Author: KC Hooper
Date: Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Professionals in the event production field have been lighting tents, pillars, walls, and even landscaping for their clients for years. By embracing the various LED sources and fixtures that have come to market, they have taken advantage of the lower power consumption of these fixtures over incandescent sources. As an example close to my heart, Apollo’s Multiform 1009 consumes a low 27 watts of electricity at its maximum intensity as opposed to a flood that would require 250 to 500 watts.
In addition to lower power consumption, LEDs as an alternative to color filters provides another cost savings. Whether the LED specified is RGB (red, blue, green), RGBW (red, blue, green, and white), or RGBA (red, blue, green, and amber), the result is the vast amount of colors each can produce.
Other LED benefits include their “onsite” versatility. Colors can be easily changed at the venue or even during the event. LED fixtures do not give off as much heat as an incandescent. Depending on the surrounding environment, such as brush or dry grass, an incandescent fixture can start a fire if it falls over or the focus drops. LED fixtures greatly reduce this risk. LED fixtures can be “daisy chained” together so that a single control on a fixture will drive the others so color matching is quite simple. And finally, most LED fixtures have on-board effects, from slow subtle color fades to strobing. The Apollo Multiforms have 15 onboard slow and fast color chases. These can come in handy when random effects are needed or they can be daisy-chained to a single master unit to create a uniform look.
Many designers shy away from LED fixtures because of cost. There are different levels of technology and intensity of LEDs on the market today that make the technology more affordable. The Apollo Multispot 1009 is only $440 and the larger and brighter Multibeam 1018 is $695. These are both aluminum, low profile light sources that are simple to operate. Try putting a few on your next event. If you haven’t started learning about or using LED technology, there is no better time!