[SML] The future of luminaires

[Ford Sellers]

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe D via Stagecraft
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Something that has not been mentioned is that the color spectrum of video projectors. I am not familiar with this aspect of video projectors. But, I know projectors are generally designed to be Red, Green, Blue, rather than a continuous spectrum... 

Joe Dunfee
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Hi Joe,
I've heard this complaint, and thought about it quite a lot (as a Product manager for a lighting manufacturer).
Let me flip this question on it's head.

Has the majority of the lighting industry turned away from follow-spots which use arc source lamps (like Super Troupers, or Starklights)?  Anyone have a guess as to the CRI of a Carbon Arc?

The CRI of Xenon and other arc source lamps is typically in the 70's.  They have a very spikey spectrum.

I know that there are more than a few people who use modified Source 4s as Follow-spots. But to be honest, the majority of us do this for financial reasons... but the majority of professional roadhouses, and opera houses that I've seen use purpose built follow-spots.  And the majority of these use an arc source, with limited color rendering abilities.  They have limitations, but the benefits (brightness, ease of use, etc) outweigh them, for the majority of us.

Is RGB technology perfect... No.
But I invite you to look at emerging technologies in television.  LED TVs are now using RGBY technology, and using an algorithm to add in the Yellow.  We are doing the same thing in the entertainment lighting industry with the use of Amber (to increase color palette) and Lime (to more closely match the photopic curve, and increase brightness and color rendering) using LEDs.  Most major entertainment lighting manufacturers use LED arrays with 5, 6, or even 7 colors.

Anyway, the point I'm making is that although limited spectra been widely used, and accepted for decades, the consumer electronic market is already addressing this (albeit for different reasons, more to do with vividness of color), and the more picky of us in entertainment lighting are also pushing for solutions.  Often, we are looking at other lighting fields (general lighting, automotive, camera flashes, retail lighting, cameras, video displays, and especially computers/computing power and software) to inspire us.  Then we combine these existing technologies that we see to give us practical new solutions.

Interestingly, Philips/Lumileds (now just Lumileds) developed the Lime LED for use in LED lightbulbs... for use in the home, and for retail lighting, not on-stage.  As much as we (entertainment lighting manufacturers) view ourselves as innovators, the real advances come with finding ways to leverage new and existing technologies developed for larger markets to provide solutions to our (relatively small) market.

I think that you'll find that the majority of people railing against adoption of new light sources like LED, and the use of projectors (and the number of detractors is decreasing) are people who do not yet understand them,  have not tried using them recently, and are not comfortable with learning a new technology.  

It's a daunting task (learning a new technology), and not always black and white.  How many of us still draft by hand?  How many were early adopters of CAD, and dove in in the 1990s?  The answer for most of us lies somewhere in the middle.  

-Ford