willdart666 Posted May 9, 2010 Posted May 9, 2010 Hey all, Just stumbled across this: http://www.theelectronicsshop.co.uk/Products/Strobes.htm It looks very "Disco" to me but has anyone ever come across one? Just wondering what they are like in terms of brightness and speed? How long until we're seeing these as standard in a pro rig I wonder? :)
congo5 Posted May 9, 2010 Posted May 9, 2010 Hey all, Just stumbled across this: http://www.theelectronicsshop.co.uk/Products/Strobes.htm It looks very "Disco" to me but has anyone ever come across one? Just wondering what they are like in terms of brightness and speed? How long until we're seeing these as standard in a pro rig I wonder? :) I've had a LED strobe now for 2 years and have had to replace 6 LED's in that time, There very bright, but there flash isnt always reliable, it can flash very fast, but on the other hand it can flash very slow. We've upgraded all our Par Can's to LED and now all of our Strobes to LED. I think all LED lanterns are making there way into PRO RIGS. We're now looking at buying LED moving Lights !!
MarkPAman Posted May 9, 2010 Posted May 9, 2010 We've upgraded all our Par Can's to LED Not sure that "upgraded" is the right word. :) "Changed" would be better. B-)
willdart666 Posted May 9, 2010 Author Posted May 9, 2010 By "pro rigs" I meant outside of pub discos, just to clear that up. I've never seen them used on any gigs I've done, we normally go with Atomics or Flashers so my thoughts were that as we move more into the age of LED with fixtures such as the Impression making a huge impression (overused pun intended), will we see a shift in the xenon tube to LED. I can't say I've had the "wow" factor from an LED fixture on strobe as I have when working with Atomics. I know the comparison is rather stretched but I cant see the replication being possible any time soon.
sleah Posted May 10, 2010 Posted May 10, 2010 Don't forget you're comparing two completely different technologies. The fact you can *cough* 'strobe' a LED is merely a byproduct of the fact that they are near instant on/off compared to other light sources.A flash tube is literally that - a flash!
adam2 Posted May 10, 2010 Posted May 10, 2010 Slightly O/T but the strobe lights fitted to vehicles of the emergency services are increasingly LED units, rather than the xenon flashtubes used formerly.This is a large market, and requires high output so as to be clearly seen in daylight.I suspect that the same LED modules will soon appear in disco equipment.
musht Posted May 10, 2010 Posted May 10, 2010 Vehicle strobes have to be seen rather than light things. Remember the little LED squeeze torches being adverised as `mile lights` because they were easily visible on axis from a mile. LED offers a lot of advantages in a rough service enviroment. Xenon is in a different class of brightness, or more specifically , power density, xenon as a contnuous wave source is only about as efficient as halogen but all the emitting bit is in a tiny area, thats why xenon is popular for followspots and sky trackers. Xenon strobe similarly is able to deliver very high power density in a very short time, properly measured in Joules not Watts as its an almost instantaneous release of energy. So even assuming LED and Xenon had same efficiency it would still take a 3000 J LED array to equal brightness of 3000 J Xenon flash lamp, guess which is going to be a lot bigger..... LEDs do have their use as strobescopes for vehicles and in science where the high speed attainable and low heat output are attractive, then get into the decay characteristics of phosphors and gate capacitance of triggers , a microsecond is a really short pulse.
Brian Posted May 10, 2010 Posted May 10, 2010 ...it would still take a 3000 J LED array to equal brightness of 3000 J Xenon flash lamp, guess which is going to be a lot bigger.....It's an interesting BOFP calculation to work out just how many LEDs you need and how much they would cost for an LED strobe as bright as an Atomic 3000 or even an AF1000.
Samwise Posted May 10, 2010 Posted May 10, 2010 Yeah Will, this is brilliant. Just don't plug it into a dimmer.x
mccall101 Posted May 10, 2010 Posted May 10, 2010 Yeah Will, this is brilliant. Just don't plug it into a dimmer.x id agree they just keep flashing as soon as power goes through it whether the faders are down or not which is a pain but I have used them with a manuel seperate fader which works but you kind of need them to be right beside you and that involves a lot or threading cables to do that and its just a bit of a pain in the arse.
sleah Posted May 11, 2010 Posted May 11, 2010 Yeah Will, this is brilliant. Just don't plug it into a dimmer.x id agree they just keep flashing as soon as power goes through it whether the faders are down or not which is a pain but I have used them with a manuel seperate fader which works but you kind of need them to be right beside you and that involves a lot or threading cables to do that and its just a bit of a pain in the arse. Eh? Not entirely sure what you are saying here... are you talking about plugging a LED fixture in to a dimmer channel and it powers up regardless of whether the dimmer is at 0% or 100%? - which is possible if the fixture is very low power (think mirror balls ;) ) No, don't plug them in to dimmer channels! Apart from those pocket size thingys, LED strobes will be DMX, so it's just a case of adding them to the DMX chain and operating from the lighting desk..... :)
paulears Posted May 11, 2010 Posted May 11, 2010 We've upgraded all our Par Can's to LED and now all of our Strobes to LED. I think all LED lanterns are making there way into PRO RIGS. We're now looking at buying LED moving Lights !! Upgraded PARs to LED PARS? They don't remotely do the same job? Stick a PAR64, just a single one, on a subject, in 106 Red, or any other saturated colour and the subject's hot, the beam clear and it looks good. Which LED Par can produces the same effect. I know venues who have replaced their PAR64 with lots of LEDs and the lighting is absolutely ... worse! They obviously have their place, and as Brian points out in his tests, they are getting brighter - but they're an additional tool, not a replacement one. I don't see many tours replacing their PAR64s in the truss with LEDs quite yet!
Grum Posted May 11, 2010 Posted May 11, 2010 I know venues who have replaced their PAR64 with lots of LEDs and the lighting is absolutely ... worse! I prefer to think of it as "challenging" with more scope for freelance LD's to get work locally. :)
Ashley R Posted May 11, 2010 Posted May 11, 2010 We've upgraded all our Par Can's to LED and now all of our Strobes to LED. I think all LED lanterns are making there way into PRO RIGS. We're now looking at buying LED moving Lights !! Hmm I think you are downgrading rather than upgrading ;) . Recently used 20 LED Panels for a small school production and they worked great! they were only used for colour washes of which they wanted about 8 different colours so saved me a tonne of time and dimmer's. But we did use Fresnel's and Par cans for the white wash. the LED's 'white' looked a ghastly pinky white. But Back onto the topic :) Personally I don't think you are going to be able to replace anything over 100w xenon with LED Strobes by the time you start to get a reasonable amount of 'bang' you have used as much power as using a regular strobe but used 4x the amount of rigging space! also every manufactuere has different strobe rates for thier LED Products. out of the 20 LED panels I own about half of them have a stupidly fast max strobe rate and the other half have a realatively slow max strobe rate so watch out!
WolvesAndi Posted May 12, 2010 Posted May 12, 2010 we had boys to men here a few days ago, the rigger said it was all pre-rig par truss they was bringing in, I thought a bit old school but ok. Turned out the pre rig was all LED pars, looked ok, I think its the future
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