Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ken M Hupp on December 10, 2010 at 8:38am

David, we have had some luck with the use of LED units. The low heat, and broad flood effect works well as there is no need for jells and you can change color through out the production without the need for multiple fixtures but you need DMX to make them work.

Permalink Reply by David McCall on December 10, 2010 at 8:46am

Do you have any specific fixtures that have worked well for you? I'd like to consider LEDs but they seem awfully expensive for our budgets.

Permalink Reply by Erich Friend on December 13, 2010 at 5:10pm

In addition to the popular ETC Seledor units, the ChromaQ Color Force product can also provide good cyc lighting. www.chroma-q.com/products/colorforce/overview.asp Both of these products have a variety of lenses that fit over the individual LED's. The very narrow dispersion angle lenses facilitate the up-close to the cyc use. You may find that a mix of lenses is needed to achieve the blending smoothness you require. I've seen them configured with with broader lenses in the LED row closest to the cyc, medium lenses along the middle row(s), and narrow lenses for the row(s) furthest away from the cyc. One of the great things about LED cyc lights / border lights is that they free-up a lot of dimmers for conventional stage lighting -- not to mention lowering the stage temperature significantly!

Permalink Reply by Ueli Riegg on December 10, 2010 at 9:54am

what you see quite often here in continental europe for this application are dimmable fluorescent tubes. depending on the product and the configuration you can get away with as little as 100 bucks per meter... they're not bright enough to light the whole cyc but for a glow or the bottom third of a gradient they're enough...

cheers from switzerland

Ueli

Permalink Reply by Kevin Griffin on December 10, 2010 at 10:12am

We just bought 10 Altman Spectra Cyc LED units for our cyc which is 35'w X 30' H. My Barbizon Rep came out and demo'ed three units and I was really impressed! 3 units actually covered an area about 20' wide from the ground and went about 10'-15' up the cyc before washing out. We were about 4'-5' away from the cyc (which is all the room I have as well). Prior to that we were using Strand three Cell Codas which if I breasted the cyc US against the back wall as far as I could did a pretty good job but I needed 5 units to obtain very good coverage or 4 units to get adequate coverage. the Altman Spectra Cyc LED units use RGBA LED which provided a great range of color with nice, rich saturation.

Permalink Reply by James Lockhart on December 10, 2010 at 10:57am

Have you tried MR 16 before they are nice little units with a nice throw and pretty cheap to rent or buy

Permalink Reply by Stephen Ellison on December 10, 2010 at 1:20pm

If you are interested in LED fixtures you should look at the Selador line of fixtures form ETC. They have 3 more colors over the Altman and are comparably priced per foot of cyc.

Permalink Reply by Rick Reid on December 13, 2010 at 11:19am

A group here had a chance to demo ETC Seladors next to Altman Spectra Cycs on about a 40x30 cyc.

The consensus was:

• the Seladors are brighter, have better color and have uses other than cycs.
• The Altmans are true asymmetric cyc units so they cover better at closed distances and don't spill DS. But if you back them off too far then the brightness drops dramatically.
• Pros with big cycs and stages would prefer the ETC
• Smaller stages and amateur groups with lower standards for color would go for the Altmans.
• Pricing is similar per foot of fixture but how many you need can make a huge price difference.

My conclusion: Demo, Demo, Demo!

Permalink Reply by David McCall on December 13, 2010 at 11:41am

The spectra cyc and Selador products seem pretty interesting, but expensive. Working that close I would guess that I'd need at least 8 to get 40 or so feet to look decent which puts us north of $10,000. You are right a demo would be very worth while if we were going to spend that much money. I might rather put that much into a couple of small arrays for the sound system at that price point.

The other interesting thought was the idea of bouncing the light off of a reflective surface on the back wall which would about double my distance. The only problem there is that we use the back wall as a black, since they left out our upstage traveler when they needed to cut back the budget for the building. I could mount some clips on the wall to hold some bed sheets or other white reflective surface. Back when I was doing film and TV design, I often used a silver diffusion designed to use on the big reflector boards to bounce light around. It would send a lot more light back to the cyc, but I'm afraid that we would see a definite line where the material runs out. Sheets or other white material would show less of a line but we still might see it.

We do have 2 cycs. One is in great shape the other has a small tear in it. I could Brest the torn one back at the bottom of the wall and use that for a bounce and see what happens.

Thanks for the input.

Permalink Reply by Michiel Sipman on December 14, 2010 at 3:31am

All the possible solutions for this problem cost a lot of money.

Have you already experimented with heavy frost or spun? This in combination with mirror-gel at the top of your cyc-unit could solve your problem with small investment. We used it in the situation you describe with very satisfying results. The cycs are of Belgian making (ADB 1 kW) and the minimum distance to the cyclorama is about 1 meter (= ca. 4 ft)