Replacement floodlights

[PantoDame]

I look after the lighting in a small village hall. The rear of the stage is light by 500w halogen floodlights, the same as are used on domestic security lights. We are slowly changing spotlights to LEDs, but anyone suggest an LED equivalent of the floodlights

[adam2]

Are these for lighting the acting area ? in which case dimming is probably required, and colour changing is potentialy useful. Or are they working lights for an area behind the stage and out of sight of the audience ?

[sunray]

I have always used the 500W halogens for uplighter house lights in the AmDrams, usually 2 or 4 being plenty and tried to move over to 50W RGB LED floods then 50W CW LED (non dimmable) but the reflection off the ceiling tiles is vastly inferior to the halogen, even when using 8 and I've gone back.

[PantoDame]

Sorry, I should have made it clear-it is the acting area. Not sure whether that is stage up or down. Thanks for the comments so far.

[Robin D]

Do these light the back wall of the stage (furthest from the audience)? That is upstage and the wall or curtains often referred to as the cyc short for cyclorama. 

The upstage downstage is because in some theatres the stage tipped towards the audience known as a raked stage. 

Either way, I am with @sunray on this for two reasons. Cheaper LEDs will not dim smoothly (never power them from a dimmer pack) and while the power saving of LED is a worthwhile goal, in reality, unless the stage is in very regular use, the return on investment is likely to be longer than the lifespan of the new units. They are on for what 3 hours max per show? Multiplied by the number of shows. The savings will be miniscule if you only do a handful of shows a year. 

LED''s are also a lot more complex as they contain electronics. They have to have a data feed and clean power. Most have fans that need regular maintenance to avoid them stopping and/or getting noisy. Nothing worse than a really quiet scene accompanied by the whirring of a dozen or so fans.

I too look after a village hall and keep it as simple as I can. I use LED's to add rich colours and movement, but everything else is old, but works. 

[sunray]

6 hours ago, Robin D said:

Do these light the back wall of the stage (furthest from the audience)? That is upstage and the wall or curtains often referred to as the cyc short for cyclorama. 

The upstage downstage is because in some theatres the stage tipped towards the audience known as a raked stage. 

It took me a long time to get to grips with the term upstaging someone. For a long time I believed it to mean the actor between the audience and the other actor was upstage, ie the front of the stage near the audience being up and the Cyc being down. That was until a set planning and moving props up and down confused the hell out of me. Following that session I asked Mister Google and all became clear.

6 hours ago, Robin D said:

Either way, I am with @sunray on this for two reasons. Cheaper LEDs will not dim smoothly (never power them from a dimmer pack) and while the power saving of LED is a worthwhile goal, in reality, unless the stage is in very regular use, the return on investment is likely to be longer than the lifespan of the new units. They are on for what 3 hours max per show? Multiplied by the number of shows. The savings will be miniscule if you only do a handful of shows a year. 

LED''s are also a lot more complex as they contain electronics. They have to have a data feed and clean power. Most have fans that need regular maintenance to avoid them stopping and/or getting noisy. Nothing worse than a really quiet scene accompanied by the whirring of a dozen or so fans.

I too look after a village hall and keep it as simple as I can. I use LED's to add rich colours and movement, but everything else is old, but works. 

I sort of inherited the everything with a plug or battery role for a local AmDram and to a small extent other parts of the hall. There has been some aim at replacing with LED until I plucked some figures from the air:

There are 3 16A supplies for stage lighting, the highest number of 500/650W fittings used being about 20 plus about 20x 50W LED or about 12KW. assuming that is in use for say 3 hours for 2 shows plus build/rehearsal or 12 hours = 144KWh or £36 or so. Replacing 20 fittings is likely to cost something in excess of say £5K we could have put on 5000/36 = 140 shows for that much or about 100 years. However thats assuming the new light don't require any repairs/replacement in that time and it doesn't account for the power they'll use.

In reality the group usually did one show and lighting use was 2 hours tops and the chance of having the whole rig lit for any length (if at all) was tiny, it's more likely only 25% of that energy or 400 shows worth.

Somehow my involvement with the group managed to extend, to a lesser extent, to 3 more AmDram groups and the calculations seemed to get repeated quite often by all of them as different people came and went.

Even if the costs were shared by the 4 groups we're still talking 25 years.

 

I don't see how it's possible that LED stage lighting will ever be cheaper than filament when all costs are taken into account. While visiting a TV studio I asked about the LED fittings, the lighting guy reckoned they were 400W but they tended to use about 2-3 to replace 2KW fittings. I don't know how much of that was for public tour or truth but my own experience of working with 'toy' kit does not support the 80-90% savings that get bandied about.

Edited October 15, 2023 by sunray

[adam2]

LEDs are the future, and can save a lot of money for long hour use in a workplace, but the economics are still doubtful  for limited use, as described above.

In the longer term it is likely that halogen lamps will be banned, not just yet though. Any such ban will be on manufacture or import, restrictions on sale or use of existing stocks seem unlikely.

[Tomo]

Theatrical and other special-purpose halogen lamps have always been a sideline of a plant that makes filament lamps for general use.
It is already very difficult to purchase many types of halogen lamps - the 'general' market doesn't want tungsten lamps anymore so the plants are closing.

As time goes by the remaining lamps will become a lot rarer and more expensive.

For example, the final floppy disk manufacturing plant closed a few years ago. Aerospace and industrial that still need them buys second-hand/refurbished at great expense.
In theory there's about 3 years supply left  - of course, it'll actually be longer than that as airframes and machinery get upgraded reducing demand.

[GR1]

Pre Covid I worked on installing a new lighting rig in a studio for a very major international financial TV broadcaster in their multi billion pound new building in London. The whole installation was with LED's with fixtures and several kilometres of LED tape in the set. The studio was planned to be used for 4 hours a day to be the London base for a global channel. Covid happened and since then I have semi retired. A couple of weeks ago I found out that after 4 years the entire LED rig is being replaced like for like because the client left the rig on 24/7 for 4 years and got to the end of the life expectancy of the rig.

Technology cannot inprove the world when met with human stupidity.

[sunray]

4 hours ago, GR1 said:

Pre Covid I worked on installing a new lighting rig in a studio for a very major international financial TV broadcaster in their multi billion pound new building in London. The whole installation was with LED's with fixtures and several kilometres of LED tape in the set. The studio was planned to be used for 4 hours a day to be the London base for a global channel. Covid happened and since then I have semi retired. A couple of weeks ago I found out that after 4 years the entire LED rig is being replaced like for like because the client left the rig on 24/7 for 4 years and got to the end of the life expectancy of the rig.

Technology cannot improve the world when met with human stupidity.

That just about sums up the futility of these cost saving systems. I'd have never expected to replace a whole light rig at 4 years even if it was running 24/365.25.

Even with the part greyed out.

 

10 hours ago, adam2 said:

LEDs are the future, and can save a lot of money for long hour use in a workplace, but the economics are still doubtful  for limited use, as described above.

I totally agree but even then I suspect the economics will not match that predicted/promised, I'm finding I have to replace bulbs more often than I ever had to replace filament bulbs or fluo tubes.

Edited October 15, 2023 by sunray
To make sense

[Tomo]

Methinks something has been rather mangled in the telling!

Four years is 35,000 hours, so roughly 2/3 of the way through a realistic L70 of 50-60k hours.

Decent quality luminaires will easily last that long, however if they were left in the same saturated colour the whole time I'd expect a visible colour shift - which would not be covered by any warranty, any more than burnt gel.

On the other hand, a lot of the LED tape probably would have failed. It's poorly cooled and made as cheap and bright as possible, so runs hot and dies young.
Most places treat it as a consumable.

On the gripping hand, a tungsten or discharge rig treated that way would have blown all the lamps and likely need some new reflectors. Some of the discharge lamps would have gone up in an exciting way. Pretty costly error even before considering the electricity.

[sunray]

4 hours ago, Tomo said:

Methinks something has been rather mangled in the telling!

Four years is 35,000 hours, so roughly 2/3 of the way through a realistic L70 of 50-60k hours.

Decent quality luminaires will easily last that long, however if they were left in the same saturated colour the whole time I'd expect a visible colour shift - which would not be covered by any warranty, any more than burnt gel.

On the other hand, a lot of the LED tape probably would have failed. It's poorly cooled and made as cheap and bright as possible, so runs hot and dies young.
Most places treat it as a consumable.

On the gripping hand, a tungsten or discharge rig treated that way would have blown all the lamps and likely need some new reflectors. Some of the discharge lamps would have gone up in an exciting way. Pretty costly error even before considering the electricity.

I imagine the rig was left powered but not illuminated so if fans were running I'd assume they are at EOL, equally with the reliability curves I'd expect about half to suffer other (electronic) failures.

[themadhippy]

Quote

I imagine the rig was left powered but not illuminated so if fans were running I'd assume they are at EOL

if the lamps not on id expect any decent fixture to ramp down or turn off the fan ,and if the kit was left on  you've removed the biggest point of failure,powering up.

[sunray]

42 minutes ago, themadhippy said:

if the lamps not on id expect any decent fixture to ramp down or turn off the fan ,and if the kit was left on  you've removed the biggest point of failure,powering up.

Yep I know all that but to be quite honest I've had a decent share of LED lighting, mostly not theatrical and leaving the things permanently on, lit or not, I'll say 4 years will be seeing significant failures. Remember the 50K hours is not a guarantee, it's more like an average and I'd fully expect some products to last 2 or 3 times that quoted which means some will be under.

[DrV]

Most electrolytic caps are rated for between 2000 and 10000 hours, albeit at maximum voltage and maximum temperature. Most switch mode PSUs have a 400V reservoir cap running at 340V. That's the weak point of many fixtures.