres don't have the money for that. I think we have quite a ways to go before LED because the viable option for replacing the fixtures we have today.
JD
Well-Known Member
Our industry is but a small grain of rice on the world economic stage. If it were up to us, LED technology would never be able to move forward. Luckily for us, there are monster industries pushing the technology forward, including a push to develop LED street lights! In a growing energy conscious world, anything that produces light is being redesigned for efficiency. There are billions of dollars being spent on developing newer and brighter forms of solid state light. We are the lucky recipients of this developing technology. When a product is built, it's research and design costs have to be spread across it's customer base. Sell 100, and you are looking at R&D/100 Sell 10,000,000 and you are looking at R&D/10,000,000. That's how things get cheap! I am sure that the guys at PixelRange are not saying, "Hey, lets design a new LED." What they are saying is "Look at this new part from XYZ company, we could incorporate that into our new product line and have a really great product." The hard work and big bucks are being spent in other industries that will develop new technologies that will benefit our own industry. It's all on a fast-track now, and if anything, the track is getting faster. Far from being a passing fad, LEDs are more comparable to the development of the audio CD, and at some point our current equipment will be like old vinyl records.
A generation from now, Lighting Designers will look back at us and marvel at how we used to produce light by running so much current through a piece of metal that it grew white hot in much the same way as we look back at gas driven limelights. We live in exciting times!
(JD steps down from his soapbox)
A generation from now, Lighting Designers will look back at us and marvel at how we used to produce light by running so much current through a piece of metal that it grew white hot in much the same way as we look back at gas driven limelights. We live in exciting times!
(JD steps down from his soapbox)
dj_illusions
Active Member
allthingstheatre, I have used a number of different models of LED strips to light cycs in MUSICAL THEATRE and would have to say that you can achieve the most awesome looking effects if you put the strips at the top and bottom of the cyc.
I was also very skeptical of the whole LED thing but a local hire company gave me a whole bunch of different stuff to try out at a show I was doing pretty cheap, so i had a bit of an experiment and realised that they can actually achieve some pretty cool effects. I have used them for side light, under set light, truss warmers, cyc light. they work very well in haze also.
i would suggest getting hold of some of the more popular fixtures and dispelling some of your own myths by having a play around with the equipment before been so quick to dismiss it.
I was also very skeptical of the whole LED thing but a local hire company gave me a whole bunch of different stuff to try out at a show I was doing pretty cheap, so i had a bit of an experiment and realised that they can actually achieve some pretty cool effects. I have used them for side light, under set light, truss warmers, cyc light. they work very well in haze also.
i would suggest getting hold of some of the more popular fixtures and dispelling some of your own myths by having a play around with the equipment before been so quick to dismiss it.
David Ashton
Well-Known Member
I totally agree that you can get some great effects{at a price} but I am saying that they are not cyc lights, you cannot achieve a flat wash with them, which is what you need for most drama and straight dance and musicals and therefore they are an add on and not a replacement for conventional lights.No one likes playing with stuff more than me but I balance the hype with the reality.I am, as always ready to concede in the event of photographic or photometric evidence.
Not a revolution, just some modern, forward thinking. See Martin EvenLED Backdrop for West End Oliver - Ukslc.org.
Product - EvenLED™.
David Ashton
Well-Known Member
Note the title,"real world check", your average theatre cannot afford the rear projection led screens, in the $100k+ range.
Since this thread was started ETC took over Selador, and their experts repeated virtually verbatim what I said in this thread, like forget about led S4's, they are not going to happen.
The evenly lit cyc continues to be like the "Loch Ness monster", lots of people have seen it but no one has yet managed to take a photograph of one.
As for a high CRI white led, if it exists, no one seems to know where, and it still remains the "Holy Grail" of the led industry.
And yes I do follow the industry avidly, I'm simply being realistic not wildly optimistic like many contributors to this thread.
Since this thread was started ETC took over Selador, and their experts repeated virtually verbatim what I said in this thread, like forget about led S4's, they are not going to happen.
The evenly lit cyc continues to be like the "Loch Ness monster", lots of people have seen it but no one has yet managed to take a photograph of one.
As for a high CRI white led, if it exists, no one seems to know where, and it still remains the "Holy Grail" of the led industry.
And yes I do follow the industry avidly, I'm simply being realistic not wildly optimistic like many contributors to this thread.
