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ADJ 300W LED Hybrid Moving Head is a Beam/Spot/Wash in one fixture.
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The Elation Fuze series is available in moving head and IP65-rated PAR versions.
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Chauvet's Ovation E-910FC offers fully homogenous color projection utilizing red, green, blue, amber and lime LEDs.
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ETC’s ColorSource Linear fixture combines a flexible design with high-color output.
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Arri’s L10-C, a fully color tunable LED Fresnel.
It's fair to say that LED lighting technology has completely arrived. Once scoffed at by most lighting designers, it's now hard to find a new lighting plot in a house of worship that does not include LED lighting technology; in fact, it's now not unusual to find facilities where the auditorium/sanctuary lighting system is exclusively LED-based. While there are still some challenges in doing so, it's now quite feasible to create a quality all-LED lighting installation.
So, what's happened in LED lighting technology that has enabled this transition?
“LED emitters make up a small portion of the cost of most complete LED fixtures,” says David Hilton, product marketing manager at Electronic Theatre Controls (ETC) in Middleton, Wis. “As time has gone on, their efficiency (lumens per watt) has increased significantly. This has had the largest impact on their presence in the marketplace because it cascades into a host of changes that optimize fix design. As the intensity of each emitter increases, fixtures can use fewer emitters to achieve the same output. With fewer emitters, you need fewer watts. This means you can use a smaller power supply, a less robust heat management system, and reduce the size or need of other items that support the LED array. All of these components make up a significant portion of the cost of a complete LED fixture. This, in turn, makes the technology more budget-friendly and attainable for more projects.”
Shift in Focus
As with any technology shift, there comes a point where the “critical mass” of investment shifts, as well. “Lamp R&D investment has moved to LED,” states Eric Loader, director of sales for Los Angeles-based Elation Professional, “and the demand for improved quality of light has driven LED manufacturers to improve the performance. . LED chip technology follows Moore’s Law—it is getting brighter and better every 18 months or so, and in addition the cost of quality LED fixtures is reducing. We are also seeing improved color rendering index (CRI) and reliability.” CRI is a measurement of a fixture’s ability to render the natural color of the object it is illuminating. CRI is a measurement of a fixture’s ability to render the natural color of the object it is illuminating.
Ford Sellers, senior product manager for Chauvet Professional in Sunrise, Fla., adds, “The early advances in LED technology were primarily focused on increasing brightness. As brightness has reached expectations, the fixture designers have demanded improvements focused on user experience. Improvements in LED driver technology have enabled us to remove flicker. Advances in phosphor technologies have allowed us to make more natural looking light and vivid colors. And advances in optics have allowed us to bend and shape the light to a multitude of purposes. While it used to be that the costs associated with these technologies meant we could only put these features into our flagship products, our early adoption of these technologies has made it so that the companies producing the electronic components have seen the market viability and moved into mass production. All of these advances have become more affordable, as they moved from the lab, into a few products, and then into the wider lighting market. The affordability of the technology has been a major driver in our ability to adopt and adapt these new technologies across the entertainment lighting market.”
It’s not just the concert and theatrical manufacturers who have benefited from these advances. Companies like ADJ, whose focus has traditionally been the DJ market, are now able to produce cost-effective fixtures that are finding acceptance in wider markets, such as houses of worship.
"LED chip technology follows Moore’s Law—it is getting brighter and better every 18 months or so."
Eric Loader
Director of Sales, Elation Professional, Los Angeles, CA.
“It’s an evolution of technology,” comments Alfred Gonzales, sales manager for ADJ USA with offices in Los Angeles. “A lot of people that go to a wedding are now expecting more of a concert feel. They are expecting uplighting, moving-head fixtures, etc…. ”
Therefore companies like ADJ are investing in more advanced types of fixtures. And the advances previously mentioned are enabling the implementation of this technology in lower-cost fixtures. “The quality has gotten better, and products are smaller, lighter weight, and not as hot,” says Gonzales. And this has translated into companies that have traditionally served the DJ market producing products that have caught the attention of church techs.
Multi-use with New Meaning
“Lights are now multi-use,” Gonzales adds. “We have a hybrid fixture that can be used as a beam fixture, spot fixture and as a wash fixture. The same goes for Par-style fixtures—they can now zoom instead of just having a fixed beam angle. LED just keeps getting brighter and brighter, and the optics are getting better as well, which augments the brightness of a fixture.”
Theater and concert environments were on more of the leading edge of adopting LED technology, but now LED is coming into its own in the area of video production, as well.
“Over the past several years,” explains Mike Wagner, senior product manager for Arri Lighting, “the commercial market LED lighting has expanded, which has allowed LED chip manufactures to invest heavily in the improvement of their products. The entertainment industry has been able to benefit from these advancements in higher efficiency and higher color rendition LED chips. In addition to this, luminaire manufacturers have made significant advancements in software, electronics and fixture design to produce more advanced and better performing lamp heads for use in video capture. Now that the novelty of LEDs has worn off, we are starting to see fixtures that are real “work horses” that lighting professionals are used to. For example, Fresnel and soft lights that produce light in the same fashion as conventional lights.”
A shift in technology, however, can bring some new challenges to overcome.
“It has been my experience that the new LED profile fixtures are much sharper than their incandescent ellipsoidal predecessors,” describes Greg Persinger, owner of Vivid Illumination based in Nashville, Tenn. “While this has great benefit with gobo projection and getting precision shutter cuts, when you are trying to blend fixtures together it makes it much harder. Even when you go and knock the fixture out of focus it still doesn’t react exactly like a traditional ellipsoidal and the light doesn’t soften as much. Yes, it does go out of focus, but it is a bit different than an incandescent ellipsoidal. With that in mind you need to have some heavier diffusion gel ready if you are trying to get LED profiles to blend. I don’t know that this is a good or bad thing as much as the characteristics of a new fixture. I think the same thing could probably be said of the ETC Source Four when it first came to market in 1992. It completely changed the way designers designed with ellipsoidal fixtures. I think we are seeing this same shift in thinking with LED fixtures now.”
Preview of Coming Attractions
Advancements in LED technology have certainly not peaked. More recent advancements include homogenized beams where the light from different colored LED emitters is combined into one consistent beam. This eliminates the problem of multi-colored shadows, and created fixtures that have beam characteristics closer to traditional fixtures.
“Over time,” says Sellers, “we will see fixtures moving away from having multiple lenses over discreet or Tri-, Quad-, and Hex-Color LEDs, and more toward truly contiguous light sources. Chauvet has several products on the market that already incorporate this concept.”
Chip On Board (COB) LED technology is also changing the beam characteristics of LED fixtures. “COB enables you to place a lot of little LEDs in one cluster,” describes Gonzales, “providing high brightness and enabling a wider beam spread. ADJ’s COB cannon can provide up to an 80-degree beam spread.”
Beyond the LED fixture itself, lighting control systems are evolving to provide more options to the lighting designer more advanced LED fixtures.
“Did you know that if you have four or more colors of LED emitters in a fixture, you can mix a color in more than one way?” asks Hilton. “Think about making a light blue that shines on a person and gives them vibrancy as opposed to a version of that same color that makes them look cold and drab. Doing this by hand is often unintuitive and incredibly time-consuming, so it is something that hasn’t really been done before. ETC’s lighting controllers, like our Eos family of consoles, have developed tools that allow you to quickly do this which facilitates a whole new way for a designer to express their vision with light. Artists right now can do things with LEDs they have never been able to do before, and what is on the horizon will give them even more tools to tell their stories with precision and beauty.”
