LED stage lighting

Types

LED stage lights come in three main types. PAR cans, striplights and 'moving head' types. In LED PAR cans, a round printed circuit board with LEDs mounted on is used in place of a PAR lamp. Moving head types can either be a bank of LEDs mounted on a yoke or more conventional moving head lights with the bulb replaced with an LED bank.

In fact, there is no such thing as an LED PAR can - it is a misnomer possibly attributed to Chinese manufacturers. As there is no Parabolic Aluminised Reflector in an LED 'PAR', they would be more accurately referred to as 'LED flood lights'.

Many LED fixtures are now made using a small number of high-output diodes that allow the beam to be focused on a "hard edge", allowing full use of gobo/beam effects.

Uses

LED instruments can and have been used to replace any conventional lighting fixture, and some shows, such as Radiohead's 2008 tour, have used only LED lighting instruments.{{Citation |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090412065800/http://i.gizmodo.com/388611/radioheads-latest-tour-features-led-stage-as-well-as-radiohead |archive-date = 12 April 2009

Advantages

LED instruments are increasingly used for live music events, most notably festivals where they are more visible than conventional lighting under daylight. LED instruments were prominently used for the Live Earth festival as they are regarded as more environmentally friendly as fixture for fixture they use far less power than other lighting.

Another advantage of LED instruments is that they can be controlled directly using DMX and do not require additional dimmers; the intensity of the LEDs being adjusted by circuitry on board the fixture. Because of their low power consumption several units can be daisy chained to one power supply.

Due to low heat output, LED instruments can be used in areas where the high amount of heat conventional stage fixtures put off would not be ideal. For this reason, LED instruments are used to light ice sculptures, especially when lighting the sculptures from within.{{Citation

Disadvantages

Because color mixing is done using three or more colors of LEDs, mixed colors will have multiple edges to shadows where different colors are showing; however, several manufacturers have introduced instruments that group three or more LEDs behind a single lens to make the multiple shadow lines less noticeable, as well as ellipsoidal fixtures with lenses that create an almost entirely homogeneous beam.

References

References

1. link. (2007-12-22)
2. [http://www.onstagelighting.co.uk/lighting-equipment/led-stage-lighting/ LED Stage Lighting - Why Buy LED Stage Lights?. On Stage Lighting - Stage Lighting Information, Articles and Help]