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Dimmer curves with mixed brands


steve h

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Posted
Dimming (48 channels) - 96 circuits patchable, 15amp plugs

 

2 * Zero88 Beta packs (12 Channels)

Eleco Dimmers (36 Channels)

4 * show tec 4 way dimmers

 

Soon to be replaced with 8 * beta packs 3 and 1 * chili pro.

 

Hi Kev

 

Just wondering how you cope with the different dimmer curves on the showtec and zero88 dimmers? Or does this not come into affect?

 

Steve

Posted

We dont :) we have a big problem with our celco dimmers and the zero88 dimmers. We have very intersting fades! The showtec we only use for emergency and in other spaces.

 

Thats 90% of reason why were replacing our dimmers.

 

There is a lovely program/lx desk called light factory thats has really good control over dimmers curves which might be of some use to you.

Posted

Thanks...its not something I usually have to deal with...all ours are betapack2s, but last week was doing a show somewhere else where the dimmers were beta2s, but one had a rather bizarre curve of really only starting to show from about 75% onwards!

 

Steve

Posted

A venue I did a show at last year had some odd dimmers; I'm told they were rescued from a skip of a TV station that was upgrading its lighting, there were 36 channels of 5KW. But... when I used them with a couple of normal dimmers, it all just looked wrong. Fortunately PCStage supports arbitrary dimmer curves, so I picked a channel, and adjusted curves to make it look the same as a "normal" dimmer, and this is what the curve looked like...

 

http://www.davidbuckley.name/pix/pcstage_dimmer_curve.jpg

 

Note that a 'normal curve' for no correction is a diagonal line from bottom left to top right...

 

Once that ocrrection was applied, one channel looked good, but on closer examination, every channel of the 36 was a bit different :blink: No wonder the TV company was trashing these dimmers.

 

So for next years show I am going to have 36 curves, one per oddball dimmer. I'm just musing over how I can automate the process so it takes me less than a lifetime to programme it up...

 

Edited for clarity.

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