LED Light Plan for our Movie Theatre Church

[martycg]

Hi

We're trying to make the switch to LED lights (we currently use a small array of parcans and lekos). Our church has 'church' in a movie theatre, our stage, is just on the ground infront of the big screen. The lights would be about 15ft back from the stage.

If there are any Lighting experts out there... what would you get? Our budget is $2-3k, we're looking for 2 new stands, 2 new warm white lights, and 4 coloured lights to split up between the two stands. We'd also need a controller as well as cables.

We're in Milton, the Toronto region, Canada. I don't know much about what we'd need in terms of wattage, so, any help there would be a bonus. We've got some emails out to a couple companies already, but if there are more options we need to get these quickly. Thanks.

[STEALMYBUCKS]

Check out this web site, it is really inspirational and can help you develop your vision for lighting.

http://www.churchstagedesignideas.co.../square-me-up/

I chose one that was built in a gymnasium to show at first, but take a look around at the other stuff. Some will be relevant, some won't.

For color,Duke used the Elation ELED Par RGB Zooms, as they are really versatile, they go from 10 to 60 degree beam angle. For what you stated previously, having that flexibility will be nice, and since you are newer to lighting and don't quite know what you want, the zoomable feature will help.

For me, there just isn't an LED light I would use yet for white, they are getting better, but the manufacturers just are not there in the price point you are looking at. The reason for the high price on VW gear is that each LED has to be matched within a certain spectrum. In essence, a good VW light has "matched" LED's, and the better the match, the higher the price! You might want to try and get a DMX controlled dimmer pack, and a few Fresnel lights for your white. If you have to go LED for white, test, test and then test some more. From the same manufacture, same light, same lot # you can get different colors, and curves from the VW lines.

As far as controllers go, look at the USB dongle options. Entetec DMX USB Pro with any of the software solutions on their page works. You just have to find a software that works for you and your team. I use Dasligh (inherited), and I have no major issues with it, but it does cost $600 with a USB dongle.

Also, is your church ever planning on doing video ever? If so, then the cheap LED stuff may not be a good investment. LED has a "flicker" that is caused by several different factors; power supply, hardware, drivers. Esoteric has a few threads in here that address the issues. Basically, just as we can't film a TV because of the 60hz refresh rate (the weird, moving line when we video tape a TV), the same thing is happening with your LED lights, they are pulsing. Our eyes don't pick it up, but the camera does. Cheaper lights can show the "flicker" effect more. But I have also seen a single color of a very high end light cause flicker, the church can't light their backdrop any higher than 75% with the blue LED's.

Have fun with your stage! Hope this helps and gets the education started on lighting.