Novella Smith, one of the founders of Selador, was passing through town the other day and stopped in to visit. She just happened to have some of her new products with her.
In case you've missed them at the last few LDIs, Selador is a manufacturer of LED fixtures targeted specifically at the theatrical market. They are unique in that they use seven colors of LEDs to synthesize white light.
Before Novella pulled out her new kit, we had a little discussion about LEDs in general. What did I think of them, she asked?
In general, I like them, I said. They're much more energy efficient than incandescent lamps, they use little power, they produce little heat, and they are starting to get bright enough to use in a lot of places. But they still have drawbacks.
One of the main drawbacks, in my humble opinion, that needs to be addressed is the stepiness in the dimming curve. LEDs are so responsive – watch them carefully the next time you see one at a red light and notice how quickly they flash off and on – that you can actually see them step through each dimming level instead of seeing a smooth dimming curve. The other drawbacks that I see are color rendering and cost. The light output, although much better than it used to be, could stand to be improved.
I think I set up her plan perfectly. She pulled out a couple of fixtures and away she went. First of all, she illuminated a painting on the wall to illustrate the color rendering. It was really good. She said that her studies indicate that to bring out blues you need to include some amber in the mix and that the UV LED in the 7-color mix helped it to imiate white light. But she didn't just tell me, she showed me. I turned on an incandescent light above the painting to compare and I was very impressed. I haven't seen an LED fixture before that could match incandescent that well.
Then she showed me the dimming curve. Much to my surprise, it was, as far as I could tell, completely smooth. It turns out there are two modes of operation on the Seladors; one with regular dimming and one with smooth dimming. The smooth dimming mode is a patented technique that Selador uses. That's about all she would tell me about it except that it was developed by a computer/theatre geek in San Francisco.
As far as the cost goes, it was much less than I expected. I'll have to get the model numbers but the retail was about $1600, which is about 1/3 of what I expected.
The Selador fixtures gave a very solid(-state) performance.
{mosimage}
