RBA Color Mixing

[versengt]

Hey all. One of the venue's I occasionally do lighting for is in a church gym. They have red, blue, amber strip lights directly above the stage hardwired to circuit breakers. (Nice right?)

Anyway I've been trying to figure out what if any advantages there are to using rba color mixing? I do good deal of work with rgb led fixtures which are obviously very versatile. rba on the other hand you're limited to something between blue, red, magenta, pink and orange. Any insight on this style of color mixing would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[shiben]

Any reason why you cant swap out the Amber for Green? It ought allow for a wider array of colors for you to choose from. Also, inserting dimmers into the line would allow even more colors to choose from. Otherwise, as you have found you are pretty limited in what colors you can use.

 

[soundlight]

Not having green makes you lose what colors now? Yellow, green, and teal? I often prefer RBA for most theatrical stuff 'cause green and yellow barely get used, and the amber created by red and green from R40 strips and many LED fixtures is usually something to be laughed at. Just a personal opinion.

 

[shiben]

Not having green makes you lose what colors now? Yellow, green, and teal? I often prefer RBA for most theatrical stuff 'cause green and yellow barely get used, and the amber created by red and green from R40 strips and many LED fixtures is usually something to be laughed at. Just a personal opinion.

I would say all three of those colors that you loose are not to be discounted, especially in the yellow range and the teal range. Green might not be the most common of colors, true. For that matter, I rarely actually hang an RGB cyc, but rather choose 3 colors that I will use and mix into 2 or 3 more colors for less common use. But if you have to only have three colors ever, RGB is the way to go for the largest number of colors for the largest number of events.

 

[Les]

I'll tell you what I never understood. Striplights with RWB roundels. Clear, amber and green roundels all cost the same, so why clear instead of the other two? Maybe because they needed white toplight? Then why not 4 circuit with a green or an amber? Always wondered this...

 

[JD]

Always figured those RBA strip lights were something the art department came up with using the paint primaries! From a practical point of view Using Amber or White gives them a way to flood the stage with a lot of light. Mixing a secondary or a full spectrum with two primaries costs them a lot of possible colors, but the "lots of light" thing seams to often win out in those settings.

 

[ship]

Never undersood the concept of the roundel colors you mentioned as other than scenic designer deciding the color mixing either - had banks of them at one point. Also recently seen the strip light driectly linked to the circuit breaker at a grade school in perhaps it wasn' someone say the scenic designer at the school designating the colors, possibly instead someone perhaps a contractor or arcitect in the long past specifying such a thing.

 

[Kelite]

Also recently seen the strip light driectly linked to the circuit breaker at a grade school in perhaps it wasn' someone say the scenic designer at the school designating the colors, possibly instead someone perhaps a contractor or arcitect in the long past specifying such a thing.

Our local middle school (which has recently become K-6) has the same color scheme wired to circuit breakers as well. Mind you, the space is the cafetorium with a small elevated stage, apparently designed for the occasional talent show and end-of-year awards program.
My understanding is that no one knows why this color scheme was chosen (using previously mentioned roundels).

 

[DanAyers]

Guess what, this is a design decision so there's no wrong answer.

When I used roundels we would routinely swap out amber with green and back again depending on the show. Sometimes having all three, Red, Green, and Blue made our stage look kind of yucky i think too red if i remember correctly so we just left blue up and took red and green down a little and then we got a good warm white. We did have several circuits that were inoperable so take the yucky comment with a grain of salt.


My advice get (borrow) the green roundels, if $ is an issue, try it with gel and see what you think. You will definitely learn from this and regardless whether it works or not you will become a better designer just for trying.

 

[versengt]

Thanks everyone for your input. They're having an event Saturday so I'll give some things a try and let you know how it goes.