GEAR. BIG LEDS
LEDs are getting bigger, but will they ever pack enough punch to rival an 18kW HMI? Definition investigates
WORDS. Phil Rhodes IMAGES. Panavision and Prolight Direct
A s LED lights push through the there are still a lot of new ideas – and the proportions can become enormous. David Amphlett is technical director at Panalux, an organisation with a long history of helping to make huge set-ups practical. “Panalux serviced Death on the Nile , shot by Haris Zambarloukos for Kenneth Branagh,” Amphlett recalls. “They had 1000 Skypanels on it. I think it was the only time this many were used on a job in the UK.” Not only is the sheer scale of large studio set-ups kilowatt power level, it might seem like low-power lighting is increasingly a won war. At bigger scales, though,
sometimes intimidating, but the individual lights themselves can be among the largest available. Panalux’s Sonara exists in varieties drawing up to 1500W, as Amphlett confirms: “This is the biggest light we make in terms of power draw. Even if you work on a ratio of six to one – which was an old rule of thumb for LED output against tungsten – it’s an equivalent of a 9K.” On the global stage, that’s still not the largest ever system – and before LEDs, they could be as expensive to run as they were to install. “One of the anecdotes from Pirates of the Caribbean was that they had 1600 tungsten spacelights at a warehouse in the US, and
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