dmjerbear
Member
Background first: I do 99% teen dances. Like most of you, my lighting rigs have changed several times as new technology has come out. Several years ago, I bought four uplights direct from the Chinese manufacturer. (Yes, I know, and we won't go there today). Each light had 96 1W RGBW LED's. Since it's not a mainstream manufacturer, I don't know the lux output. In any case, they were relatively bright and served my purposes pretty well. However, reliability has (no surprise) been an issue, and I've had to replace several components. So late last year, I pulled the trigger and bought four Blizzard Toughstick RGBAW's. I knew I'd be losing programming flexibility, since they have much less DMX channels. But with 60 3W LEDs and 11,000 lux @ 1m I thought I'd have all the light I could ever need!
The problem is that as I've used them, they really don't seem to brighten the room a lot more than the old uplights. I've tried them with and without diffusion, and it's about the same. I've had to resort to using two or three of the old uplights with the new ones, just to have things be bright enough. The venue we perform at the most is a typical middle school gym. Besides the uplights, we have four S&P's in a box on the floor, aimed at various spots on the gym ceiling.
Any recommendations on what I can do better? And on a related note, can anyone tell me whether a projector or a TV brightens a room more? We currently run video loops on a 46" TV, but I've been looking at a Benq 1080ST projector (2000 lumens) to go with a 80-100" screen.
The problem is that as I've used them, they really don't seem to brighten the room a lot more than the old uplights. I've tried them with and without diffusion, and it's about the same. I've had to resort to using two or three of the old uplights with the new ones, just to have things be bright enough. The venue we perform at the most is a typical middle school gym. Besides the uplights, we have four S&P's in a box on the floor, aimed at various spots on the gym ceiling.
Any recommendations on what I can do better? And on a related note, can anyone tell me whether a projector or a TV brightens a room more? We currently run video loops on a 46" TV, but I've been looking at a Benq 1080ST projector (2000 lumens) to go with a 80-100" screen.