Par Cans - LED vs BULB

[lazerdjs]

Recently been thinking about changing some of my par cans to LED. We have quite a large stock of cans for occasional use at discos but mainly for stage events (battle of the bands kind of thing...) and corporate events/dinners.

The main issue we are having at the moment is how often the bulbs blow! We mostly use par 64s in both long and short can.

My main question is what are your opinions on LED pars? Are they bright enough to provide washes etc. Would i need larger quantities than my current stock of conventional pars. Would the LED cans be more suited to the disco environment. I did think they would make a nice lightshow with 4 LED cans and a couple of movers... But then i could use wash moving heads?!

Any comments/advice would be appreciated...

thanks!

[DMX Will]

The LEDs are alot dimmer than a standard lamp (especially when the 64 can is in question). If you're having problems with bulbs blowing, I suggest you start buying GE lamps instead of the nasty cheapies, as these lamps will last for ages even with bumps and bangs when loading and unloading your transport.

An experiment was done by a member of another forum I use. The Par 56 with GE lamp Vs. A Stairville 56 Can LED Par. Results are:


Standard Par 56:
R 2560 lux
G 2140 lux
B 1620 lux
Open 17800 lux

Stairville LED Par 56:
R 120 lux
G 640 lux
B 60 lux
R+G+B 738 lux


(Lux is the brightness ;))

[sleah]

I'd say 4 LED's are roughy equivalent to 1 PAR56, which is about right if you look at green in the post above. Colours and lux are a very subjective thing and can be perceived differently by different people, so using the guide above doesn't mean a PAR56 is 'x' number of times brighter than 4 LED's, green is the best guide as it's what the human eye is most sensitive to.
It's a bit like sound, twice the number doesn't always mean twice as bright.

So yes, you will need to increase your stock! By at least 4 fold to be anywhere near the same power, more as you are using PAR64 which are 1000W unlike a PAR56 at 300W:eek: