cree led lighting

[hadyn]

hi
has anyone got any of these new lighting fixtures with the cree leds in them?
just wondered how bright they are
i have a small torch with a cree led in it and it is super bright so i thought these new lights with them in must be great and much more brighter than the conventional led ones.
hadyn

[paulg]

As such, Cree is a trademark rather than a type of LED. I think it's best to talk about LED's in terms of wattage, beam angle and overall light output/brightness. It's also important to consider whether the light source is passed through a lense and is hence condensed (that's why 'cree' led torches look so bright). I have one, and when I'm out walking at night is a god send for spotting dog turd in my path!

The first LED lighting units were absolute pants and some still are but things have moved on so quickly and the technology is now pretty good. I suppose for DJ's, brightness and beam angle are the main concerns? To give you and idea of brightness, I have an 18X8w RGBW (2w red, 2w green, 2w blue, 2w white = 160 w total) stage flood by Thomann. http://www.thomann.de/gb/stairville_...lood_18x8w.htm. One of them will floodlight a stage (let's say 7m by 3 m) quite well. Two of them will light a stage very brightly throughout the whole colour spectrum. If you glance into the light source, you'll not see a great deal for about 30 seconds until your retina recovers. These things are very bright indeed. One of them is roughly equivalent to 2 large par cans.

As a rough guide, for lights that use lenses such as moving heads, a 25w single white LED similar to a modern 150w MSD lamp. A modern 50w LED is similar to 250w MSD lamp. However, single LED's tend to be be a flat light source and that creates some issues. If you look at a typical 250W MSD lamp or a 250w/24v ELC, the light source protrudes outwards and it can be sat in a conical reflector to maximise intensity. When combined with a lense, this creates a sizable light source. LED light sources tend to be flat so it's difficult to make use of a reflector. As a result, they tend to rely more on lenses and hence have narrower beam angles. So, whilst they are bright at source, out on the dance floor, they tend to produce narrower gobo's than those produced by traditional reflector lights.

In summary, just about any 50W led powered moving head or barrel / single mirror scanner type lighting unit would do the trick for most DJ applications. Some impressive technology has trickled down into the mobile DJ market so you can buy with some confidence.

I remember a post on here not many years ago that basically said LED's will never replace bulbs in the DJ lighting world! Well, if you look at many professional lighting shows now, you can see LED's performing brilliantly so I wouldn't worry about buying LED lights. Most concerns we all used to have have gone now. Perhaps avoid some of the rubbish on Ebay though. Most of the retailers on the web will have decent stock - Gear4Dj's, DJkit etc. Personally, I'd avoid Discoworld - they sold me some LED lights that were not up to scratch and insisted I paid return postage which I thought to be unfair - lesson learnt: always check a retailers returns policy.