Fire & Ice
ETC Fixtures Product Manager Tom Littrell discusses the newest Selador Series fixtures:
Vivid Fire and Vivid Ice have just released. In an environment where every LED offering touts its ability to make full-range color, you may ask yourself why we decided to build fixtures with a more limited color palette, especially when our own Selador Series products make the best full-range color of all.
I‘ve got to admit that I was a little skeptical about a limited-range Selador variant – especially after spending so much time looking at all of the great color possible with Selador fixtures. But sometimes I like to pretend that I’m a lighting designer. And I’m working to light acting areas and objects in theaters already equipped with tungsten fixtures designed for the job. It’s especially comforting when they are Source Fours.
But somewhere in the process, I start to think about adding deeper colors – just like real designers do, I think. Toning the stage with cool blues, warm blues, indigos, ambers, reds... you name it. But dropping that cut of R26 or L181 in front of a tungsten fixture chops out a LOT of light. The area I lit with two 575W Source Fours needs multiple fixtures, times multiple colors for toning. Or scrollers. Or moving lights. I’ve run out of fixtures or pipe space or dimmers long before I have the deep color I really wanted to pop those costumes and sets.
Enter Fire and Ice. LED reds are very efficient. Fire can equal two-and-a-half 575W PARs in R27. And blue LEDs have an unrivaled blue power. Imagine: the power of sixteen 575W PARs in Cong
o blue in one 11” fixture. By limiting the color output to ranges where LEDs have the most efficiency, we have created LED fixtures that can punch through bright tungsten stage lighting. And by adapting the x7 Color System for these two color ranges, you don’t just get a ‘blue wash.’ You get an R68 wash and an R79 wash and an R83 wash and a L181 wash, and, and, and… all from the same compact, low-wattage Vivid Ice fixture.
Hey, I like to think ‘green’ so let’s look at some ‘green’ numbers for blue downlight on 15 acting areas. Three rows of five 575W PARs gelled in R68. And three rows of five 575W PARs gelled in R80. So, two colors of blue downlight equals 17,250 watts. Now replace those 30 PARs with three rows of five 125W Vivid Ice fixtures. I’ve got one downlight system capable of warm blues, cool blues, dark blues and light blues for 1,875 watts of power. Yep, that’s about one-tenth as much electricity. And don’t forget the smooth crossfades from color to color and the Selador dimming ability in slow-timed cues.
The reality of my world – right now – is a stage or other space where tungsten lights dominate the inventory. The performance I’ve seen from Vivid Fire and Vivid Ice says that they will work in my world, right now. I can’t wait to use them.