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May 2012

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New Lighting Technologies Roundup

A look at the flurry of new product launches including moving lights, LEDs and iPhone apps.

by Michael S. Eddy

Advances in lighting technology seem to be coming faster and faster as manufacturers and developers bring out new products to make the lives of lighting designers, programmers and technicians that much easier. In order to help you stay up to date on the flurry of recent product launches, Church Production Magazine thought we would offer a roundup of some of the latest lighting technologies and products. I have included some of the most promising and useful products worth your notice and perhaps a demonstration.

Let's start with light emitting diodes (LED), which are starting to really come into their own for performance lighting. The products that use LEDs as their source are moving far beyond the initial purposes of basic color wash lights into lighting units with punch, accurate color control and real world usability for your lighting projects. An important advance is a single, solid beam that produces one shadow, not the multicolored shadows that you got in earlier units when you tried to create white light with red, green and blue LEDs.

GEKKO TECHNOLOGY

Kezia LED Spot Luminaire
Gekko has been working on LED lighting for the film and video markets and making impressive inroads worth looking at if you do any kind of video or broadcast as a part of your services. Started by a cameraman who knows all about proper lighting for image capture, Gekko has a range of LED wash lights with tunable white color temperatures. The company recently introduced the kezia, a hard-source LED spot luminaire that casts a single shadow. It comes in two models: the kezia 50 has an output brightness of a 250W tungsten unit yet consumes only 50W of power, and the kezia 200 has similar brightness to a 1kW tungsten light while consuming less than 200W. The kezia uses Gekko's kleer colour LED array optimized for film and video image capture, with color temperature presets calibrated at 2,900K, 3,200K, 5,600K and 6,500K. Gekko's proprietary arrays create broad-spectrum white light and, unlike traditional lighting products, the color temperature remains consistent throughout the full range of dimming, ambient temperature and life of the unit. The kezia also incorporates Gekko's color-feedback system of self-monitoring sensors to ensure stable color across a range of output levels, as well as correcting changes in performance caused by ambient temperature and component aging, which ensures consistent color temperature. In addition to the white-only mode, the kezia comes with an array allowing a wider saturated color range suited to theatre and entertainment. Interchangeable lenses allow either model luminaire to be operated in fixed-focus mode with 20-degree, 60-degree or 80-degree beam angle. Unlike wash fixtures that use LEDs, the kezia spot luminaires can be accurately cut with a barndoor, just like standard tungsten lights. The kezia fixtures are capable of operation under local or DMX control. Prices start at $4,500.

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Michael S. Eddy writes about design and technology. He can be reached at mseddy2900@hotmail.com.   .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)