Simple floodlight for early experiments

[nilsemil]

Hi! I'm about to try some scenography experiments in a small room.

I need a decent flood light. LED's I suppose. placed on floor.

I would like to produce warm white, white, blue, red and possibly UV with good punch. DMX controlled.

Total spread, no focus needed, just as much light as possible, monochromic or warm white.

Sorry for fuzzy question, but it's a start :-)

[niclights]

In terms of LED in my experience writing personality files over the last hew years I can't remember if I have seen any that combine different temperature white components with RGB. Usually manufacturer's separate them into white or colour mixing products. There probably are some but they are quite rare and even more so for wide flood. So you probably would be looking at RGBAW or RGBAWUV.

 

While wide floods are less prevalent than relatively narrow angle washes such as LED Pars or battens/'wall washers' there are still a lot of options with big differences in cost so I think it might be helpful if you could provide an idea of budget.

 

Do you definitely need LED/control? It would certainly be a lot cheaper and simpler to have a flood with gel albeit with the heat and less efficient for blues.

[paulears]

Video lighting often has a number of 'whites' - but they don't have a need for RGB - so much will come down to if you need a gentle spectrum or a spike spectrum, and how this works with your idea? Is hard or soft light important? There are more RGBW profiles around now?

[p.k.roberts]

No personal experience of them (yet), but I'm wondering if an LED cyc light might be worth looking at - there are a few around now ....

[andy_s]

The chauvet ovation range has different white colour temperatures, plus RGB, plus other specific colours ( Royal blue, lime green, etc. (I'm told by the lighting students I've just been working with)...

[timsabre]

The chauvet ovation range has different white colour temperatures, plus RGB, plus other specific colours ( Royal blue, lime green, etc. (I'm told by the lighting students I've just been working with)...

They don't really, they simulate different whites by mixing in amber. This fools your eye into seeing a warmer white colour, but really it's just putting a peak in the spectrum in Amber - it is not quite the same thing when working with pigments. A proper "warm white" has a much fuller spectrum which will make the pigments react differently..

(The chauvet lights are RGBAL (L=lime). The ETC Lustrs are better, having RGBWAL-UV which fills more holes in the spectrum but is still a bit peaky)

 

 

[nilsemil]

my budget at first is just for experiments so not more $100-300 but once I get a hang of what I want and need it can be more costly. just gotta figure some aesthetics first.

 

what I didn't mention is, which might be totally wrong for LED's is:

 

I want the light source itself to look interesting, not the enclosure but the very area that provides the photons :-)

 

I really don't like seeing the led dots themselves, I'd prefer a "solid" look, like just a rectangular solid colour when looking right at the lamp.

 

examples I dont like the look of

https://www.thomann.de/se/cameo_thunder_wash_600w.htm

 

but maybe it's just possible to put a diffractor and hide the dots?

 

ok this message got really fuzzy, but it's a start

 

so, it's both for audience in the room and for being filmed. the effect in each light is totally monochrome colour (except for the whites ofcourse)

 

thanks guys for really good input. feel free to keep it coming.

 

SO,

 

any advice for a certain flood product I should look into?

 

lots of light for little money, experiment phase

[timsabre]

Diffuser won't work with a dotty fixture, you will still see the dotsYou need a COB fixture if you just want a single colour

e.g. https://www.thomann.de/gb/showtec_compact_par_60_cob_rgbw.htm

this will not give you a true warm white though - you can mix something that looks like warm white by adding red and a bit of green to the white.

 

[niclights]

I think if you don't like the dots then LED might not be the best thing. I'm with you on this. I personally prefer a solid light from LED but it's not easy to find ones that throw enough light. The film/TV sector have some such as the Arri SkyPanel but they don't come cheap. Even the type you linked to is relatively rare - that sort of 'resolution' is typically seen in LED strobe fixtures. Usually there are far fewer (and much more obvious) 'dots'. In some fixtures the dots are individual colours which can look horrible if they are used in combination when viewed directly.

 

It is possible to diffuse them but it's harder than you might first think. You have to find just the right combination of density and distance from the emitters and you lose a significant amount of output as a result.

 

Unless you specifically have to be able to dynamically change the colour or do other things like strobe or if it is essential they are not hot to touch (for example for safety reasons) then I think static fixtures may be the best way forward - ie. tungsten, discharge or fluorescent source with filters.

[osmosis]

Arri Sky Panel or the Lightpanel Gemini will do as you ask. Great soft lights and are now used everywhere in the tv and film world. May be a bit out of your price range but you hire them.

[david.elsbury]

Again another vote for the Arri Skypanel- yes I do appreciate it’s well out of your budget:-)

[nilsemil]

thanks guys for really good answers. and pep.

 

so, generally flood lights arent DMX colour controllable? they are more of a fixed colour, or is it done with motorised colour filters?

 

 

 

what different techniques of flood lights should I look for?

 

thanks again

(a link of different ones)

https://www.thomann.de/gb/flood_lights.html?viewMode=block

 

 

Emil

Loney dear

[ed_ld]

Another vote for the Skypanel or the cheaper Kinoflo Freestyle

 

Both quite expensive but worth hiring in for your actual project as opposed to buying.

 

In the meantime, for your experiments and depending how handy you are with a soldering iron...you could make a DIY mini Skypanel fairly cheaply using some LED tape.

 

Just stick alternate strips of RGB and then WwCw bicolour to a piece of card/wood and then wire back to a DMX driver and PSU. You then put some diffusion gel over the top (maybe stand it off from the tape by an inch or so to get your uniform flat look)

 

We make little things like this a lot in the film industry for small location spaces and you'll be surprised how bright they are.

 

Doesn't even have to involve soldering if you don't mind looping the tape back on itself instead of cutting each time you zig zag across the card.

 

Hope that makes sense!

[nilsemil]

so how do you guys generally feel about seeing the very LED's? it makes me sad :-)

[paulears]

Is don't quite understand what you mean? When we had tungsten sources, lining up three intersecting circles from profiles with red, free and blue gel worked amazingly well for demonstrating the science. With LED sources, the results are very different. Still works of course to a large degree, but the overlaps have interesting artefacts and the range of magentas is different to a large degree. However, even weirder things happen when you point video cameras at the result on screen. Worth doing.