Light Minds Think Alike - All Comments

re: People for the ethical demonstration of Selador

Steve Bailey — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 01:11:57 GMT

"Selador feels comfortable lighting people and objects on a stage. Placing them on the ground and shining them on a wall give them a hollow existence."

Ummm... so your saying I should go use a Color Kinetics as a ground row ?

Seriously though and I get the point, but remember that lighting designers are very adept at asking our tools to do something they weren't designed for and if I were working at ETC I'd be developing the accessories to make those fixtures do a great job at lighting the wall.

Steve B.

re: Source Fours in their (un)natural habitat

malex — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:57:02 GMT

"Several years ago in a K-Mart {u.s. chain dept.store}, I saw a S4 being used for a *blue light special*."

My university actually got a lot of those fixtures when KMart killed the promotion. One of our design students was the son of a KMart VP and helped direct them out way!

re: Source Fours in their (un)natural habitat

Scott.Tusing — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 02:37:04 GMT

I actually live in the Washington D.C area and I see S4s used all around in "weird" ways. I think that there are some 15 degree ones at the Convention Center and some also in one of the shopping centers in Bethesda, MD.

It is weird to see them out of their "natural" habitat but good products will carry over to any market - not just in the theatre world.

re: Source Fours in their (un)natural habitat

aleproco — Wed, 19 May 2010 18:07:48 GMT

Several years ago in a K-Mart {u.s. chain dept.store}, I saw a S4 being used for a *blue light special*.

It was hung from the ceiling aiming down. On the front was a congo blue diachroic, with a mirror rotator to emulate the blue rotary light they used to have roaming around the store to indicate the specials of the day.

It amazed me how much money had been involved to produce such a simple effect. That maybe one of the reasons they had bankruptcy a while back.

re: People for the ethical demonstration of Selador

Jeffrey Stid — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 20:24:02 GMT

Nice!

re: Source Fours in their (un)natural habitat

dlincecum — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:15:38 GMT

I agree that everything on stage ultimately came from elsewhere. I was (although rather weakly written) more specifically referring to lighting designers adopting "commercial lighting" technologies. Practicals aside - are Stage LD's using techniques from commercial lighting design? I'm not really as much aware of migrations like that.

Sure - we are using Wi-fi and PC Motherboards in consoles. But we don't see many compact fluorescent lamps used on stage to solve problems. Or do we?

re: Source Fours in their (un)natural habitat

luke.delwiche — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 21:49:03 GMT

Now this is a retail/entertainment lighting mash-up:

www.techietalk.co.uk/.../westfield-09-2.jpg

Westfield, London, permanent rig.

re: Source Fours in their (un)natural habitat

JeffMabray — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:07:12 GMT

But it took theater to use them in different or originally unintended ways. Now those ways are making their way back into the real world....

re: Source Fours in their (un)natural habitat

derekleffew — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 16:03:13 GMT

"Technology is one – stage technologies that are just really useful beg for adoption elsewhere. I don’t really see this the other way around – are stage designers adopting commercial technologies?"

Um, okay. In the interest of furthering debate, I'll argue the counterpoint.

Every piece of technology used on the stage is re-purposed from another, larger industry. The chain hoist, the PAR lamp, LEDs, computers, lasers, RF mics, textiles, make-up. Were the motors, sensors, and microprocessors inside moving lights created for the live entertainment industry? More specifically, theatrical lighting designers use architectural fixtures all the time. Ever wire a practical? Put ropelight on a set? Built a light box with E26 sockets?

"There are probably many more observations on lighting cultures and mash-ups. What’s yours?"

See my avatar. ;-)

re: Fire & Ice

mdrury — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 16:33:45 GMT

Will we ever see a Fire and Ice fixture in the same 21" housing and sold as one unit (and hopefully cheaper than individually)?

Matthew Drury

Technical Director

Willow Creek North Shore

re: People for the ethical demonstration of Selador

john.kuehl — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 21:25:32 GMT

"Selador feels comfortable lighting people and objects on a stage. Placing them on the ground and shining them on a wall give them a hollow existence."

Love that line.

re: Your Answers to "Eos or Congo?"

Blackfaer — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 05:49:12 GMT

As others have said, which flavor of ice cream do you like? If I'm designing a theatrical show in a traditional manner with a week of tech and the same sequence of cues day in day out, I want an EOS/ION. If I'm (as I typically do in my current job) running a different show that comes in each day with no idea what will be happening next, doing music and theatrical and opera and ballet and everything on a one- or two-day rehearsal and show schedule, and programming as the show goes on, I want a console I can run and program with my eyes on the stage, not on the console, and for that I want a Congo.

Touchscreens are nice, which is why I have one plugged into my Congo. But I don't use it that much since I'm usually doing things on the fly and focused on the stage.

re: Fire & Ice

Tom Littrell — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:34:54 GMT

Hi Brendan - Thanks for your comments. Here are my thoughts: Barn-doors as a beam shaping tool really only work on fresnel optical systems. Barn-doors on an LED fixture will work sort of like they do on a PAR - more of an aperture-hiding device and not a true beam shaping/cut-off device. You are correct though - we do need to offer more in the way of tophats and other ways to hide the aperture. The different Selador lenses provide a multitude of combinations to shape the beam. Photometrics for different lenses and lens combinations are in the downloads part of the website under Selador and technical documentation. Finally, I think you'll find the dimming curve of the Selador fixtures to your liking. It's the best I've seen. Thanks for taking an interest and chiming in.

Tom

re: Fire & Ice

BGrayLD — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:14:40 GMT

What about beam control? You compare these fixture to a PAR but I looked at the spec sheet and while there are spread diffusors listed there is no mention of Bar doors or Tophats/Snoots or Spill rings. I use a wide variety of LED fixtures (PixelRange/JTE PixelPar, Coemar ParLite, Altman SpectraPAR, Various Philips/CK products, etc) and it frustrates me that more fixtures don't have barn doors as an optional accessory. Some don't even have a holder/slot for them. If you are truly going to compare a fixture to a PAR I think that you need to replicate all of its functions.

Also, where are the specs for the output with the diffusion lense? Its hard to compare the efficiency of the unit vs. a PAR without all of the data.

I love LEDs, and the Selador/ETC units are exciting, but lets not get carried away with LED hype and look at real functionality.

By teh way how is the low-end dimming curve on these units? Better than most of the other lights out there?

-Brendan Gray

re: Wiki breakthrough…what we wanted in 1995

tromain — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:18:06 GMT

Finally! Great Post Mike.