LED theatre lanterns

Just to share a bit of info I picked up from a stage lighting company this morning.

Apparently if the venue is using lighting with bulbs from the far east they are built to different specifications to the European ones.

This is something to do with the frequencies and voltage's that the LED's run at, if the European ones are used then you don't get as many or any problems.

Price wise its £20 compare to £100 or so guess who is the cheapest.

Regards

LEDs are powered by DC voltages so there is no variation of frequency. Sounds like "salesman speak" to me

The illumination issues are down to the spectral output of the LED, and that has more to do with the manufacturing process and quality of materials in the LED. As I mentioned, there can be a wide variation of quality with cheap LEDs.

But, as the referenced videos pointed out, even when using really expensive LED lighting (as in the film industry), you cannot trust what your eye sees since there is a metameric error occurring in the camera (i.e. your eye sees one colour, but the camera is seeing discrete wavelengths and not wide spectrum colour - and these individual peaks create issues with the spectral response of the camera's sensor). As was pointed out, two different cameras can render the same LED-lit scene completely differently - which gives almost impossible problems when shooting video + stills!

Hopefully the LED lighting will improve...

Matt

Some power to LED lighting will be through switch mode source and while appearing to be constant will have pulses of a frequency that can be seen as they move. This probably would have no affect on colour.

Not all d/c is flat.

Some further information about the LED lights. I know somebody who runs a sound and lighting hire company, he showed me some of the lights working.

The difference is in how white light is made up, some units are RGB with the best type being RGB-W, he did not have any of the RGB-W lights with him, so could not compare.