Today’s worship teams are working closely with architects and interior designers to create more engaging and immersive environments. And this has led to a trend towards transforming the look and feel of a traditional worship space to a room that seamlessly supports a worship experience that is contemporary with theatrical elements.
Through the creative use of light, churches can transcend the physical barrier between the platform and the congregation. With more and more houses of worship incorporating video technologies into their services and incorporating HD cameras, it is critical that the house lighting system provide flicker-free operation on camera.
LED technology has dramatically changed, even disrupted, the houselight and downlight product category over the past few years in both new construction and retrofits....
LED technology has dramatically changed, even disrupted, the houselight and downlight product category over the past few years in both new construction and retrofits. In addition to electrical savings, infrastructure savings can also be substantial as LED systems allow for smaller mains power and HVAC systems when the facility is designed from the ground up around an LED based lighting system.
Here’s a look at some of the newest products in the architectural lighting category.
The Chroma-Q Inspire | A.C. Lighting
The Chroma-Q Inspire color-mixing LED house light features an innovative, fully homogenized lens that provides a single, clean shadow and eliminates the color separation and shadows that are synonymous with individual and quad-chip LEDs. “The Inspire product range of house lights including the original Inspire, Mini and the latest XT, provide beautiful whites, soft pastels and bold saturates—all from a single fixture,” says Kyla Werrett, marketing project manager for the company. “With a high Color Rendering Index (CRI) of 92 the Inspire renders skin tones as well as wall, floor and seating treatments accurately providing the space with a natural look and feel.” The Inspire product range is available in black, white and custom RAL colors allowing designers the ability to incorporate fixtures that blend into space.
Colour 5 Profile | Elation Professional
The Colour 5 Profile is an ellipsoidal spot with 180W LED engine (RGBAW) that emits a superior light quality (CRI over 94). “It is capable of varying color temperature from 2,700K-7,200K and is an excellent choice when variable colored light is required,” says Eric Loader, Elation Professional Sales and Marketing Director. “It houses a 26-degree beam angle lens with interchangeable lens options of 19 degrees, 36 degrees and 50 degrees available.” It includes four-blade manual framing for control of the beam shape and supports B-size metal or HT transparency gobos for custom gobo projections.
Artiste DaVinci | Elation Professional
Artiste DaVinci is all about creativity with a range of color and graphical effects that allow for unlimited artistic capabilities. “This ‘theatrical grade’ LED moving head spot includes CMY color mixing, seven dichroic colors, CTB and CTO color mixing for color temperature control and matching, two gobo wheels, an animation system, zoom, prisms and more,” Loader says. An output of over 12,000 lumens from a newly designed 270W cool white LED engine and advanced optics is comparable to 700W discharge lamp fixtures.
ArcSystem uses the latest LED packages with proprietary hardware and software to create maximum performance with industry-leading dimming. The result is an LED fixture with an unparalleled natural look and feel. “The ArcSystem line features everything from recessed ceiling lighting (The ArcSystem Pro One-Cell, in 6-inch, 4-inch, and 2-inch diameters), pendants (Pro Four-Cell Pendants) and two-, four-, and eight-cell fixtures capable of creating a beautiful downlight in even the largest space,” says Chris Patton, product manager for Architectural Luminaires with Electronic Theatre Controls (ETC).
SolaFrame Theatre | High End Systems
SolaFrame Theatre is the industry’s first automated LED luminaire to deliver completely silent operation. “Engineered with no fans, SolaFrame Theatre features a special high-CRI Bright White LED engine,” says Bruce Jordahl, marketing communications specialist with High End Systems. “The fixture delivers 15,000 field lumens and features our full-frame shuttering system. SolaFrame Theatre is a natural fit for designers that work in theatres and other venues where fixture noise is simply not acceptable.”
Ovation H-605FC House Lights | Chauvet Lighting
The Ovation H-605FC was designed to bring a “new level of color-mixing” to house lights, thanks to a new convection cooled fixture powered by an RGBA-Lime LED engine. The fixture can replicate almost any color with extraordinary accuracy, as well as virtually any color temperature of white, valuable to any worship service’s color scheme. Color temperature presets range from 2800K to 6500K with high CRI and CQS, as well as 16-bit dimming for smooth color fades down to the bottom of the curve, allowing the light to be dimmed at the start of a worship service without distractive sudden drops in output.
The MiniBurst is a powerful graphic strobe despite its compact dimensions belie its capabilities as it still dazzles in terms of output, creative possibilities and price point. With a 192mm x 192mm square face, the product contains 960 mono-chip, daylight-white LED sources grouped into 16 pixels on a 4 x 4 matrix, can emit up to up to 60,000 lumens, and can easily integrate into lighting rigs of all sizes. It also boasts Ayrton’s famed continuous pan and tilt and extremely accurate positioning.
The Scenius Unico uses a 1400W Osram lamp to help bring out beautiful spot effects, with six rotating gobos, a rotating prism, an animation wheel and a precise framing system. It also has a strong wash light and boasts a system of varying diffusion filters. The Scenius Unico is also an excellent wash light, as it offers a system with different diffusion filters, which may be inserted gradually. Perhaps most impressive, the spot light can also generate a powerful narrow beam of super concentrated light, with a minimum beam angle of only 5 degrees.
