2 minute read
Lighting Choices Come Down to Three Letters: LED
Vendors will be offering a lot more quality at lower cost
For those of you attending the NAB Show, any boasting about bigger, brighter, and better-than-ever lights is more than just hyperbole. In a pattern similar to the early days of computing, LEDs have made major strides in efficiency and color quality. They really are better than ever.
Manufacturers may have been sidelined during the pandemic, but many have used that time to refine and expand their product lines. In addition to those efforts, you find there’s been major improvement in the LED components themselves. Here’s some of what you can expect to see.
Saving Money
With few exceptions, manufacturers have discontinued their “traditional lamp” fixtures. What you see on display will be almost exclusively LED. The rare exceptions to this rule will be the big HMIs or special-purpose fixtures that require a quality that LEDs can’t provide. So unless it’s an 18K spot or something with exotic optics, it’s all LED.
New laws to get mercury out of the environment have put fluorescent lamps on the “nearly extinct” list. The big lamp manufacturers have already finished making the last of them, and whatever remains in the warehouse will be the last of it. As a result, there may be high demand this year for LED soft-lights to replace obsolete fluorescent equipment. With supply-chain problems finally clearing up, product availability should be better than the past few years.
Progress in the development of LEDs has followed a path similar to Moore’s law for microelectronics. Haitz’s Law predicts LED efficiency increases and cost reductions that we’re seeing reflected in the latest light fixtures. If you do a lumens-per-dollar calculation, you’ll find you’re getting a lot more quality light for your buck than ever. That’s at least partly due to the efficacy improvement of the LED chips themselves. This helps explain why newer models can honestly boast about better output.
‘TUNABLE WHITE’
Real-world lighting requirements don’t come in just one color-temperature (CT). Bi-color fixtures address this demand with variable white adjustment. Models that include +/- green adjustment will make it easier to use together with other fixtures that may not be spot-on. These “tunable white” fixtures are ideal for field use where color-temperature versatility is needed. Studio spaces may even discover they prefer how skin tones look when lit with a bit lower color temperature than the de facto standard of 5600K “daylight.”
Expect to see many companies offering slightly different versions of a Mono-Light. This format is almost primal in its bare-bones layout. It consists of a COB (Chip On Board) LED, fan-cooled radiator, power supply (often separate), and a control interface to make it all work.
These lights put out a lot of raw light, but are typically used with a variety of light modifiers (reflector, diffuser, Fresnel lens, etc.)—typically fitting a common Bowens mount. For better and worse, this category is the Swiss Army Knife of lights. With the right attachments, mono-lights are a useful tool for smaller scale field production out of a trunk.
Like the unofficial motto of the US Post Office (“Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat…”), look for more IP65 lights that will deliver under every condition. These more robust field lights are designed to handle the worst of the elements. “Run & Gun” crews will appreci-
