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ALTMAN LIGHTING PHOENIX | The PHX 150 from Altman is an LED profile spot fixture designed for longer throws. It's available in several different versions: 3,000K white, 5,600K white, RGBA (amber), RGBW and white version with tunable color temperature. Zoom options from 5- to 55-degrees are available.
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ETC COLORSOURCE SPOT | ETC ColorSource Spot is an affordable profile fixture that incorporates red, blue, green and lime LED emitters. A simple user interface on the rear of the fixture allows quick set-up with or without a console.
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LIGHTRONICS FXLE1232W | Lightronics FXLE1232W is a dimmable warm white ellipsoidal fixture with a 3,200K color temperature and a durable plastic housing. Generating over 7,000 lumens (up to 23,500 lux), the FXLE1232W sports a 120-watt LED array with an expected lifespan of over 50,000 hours.
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CHAUVET OVATION | Chauvet’s Ovation E-910FC is a five-Color RGBA+Lime LED ellipsoidal with 91 x 3-watt RGBAL LEDs. It also features a Virtual Color Wheel with 31 colors that match popular gel colors, and nine color temperature presets from 2,800K to 6,500K.
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ELATION PLATINUM SEVEN | The Elation Platinum Seven contains a patent-pending high- power seven-color system housing 19x 25W multi-chip LEDs (red, green, blue, white, amber,
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ELEKTRALITE ELEKTRABAR MINI | The elektraBar Mini features eight 12-watt, six-in-one LEDs capable of generating red, green, blue, white, amber and indigo with a diffraction lensing system for improved single-color output. It also offers individual control of each pixel allowing for more than 16 million possible colors on the eight LED emitters.Q
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BLIZZARD TOURNADO | Blizzard Tournado WW COB features a 60-degree beam angle, 3,000 K color temperature. The COB technology produces very intense light from several small 60-watt LED chips.
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CHROMA-Q INSPIRE | The Chroma-Q Inspire color-changing LED house light is designed to create immersive environments where the lighting design on stage blends with the colors over the audience. The fixture is available in a full-sized (16-inch tall) or Mini versions, black or white housing and a variety of beam angles.
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ARRI L-SERIES | Arri L-Series L7-C offers color temperature, tint and hue control from 2,800 K to 10,000 K with plus/minus green correction and full control of RGB+W.
In 1955, a groundbreaking piece of technology single-handedly transformed households in America: the color TV. And over the past 50 years, numerous devices, software, and services have produced the same effect. Apple's iPod, in the way we consume music. Twitter, in how we transmit news and information. The personal computer, in how we function on a daily basis. While the adoption rate and popularity holds a distinct place in each sector, these technologies have set the standard for the current age and those to come.
Ask any self-professed production enthusiast and they will rattle off the latest and greatest pieces of gear—those fueled with promises of cleaner, better, brighter, and faster. This obsession with innovation has sparked many of the great advancements over the past several decades. And when it comes to lighting, few can argue with the profound impact of LED technology.
A Short History
As early as 1935, physicists began experimenting with elementary electronic and light transmission principles, which would later influence LED technology and operation. When advancements in transistors and semiconductors flourished in the 1960s and beyond, the first diodes, starting with red, were being tested. Amazingly enough, the development into blue and white diodes took until the mid 1990s. And even then, LED fixtures were still relatively unused by lighting designers—much of this due to the fact that the lumen output and control were still far out of reach compared with their conventional counterparts.
Over the last 10 years—many could argue even the past 5 years—the industry has seen monumental leaps in LED technology and usage. And with the marketplace exponentially saturated, keeping an eye on emergent and relevant products becomes increasingly difficult. This same overload, though, has brought the technology into a wider space of affordability, performance and diverse usage. While LED is not always the answer for every situation, it’s worth knowing the pros, cons, and new developments available for houses of worship and beyond.
Knowing the Ups & Downs
While LED is not always the answer for every situation, it’s worth knowing the pros, cons, and new developments available for houses of worship.
Early adopters of LED lighting pointed to one major advantage that soon trumped all others: power draw. Remember the past days of concert touring and the massive Par64 lighting rigs? Not only were those rigs a flaming heat storm on stage, but the power needed to feed that much lighting was borderline insane. In order to provide the needed stage wash and color, it necessitated grids of epic proportion. LED technology has helped all but erase those challenges. With even a few 20-amp circuits, daisy chaining multiple LED fixtures is now commonplace. Now with fixtures capable of color mixing, DMX control, no need for dimming racks, and at a fraction of the weight, LED lighting has changed the game with various lighting applications.
While the advantages run deep, it certainly has not come without applicable growing pains. Unlike traditional discharge-lamp sources, LED uses an additive process to create its color output. Many lighting designers, early on, noted the lack of attaining proper color mix results, especially when used alongside traditional fixtures. This is where you often see shadows and non-linear performance. Early fixtures used 5mm and 10mm diodes that progressed into 1W and 3W sources. These represent fixtures where you see individual color elements on the face of the light (see figure 1). Manufacturers now employ Tri, Quad, and Hex elements, meaning there are three, four or five individual LED diodes combined with a reflector and lens. This has eliminated the “multi-color” look on the fixture face and dramatically improved shadowing and a more homogenized color mix (see figure 2).
As mentioned earlier, removing the need for expensive and power-thirsty dimming racks brought an attractive money-saving advantage to LED fixtures. The inherent difficulty though has been with the way non-incandescent fixtures behave with their dimming curves. Incandescent bulbs do not follow a linear curve base on percentage of input power. So the lower 50% of output will be much more gradual in increasing or decreasing lumens, and the actual color of the output changes, as well. LEDs on the other hand are extremely linear, meaning even small changes in intensity levels, even at lower lumen output levels, will be quite noticeable. While this dimming curve has been slowly improved, especially in higher-end fixtures, this has provided challenges in many applications for designers.
The COB Advantage
One of the more recent advancements in LED fixtures—and one that many manufacturers are taking advantage of—is chip-on-board (COB) technology. In a nutshell, manufacturers began installing lenses over LEDs in order to improve coherence and reduce uncomfortable glare. With that, though, came loss of lumen output. COB technology uses an exponentially higher density of LED sources, mounted directly onto a conductor. This in turn offers higher output ratio and uniformity.
Temperature AND Broadcast Advancements
Gather a group of lighting designers and they will quickly agree on one troublesome aspect of early LED usage: color temperature. Especially when considering broadcast applications, where temperature is vital to camera white balance and exposure, aligning traditional and LED light sources has been tricky in years past. With the standard 3,200K indoor incandescent and 5,500K outdoor lighting temperatures, manufacturers are continually adding temperature correction to their products to meet these needs. In addition, recent offerings feature fixtures that are solely aimed at providing both indoor and outdoor temperature standards. While some are specific to a certain temperature, others play a hybrid role. Commonly referred to as VW (variable white), these fixtures allow for mixed combinations along the temperature spectrum, giving users maximum flexibility within a single light.
In addition to the advancements in color temperature and broadcast-centric fixtures, ETC recently introduced its Source 4WRD. Aimed at venues with existing ETC SourceFour ellipsoidals, it is a quick, backend LED retrofit offering 575W output and performance features. With a 70% reduction in power, not to mention eliminating the need to re-lamp on a regular basis, this is sure to become a popular option with many houses of worship, theaters, and other applications looking to reduce operating costs.
Looking Ahead
As both the component and fixture advancement continues to mature, LED technology is sure to hold an important and expansive mark within houses of worship all around the world. Now more than ever, the level of professional solutions has caught up with the high level of artistic and performance demands—and this will surely continue to expand for years to come.
As with any emerging technology, it pays to do your homework. Finding the right fit for your application while planning for the future is essential. What works for one venue when it comes to LED technology may not work for another. But with the rapidly changing marketplace, solving even the most complex problems is affordable and possible now more than ever.
