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Author Topic: Upgrade portable stage lighting to LEDs  (Read 9550 times)

Steve Garris

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Re: Upgrade portable stage lighting to LEDs
« Reply #10 on: April 15, 2016, 05:40:12 PM »

How can I compare these lights without any in hand? I'm wondering how to compare brightness, coverage, and throw.

Another question:Is it easy to say that a light with 12 x 10 Watts LEDs is brighter than 24 x 5 Watts? Can you compare power consumption to determine brightness?

Finally, how can I compare the COB lights to the LED lights in terms of brightness? Are there other considerations when making that comparison (throw, color, etc)?

It's nearly impossible to make accurate comparisons, but in general a 10W multi-color Led will be brighter than a 5W multi-color Led. Having said that, I compared my (7) 10W Led's to my freinds (5) 10W Led's, and mine was only very slightly brighter. The 12 vs 24 comparison you mentioned would be anyones call, it could go either way or they might be the same.
Looking at spec's might not help much. some use Lumens, others use Lux, and there's no way to compare the two. I usually go by reviews, but sadly there aren't a lot of subjective reviews out there, and even fewer actual measurements.
Regarding the Cob lights, they throw super wide beams, so they have to be brighter.

If the Colorkey 150W spec is accurate, that will make for a fairly bright 60 deg light. But this Cob light has a super wide beam and will look entirely different than the other two Led lights. The LB Par and Puck Q12A will be identical in output.
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Mark Cadwallader

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Re: Upgrade portable stage lighting to LEDs
« Reply #11 on: April 15, 2016, 07:41:10 PM »

Since you mention two Blizzard products, you can go to the Blizzard website and see the published photometric data. Blizzard lists that info (for each indivual color plus "all"); not all vendors do.  That is, in my mind, a reason to select one brand over another. I'm not wiiling to buy without seeing the (claimed) lumenous intensity numbers, if I can't actually compare units in person. (I live 300 miles from the nearest banjo hut, let alone a stocking dealer.)

Please note that many vendors list that data, not just Blizzard. I think that it fair to assume that a fixture with data is more of a professional unit than one without.
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Rick Powell

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Re: Upgrade portable stage lighting to LEDs
« Reply #12 on: April 26, 2016, 12:59:42 AM »

i used to use three Blizzard q12A per side on a tree, no controller just constant color by manual setting, and it seemed to light up a 10 x 20 stage area pretty well.  We now use about 3x that lighting also using lights on a back truss, and can cover anything up to 15 x 30 pretty well. We could use more but we are trying to keep down to 2 or 3 circuits total (band, sound and lights) and avoid distro land.

As far as the COB pars, most have an optional narrow angle lens that can sharpen the beam to 25 deg or so, if needed.
« Last Edit: April 26, 2016, 01:02:32 AM by Rick Powell »
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Graham Spice

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Re: Upgrade portable stage lighting to LEDs
« Reply #13 on: May 23, 2016, 05:35:40 PM »

As usual, I'm probably more confused than I started out! :)

If you were going to buy lights to cover a 16x16 stage, what would you get? I'm looking for fixtures that can be controlled by DMX with decent color and are very bright.

I think I've mentioned this but I tried the Chauvet 4BAR Tri USB and they were not bright enough so I sent them back. I loved the form factor (small & light with a gig bag) but they couldn't replace my existing 8 x 500w Par58s

Thanks again for your help. I wish I understood this stuff better. Obviously it would help if I could get my hands on more lights to try out but that's not an option so I'm hoping you have had hands-on with these fixtures.
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Mark Cadwallader

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Re: Upgrade portable stage lighting to LEDs
« Reply #14 on: May 24, 2016, 10:32:36 PM »

Graham, if you find photometric specs for your PAR lamp (wattage and beam pattern), that will give you a reference point for starters. Assuming that you colored the PAR fixutes with Roscoe or Lee gels, you can look up the percentage of light transmitted thru the gel and therefore a very good idea of the lux you are needing for an LED fixture to be as bright or brighter than your existing PAR fixtures. The type of lamp should specify the "beam" and "field" angle (in degrees); that tells you (or lets you calculate) how much area will lit at any given distance from light to deck surface.

Don't forget to compare the % of light actually transmitted thru the gel to the LED color output in order to do a proper comparison. You'll probably be surprised at how much light gets absorbed by a saturated color gel.  Roscoe and Lee publish those specifications, and they should be easy to find. (Note that the light transmission data is based on new (unused) gel that hasn't aborbed many hours of full light exposure.)

A local source of information about how to figure out this stuff out is your local high school theater tech teacher, btw.
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David Buckley

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Re: Upgrade portable stage lighting to LEDs
« Reply #15 on: May 25, 2016, 12:34:48 AM »

A while ago I compared our el-cheapo LED PAR56 equivalents against a Selecon Acclaim 650W Fresnel, a very well regarded fixture.  And a lot brighter than a 300W PAR56. The two fixtures were setup illuminating next to each other against a white wall,  the frezzie was gelled, and the LED adjusted to be a similar colour by eye





For colours, the LEDs deliver similar intensity with less power consumption, though with the annoying background fan noise.  For open white, the last strip, well,  RGB el-cheapo lights do not do a tungsten white.





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Graham Spice

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Re: Upgrade portable stage lighting to LEDs
« Reply #16 on: May 25, 2016, 01:07:22 PM »

Graham, if you find photometric specs for your PAR lamp (wattage and beam pattern), that will give you a reference point for starters.
This is an excellent idea, Mark. Figure out what I'm used to and then determine how to exceed it with a new system. I will start into this investigation, thank you
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Mal Brown

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Re: Upgrade portable stage lighting to LEDs
« Reply #17 on: May 29, 2016, 01:18:36 PM »

MonoPrice has a nice 9 by 10 flat par RGBW. $60 per unit.   I have 16 of them for sound company use.  They blow my old Chauvet slimpar 56's away...  Way brighter, more defined edges, smoother color changes, better color mixing - RGB Chauvets vs The RGBW - not really fair...  better color saturation.

Only down side so far is no power pass through on the light so I have 8 power cables per tree...

For my band, I took 2 pairs of those and mounted them to a short poece of flat bar stock, drilled out toaccomodate an M10-150 bolt.  Put 2 cinch nuts on the  bolt.  I spin them into one of the fly points on QSC K12's and run the bottom cinch nut down to fix them in place.
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Rick Scofield

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Re: Upgrade portable stage lighting to LEDs
« Reply #18 on: May 30, 2016, 05:53:48 PM »

MonoPrice has a nice 9 by 10 flat par RGBW. $60 per unit.   I have 16 of them for sound company use.  They blow my old Chauvet slimpar 56's away...  Way brighter, more defined edges, smoother color changes, better color mixing - RGB Chauvets vs The RGBW - not really fair...  better color saturation.

Only down side so far is no power pass through on the light so I have 8 power cables per tree...

For my band, I took 2 pairs of those and mounted them to a short poece of flat bar stock, drilled out toaccomodate an M10-150 bolt.  Put 2 cinch nuts on the  bolt.  I spin them into one of the fly points on QSC K12's and run the bottom cinch nut down to fix them in place.

I'd love to see a picture of that set up deployed. Thinking of doing something similar for smaller stages.
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ProSoundWeb Community

Re: Upgrade portable stage lighting to LEDs
« Reply #18 on: May 30, 2016, 05:53:48 PM »


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