For over a hundred years we have been lighting our homes, buildings, theatres, and houses of worship with tungsten halogen lamps. But as energy costs escalated, we searched for more efficient light sources. As technology replaced our tungsten halogen lamps with compact fluorescent, a new technology has moved into the household, LEDs. Although LEDs are much more expensive than compact florescent lamps, their incredibly long lamp life, coupled with their excellent warm color rendering, LEDs look like the ideal light source for the home and office.
It was only a matter of time for LEDs to move into the world of theatrical lighting. Stage lighting has embraced LED technology for several years now. In fact, I would estimate that about 75% of the lamp and fixture products presented at this year's LDI Show are LED-based. Just about all the major theatrical lighting fixture manufacturers now have a wide range of LED stage lighting fixtures available for sale.
Up until now, these fixtures have been very expensive. However, with the advent of inexpensive LED manufacturing from China, lighting companies have been able to lower their manufacturing expenses. Where a standard PAR Can and PAR 64 lamp would cost about $150, when you consider its energy inefficiency, and the inability for a conventional PAR to change colors in one fixture (unless you purchase an expensive color changer or hang multiple PARs with different colors), the user cost of LED PARs are now approaching an attractive price point.
Which bring us to Lightronics' new FXLD1018FRP 5-in-1 RGBAW LED lighting fixture. This fixture uses the latest LED technology, promising an excellent high-powered lighting source coupled with the ability to mix to a wide variety of colors. Lightronics sent us this fixture for testing in our light lab and theaters at California State University Long Beach. We ran several photometric tests as well as compared this fixture against some of its competitors. We also compared it to a conventional PAR 64 can mentioned above.
First, a little background... The new Lightronics FXLD1018FRP 5-in-1 RGBAW fixture uses five separate colors of LEDs. As you may guess, the initials stand for Red, Green, Blue, Amber, and White. We all know that red, green, and blue are the primary colors of light. So why would you need two more colors? Because RGB LEDs have a difficult time mixing to a pleasing warm and cool white light. Adding the additional amber and white LEDs offer a variety of white light with a wide range of color temperature. Additionally, in conjunction with the red, green, and blue LEDs, this fixture is designed to achieve beautiful pastel colors.
Each 10-watt, five-in-one colored LED is situated behind one of 18 lenses in the fixture. This design has several advantages. First, this LED grouping assists in the additive mixing of colors, creating a very even color field. This design also assists in the reduction of colored shadows, which is a typical byproduct of LED fixtures that use this type of color mixing.
Adding the additional amber and white LEDs offer a variety of white light with a wide range of color temperature.
The optics of LEDs varies from model to model depending on the manufacturer. There seems to be no industry standard right now. This Lightronics fixture comes with a 45-degree lens. An optional 25-degree lens is available as well. We tested the 45-degree lens and we found the field spread quite useful for relatively short throws.
Our tests revealed that this fixture was extremely bright, especially in comparison to older LED wash fixtures that we have in our inventory. We tested the Lightronics LED fixture and found that the intensity of the white light is quite comparable to a PAR64 WFL. However, when we placed a dark gel into the PAR64, the intensity was greatly reduced. This was not as evident with the Lightronics LED fixture. We found that the LED would not lose the same percentage of light as the conventional PAR. This is due to the fact that with a gel, the subtractive color mixing of placing a filter in front of a light will reduce the intensity dramatically. In the LED fixture, there is no subtractive color mixing.
We also tested the consistency of the color field. This is where many LED fixtures fall by the wayside. The entire field of light must stay at the same color from center of the field to the edge of the field. This is also very important when fading from color to color. The Lightronics LED fixture's color fading was exquisite. There were no anomalies of strange color banding when fading from color to color. In fact, we found the color consistency of this fixture among the best we have ever tested.
When testing the dimming function we discovered a very smooth dimming curve with minimal drop-off at the lower end. Again, this is a very difficult test for an LED fixture to pass. The Lightronics passed this test with flying colors.
Regarding color accuracy, we were able to reproduce most colors in the spectrum. We were happily surprised to be able to easily mix to light lavenders, pinks, ambers, and blues, as these are very useful theatrical colors. However, we were not able to achieve a really deep primary blue. This is probably due to the fixture's LED design intent to create a wide range of pastel colors. This is the issue with most LED fixtures. Unless you add another system of deep blue LED's (which ups the price considerably), you have to compromise that deep color. That being said, we were able to achieve lovely deep reds, yellows, and greens … other difficult colors in the LED spectrum. Considering the wide color range and smooth color fields, we would have no problem using this fixture for most color washes.
The addition of the white and amber LED's made mixing to a varied white light color temperature easy. We were able to match the LED fixture to a 3,200-Kelvin incandescent fixture. This means that you should be able to mix and blend this LED fixture with your standard conventional lighting instruments without strange color inconsistencies.
One issue with multi-colored LED fixtures is the phenomena of multi-colored shadows. LEDs in colored arrays will project multi-colored shadows of objects that the light hits. There is an aura around the shadow with the colors of the LEDs. The design of placing the LEDs behind individual lens seems to have minimized this issue.
We tested the strobe modes and were very impressed with the speed and variety of this effect. It is extremely bright and effective. You can activate the strobe, along with many other effects from the lighting board as well as directly from the menu on the fixture.
The fixture is controlled via DMX512 in five- or nine-channel modes. In the five-channel mode you get separate control of each of the five colors. In the nine-channel mode you add control of the variable dimmer, strobe, and effects functions. The fixture is flicker-free and HD-compatible with a refresh rate >400 Hz, which makes it ideal for video shoots (especially important for those houses of worship who use IMAG or other video recording techniques).
The fixture also has a four-character LCD readout that allows you to change modes, set the DMX address, and test the fixture. We found the features very easy to adjust. As a nice touch, the Lightronics LED also has a double yoke, allowing it to be mounted in several positions.
We were very impressed with the Lightronics FXLD1018FRP 5-in-1 RGBAW LED fixture. Prices for LED technology are coming down, which will permit houses of worship to incorporate this technology into their lighting rigs. Yes, it looks as if the days of the tungsten halogen lamp are coming to an end. But with that one hundred+-year-old technology coming to an end, a new technology is taking its place … with the huge advantage of enormous energy savings and color flexibility. Change is good, indeed….
