Good beam from any LED "pars"?

[nopEda]

Hi,

 

Are there any fairly inexpensive LED "par" type fixtures that put out a good visible beam? So far the only LED fixtures I've seen that do are the Martin 101s. Are there any LED pars that put out as good or better a beam than the 101s? I've been led to believe the 101s use a 3 watt LED...does anyone know if that's true or not?

 

Thanks for any help!

David

[smalljoshua]

I don't know off hand what the 101s use, but just yesterday, I worked on a festival where we used a number of Lanta Neptune 18 wash lights. They were very impressive and gave a very good narrow beam visible in haze. Comparable in brightness IMO to the 101s (I haven't a/b'd them though) and much much more affordable!

 

Josh

[Young Johnstone]

What are you after? A moving LED wash (ie the 101) or a fixture like a PAR? I got a little confused with your post!

[Ashley R]

I had at one point in time some led par cans, that had 36x1w led's with a tiny beam angle of 6deg. So nice and punchy, kind of like the 101.

And I think he is looking for some par cans that have a beam that's similar to the Mac 101's

[billystag]

I have some robin ledbeam 100's - they give a brilliant beam in smoke (for an LED source of this type). They obviously won't compete with a sharpy but they are a different instrument.

[nopEda]

What are you after? A moving LED wash (ie the 101) or a fixture like a PAR? I got a little confused with your post!

We have several old Martin Mac 600s that don't seem to be worth the expense it would take to fix them, plus I'm trying to move on to LEDs and get away from the old arc lamp stuff. Eventually lights like the 101s will be quite cheap imo, but until that time comes I'm hoping to find some LED par type fixtures with a good beam to them that we can mount on the frames of some of the old 600s. They would have to be programmed as two different fixtures, but that's okay. It would make something good and useful out of fixtures that are useless right now if we can do it. There would be no more color flag problems, or shutter or frost or color wheel or lamp on etc... problems. As long as the pan and tilt part of the 600s works that's all that would matter from them, if we can find the right LED fixtures to use.

 

And I think he is looking for some par cans that have a beam that's similar to the Mac 101's

Yes, LED pars.

[LXbydesign]

Slight flaw in that plan is that until they invent wireless mains and you have wireless DMX box strapped to each can and the 600 fixture - your gonna end up in a bit of a cable pickle when you switch on the Mac600 and it goes through its start up cycle . . .

[timsabre]

Slight flaw in that plan is that until they invent wireless mains and you have wireless DMX box strapped to each can and the 600 fixture - your gonna end up in a bit of a cable pickle when you switch on the Mac600 and it goes through its start up cycle . . .

 

Errrr, they do have wires going through the yoke into the head you know, in fact quite a number of them. This should be perfectly doable given enough time and determination.

[gyro_gearloose]

You'd be better off selling your Mac 600s and using the proceeds to buy some proper LED moving heads. This will be much easier than trying to butcher an LED can onto the Mac body. Trust me on this. Even if your Macs are in need of repair, you'll always find someone willing to buy them (possibly me depending on what is wrong with them). :)

 

Another option would be to fit an LED lamp into the 600s. You'll retain the colour mixing and beam shaping abilities of the Mac, and the mechanical dimming will be smoother than electronically dimming the LED. Poor dimming, particularly just before the lamp goes out completely, is a big problem for many cheaper LED lamps.

 

E2A: Have a look at Chauvets range of LED moving heads. They're pretty good, and they do have some very narrow beam angles on some of their 'wash' lights. I think the narrowest they do is somewhere around 10 degrees, but don't quote me on that :)

[paulears]

In panto last year - we had a prop lightning staff - press a button and it made a high bright flash. Being nosey, inside was simply a cluster of white leds - probably 40 or so in a ball shaped lump - glued together. I wonder what something like this would do placed in the discharge lamp position? Could be worth trying as an experiment.

[gyro_gearloose]

I wonder what something like this would do placed in the discharge lamp position?

Probably overheat and die very quickly if the LEDs are even moderately powerful :) There's a big difference between flashing very briefly and staying on continuously. If you wanted to swap out the discharge lamp for an LED then take a look at the Bridgelux LEDs available from Farnell. They come in many different brightness levels/colour temps. with the brightest producing up to 9,000 Lumens.

[nopEda]

You'd be better off selling your Mac 600s and using the proceeds to buy some proper LED moving heads. This will be much easier than trying to butcher an LED can onto the Mac body. Trust me on this. Even if your Macs are in need of repair, you'll always find someone willing to buy them (possibly me depending on what is wrong with them). :)

. . .

E2A: Have a look at Chauvets range of LED moving heads. They're pretty good, and they do have some very narrow beam angles on some of their 'wash' lights.

So far I haven't found any examples of what I'm looking for...no one has suggested a good par LED so maybe they don't even exist. But again so far I can't help but feel that there are some out there, and that they would be considerably cheaper than a moving head. Also, if we can get set up that way and then in a few years better fixtures become affordable we would be in a great position to upgrade, which would probably not be true if we buy moving head LEDs instead of upgrading the 600s. We would still want to sell the ones that are in better condition though and put that money into the upgrade fixtures. We have 4 that so far are in good condition, but we use them four to five nights a week so that could change at any time. We have a group of 500s that we've stopped using, and that is the first group we want to sell. Four of them are in good shape except that one shows a FBET when it boots up, but I don't have any problems controlling it. We have 11 all together, and if there's any chance you'd be interested in them please let me know and I'll send you the info about them. My email address is:

 

nopeda@bellsouth.net

 

if you want to get in touch that way, or I'll post it here if you'd rather.

 

If you wanted to swap out the discharge lamp for an LED then take a look at the Bridgelux LEDs available from Farnell. They come in many different brightness levels/colour temps. with the brightest producing up to 9,000 Lumens.

That's something I was thinking about for the 500s. How would I get the LED into the correct position? Have you tried that method, or do you know people who have?

[mac500]

As suggested earlier in the post I'd definately look at the chauvet range of fixtures. I've used the Q-wash 560z wash. They're brilliant and go to a really tight beam.

[Don Allen]

As an example of what is available, have a look at Etan Lighting 36*10W RGBW Zoom it is a 10 to 60 degree zoom. Pricing is under 700USD. There are other suppliers but you will have to import yourself, will have no local support etc. One advantage of going to led movers is the weight reduction.

 

The beam angle of led lighting is determined by the lens. You can usually choose from a range of beam angles, I chose 30 degree for my Etan 48x5W RGBA led pars as a compromise between a medium par64 and a 1K fresnel. I can buy lenses from other suppliers if I want a different angle and for indoor pars they are easy to change.

[gyro_gearloose]

So far I haven't found any examples of what I'm looking for...no one has suggested a good par LED so maybe they don't even exist.

If you are after static LED PARs, have a look at the 54W Kam power cans. They are now onto version 2 of the fixture, but a few years ago I saw a demo of the first version and I have to say it was rather good. You didn't get the colour fringing that many other LED wash lights produced, and they were quite bright. I'm not sure what the beam angle was though.

 

Another option is Chauvets RGBA SlimPar. We're starting to see these used on touring shows that come to our venue and they seem to be quite bright and punchy. They are a little more expensive than the Kam 'cans, although they do produce a better spread of colours as they are RGBA LEDs as opposed to the Powercan's RGB LEDs.

 

But again so far I can't help but feel that there are some out there, and that they would be considerably cheaper than a moving head. Also, if we can get set up that way and then in a few years better fixtures become affordable we would be in a great position to upgrade, which would probably not be true if we buy moving head LEDs instead of upgrading the 600s.

I'm not quite sure I'm following you here. Are you saying that you'd rather get some LED PARs now, and wait a year or two until LED moving heads become better/cheaper? Or are you saying that you still want to graft an LED PAR onto some of your faulty Mac 600s now, and upgrade to 'proper' LED moving heads in the future?

 

Waiting for LEDs to improve might have been a valid argument a few years ago, but there are now many viable options available to suit your situation. As for chopping up a Mac 600, even if its broken, and attaching an LED PAR, this really is not a good idea. Its not easy to do safely, and even broken Macs have some value, even if it just for parts to repair other Macs. If I were in your position, I'd be selling off your Macs, even the broken ones, and gradually replacing them with either fixed or moving LED units.

 

That's something I was thinking about for the 500s. How would I get the LED into the correct position? Have you tried that method, or do you know people who have?

There's masses of space inside the head of a Mac 500 once the lamp and reflector have been removed, so there's plenty of space to fit an LED light source. The problem with doing this is that you'd need to design some condenser optics that sit in front of the LED as Mac 500s don't have them. Condenser optics are far more efficient than the rather simple reflector system found in Mac 500s, and many other makes of moving light. You need a really efficient optics system with LEDs as a Philips MSR 575/2 that the Mac uses produces around 49,000 Lumens, yet according to the Mac 500 manual only 9,000 of those Lumens make it out of the front of the unit!

 

By way of comparison, have a look at my Miniscan LED conversion. Clay Paky Miniscans have condenser optics built in so all I had to do was re-package the lenses. Having done a side-by-side comparison of my LED Miniscan and one still fitted with an HMI 300 lamp I can say that my converted Miniscan, with a 1,900 Lumen LED, is almost as bright as an original Miniscan, with a 22,000 Lumen discharge lamp. Result :)

 

Part of this is down to the fact the optic system in a Miniscan doesn't capture much of the light from the discharge lamp, so it needs condensing optics to make best use of what little light is does capture. You might ask why Clay Paky did it this way, and the answer is that all discharge lamps get very hot and dealing with this heat requires good airflow over the lamp. To get good airflow you can't always surround a lamp with a reflector, so you must waste some, or even most, of the light from the lamp.