FEATURE | H IGH - POWERED LEDS
At best, 75 or 80% of the power put into LEDs comes out as heat
calculation will factor in other changes. LED costs more than tungsten-halogen. Certainly, it consumes less power, but LEDs are also lighter, faster to rig and require much lighter-weight mains distribution, all of which leads to lower crewing and transportation costs. Rigging a large studio with a grid full of spacelights might even require fewer days and fewer crew members as a whole. Berkeljon puts it thus: “These kind of numbers are going to be critical as to how producers, rigging crew and electrics, and everyone else who’s making decisions, can figure out what the best decision is going to be for them.” It seems likely that many LEDs of the imminent future will be scaled-up versions of existing devices – bigger panels with higher output, and higher-power hard lights to compete with medium- size HMIs. In some cases, not much will change: HMIs are about as efficient as many LEDs, though it may be cheaper to buy, more flexible, dimmable and even colour- mixing. Compared to big tungsten lights, though, the saving not only in electricity consumption, but in crewing and trucking might be huge. If we’re to expect big changes, that’s where they’ll be – and the higher LED power levels climb, the more savings will be possible. But should we expect to see an LED 18K at IBC this year? It’s a longed-for product, but probably not – though anyone arriving with an LED at even 10% of that power might struggle to keep them on the shelves.
ABOVE High output is usually not associated with a fully tuneable LED fixture, but the SkyPanel Arri has been able to accomplish both. The SkyPanel has tremendous light output across the entire CCT range
really well. It makes it possible for us to keep investing in building bigger solutions.” Creamsource released the Sky – designed to drive spacelights, among other things – in 2012. A 1200W LED light, even a clustered design, is unusual in 2019; it was exceptional at launch, especially given the completely passive cooling design. Berkeljon remembers “a lot of pushback from the market because of its size and weight”. He adds: “Before some other manufacturers released some equally large, or larger and heavier fixtures, we were the biggest beast in the room for a while. Because of that, we decided there’d be a great market for something that was similar power, but lighter weight.” The result was the SpaceX, a lighter option doing broadly the same job and at a keen price: the company likes to talk about price per watt, and emphasises that £4.50 per watt is a very modest price for an LED. If there’s a general problem with high- power LED, it’s price, though any reasonable
can passively cool. The challenge, for Cineo at least, when we start looking at power densities that are greater than that, is that there needs to be supplementary air.” Discussing Light & Motion’s higher- power options, Tolan describes the desire to create ever smaller light sources – a concern common to several manufacturers – as exacerbating the problem. “The move to the chip-on-board arrays, where you have many LED dies in one package, is definitely something we embraced, and it’s beneficial from an optics standpoint. It’s detrimental from a cooling standpoint and we’re still pushing towards smaller source sizes. On our newer products, we’re trying to get that source size even smaller. The smaller the light-emitting surface, the more optical options you have.” BIGGER LIGHTS To date, LEDs have mainly been small enough to battery power, and therefore that efficiency has allowed for greater convenience, smaller lights that are easier to place and batteries that last longer. To make a dent in power budgets on large-scale dramas, much bigger lights are required – and big LED lights are expensive. It’s a problem that Creamsource hit early. Tama Berkeljon, managing director at Outsight, recalls: “Our first system was 320W, the Doppio, and the biggest LED you could find for our market at that time was under 10W. At that time people saw our price tag and said, ‘That’s crazy!’ The price acceptance was not there – people were not used to paying that kind of money for LEDs. LEDs were something you’d put on the camera or put where you didn’t need a lot of light. The exciting thing for high power is that the marketplace has changed so much – that acceptance has been driving up
ABOVE NBCUniversal’s LightBlade LB800, which offers about 900W power output
64 DEF I N I T ION | SEPTEMBER 20 1 9
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