LED PARs

[Dave]

I've appreciated Brian's LED vs TH shootouts. The basic conclusion from the most recent one of the Elation LED fresnel was that it's around half the brightness of a 500W Minuette fresnel, which is certainly usable (allowing for things like colour rendering and beam quality etc).

 

I was wondering if anyone has any experience of the more recent chinese LED PARs that typically have 18, 24, or even 36 3W LEDs? If they are comparable to the Elation fresnel, then I'd expect them to be equally bright. Perhaps 36 x 3W LEDs might approach the brightness of a 500W TH lamp?

 

I have a client who'd like to light a small stage with LEDs, and I was thinking that 8 of these might suffice. I've little experience of LEDs and don't know if they are sufficiently advanced to be a practical solution.

 

Any thoughts?

[timmeh2]

Hi

 

From what I've seen these 3W chips aren't really 3W, recently I compared some chinese-made ones to CK ColorBlasts (1W) and I couldn't see much difference in them. That might not be true for all though.

 

One thing I did notice straightaway was the colour variance was pretty poor, whereas the CK units had fairly even output across various DMX values the chinese ones were quite far apart.

 

Of course you could fix this on your lighting desk if it supports palettes, but it would be time-consuming.

 

HTH

 

All the best

Timmeh

[Brian]

From what I've seen these 3W chips aren't really 3W...

Indeed. I've got a '3W' unit sat next to me. It's a white LED so the voltage across it is somewhere between 3.0v and 3.6v. The current through it is 350mA (it's regulated) so that's between 1.05W and 1.26W. 3W? I think not.

[Dave]

Perhaps they've found a way to change the laws of physics (captain)... ;)

 

How can firms get away with such blatent lies?