Objects of Desire

Watch as they wink and blink, sequence and strobe. LEDs are everywhere. Yet they all look alike. Feeling blinded by science? Alone in the ‘unknown LED zone?’

Some of today’s high-powered LED products have traveled light-years away from the early days of disco effects. With their reduced energy consumption, durability, reliability, small size and long life, LED products offer too much to dismiss.

What is it that you Desire in LED lighting products?

To look at LED lighting with new eyes, one must rethink what one knows: that white LEDs look cold and digital; specific colors are unattainable; that the fixtures won’t hold a candle to an inventory of conventional and tungsten fixtures; that LEDs quickly lose color and power in hot and cold weather, so forget outdoor gigs. There are so many concerns...

None of this applies anymore. Not to ETC, anyway.

ETC has done all the rethinking, addressed all the issues, and put the user – from lighting designer to tech director to studio help to rental shops – in control in more ways than one.

Your Desire in LEDs
Desire is wanting what you want, the way you want it, when you want it. Such is the line of thinking behind ETC’s Desire™ LED series of high-intensity wash luminaires: offering not only what you want, demand and need, but allowing you to operate and control it with the same adaptability and flexibility. It’s designed with the user experience in mind.

ETC isn’t saying that LEDs should replace everything. It depends on the situation. With ETC’s LEDs, users choose their Desire in the shape of the light distribution, the color palette and color temperatures, the power boosts or power savings needed for the specific demands of enhanced performance.

Name the market and there’s a Desire fixture adaptable to it: for the theatrical stage, TV studio, effects, outdoor architectural installs. Lighting skill levels are even taken into consideration with the unmanned Stand Alone Mode for the non-techie in all markets.

The new Desire line of LED luminaires – in a familiar PAR-shaped body – offers many layers of choice to these lights. It’s like designing your own light from custom CAD drawings.

Solving your design dilemma begins with proper fixture selection. It starts with the chassis. The Desire D40 luminaire features a circular head of 40 diode emitters for bright looks. It is convection-cooled and available in modified outdoor versions. The brighter D60 version has an expanded head with 60 diode emitters. It is fan-cooled, so all versions stay indoors.

Now to color concerns. Like many other LED products, Desire luminaires can use RGB color mixing. But they also take it up a notch, offering another choice: a proprietary x7 Color System™ of seven LED colors and the latest white LED emitters to produce the widest range of colors available. It’s part of ETC’s “more color, better light” philosophy.

But even more color choices come in again when selecting a palette – Lustr®+, Vivid™, Studio™, Fire™ and Ice™ – for a project.

Adapting to the Stage
Lustr+ and Vivid are the Desire line’s two flagship models. If your budget is limited, these two fixtures together solve a majority of stage and theater lighting needs.

The Lustr+ palette specializes in crisp, white light and soft theatrical pastels for versatile front- and side-light needs. Small to medium-sized venues – from churches to corporate auditoriums – will enjoy the Lustr+ luminaire's natural-looking pigments and skin tones and its shine on scenery. Get your gel colors, while emitting less energy.

Vivid arrays produce a power palette with the broadest range of deep, bold, saturated colors ever seen in an LED fixture. This long-throw, narrow beam is the perfect over-the-stage fixture for back-, down- and side-lighting. It’s an easy color complement or a simple swap for gelled tungsten fixtures in the theatrical rig – the logical way to outfit a new “hybrid stage.”

Niche fixtures Fire (for warm colors) and Ice (for cool colors) offer more palette specialization for theaters. Trade out Fire for red-, or Ice for blue-gelled tungsten fixtures, for big energy savings while preserving the superior quality of light.

Adapting to the Studio
Studios require high-quality white light, and the Desire Studio fixture fulfills that need. Recognizing that all white light is not the same, the Studio fixture offers three selectable options to match different color temperatures: Studio HD for high-definition white light, Studio Tungsten for warm white, and Studio Daylight for cool white.

The Studio luminaire replaces power-hungry tungsten and inefficient fluorescent fixtures. Lighting designers or techs in TV studios, HD video events, house-of-worship TV broadcasts and other live, on-camera, AV situations will feel comfortable handing control to the in-house studio tech, because the Studio luminaire is also designed to run in Stand Alone Mode without a DMX console, and in Master-Slave operation.

The Studio fixture offers a familiar feel, allowing for the usual control and shaping of lighting, with diffusion and shaping lenses, snoots, barndoors, egg crates, and chimeras.

Adapting to High-Impact
Strobing and other bursts of energy require maximum light output. Although such an energy requirement would drain most LED fixtures, ETC allows for this power boost by, well, boosting power. Basically, the user sets this up in the Desire operating mode under the High-Impact setting. In that, the fixture can be reset to the RGB Color Mode to match up with any other similar-running LED fixtures, droop compensation is off to allow for max output, and the light looks like a digital light. The fixture can also be set in Stand Alone to run a sequence of preset looks – perfect for the ballroom gig.

Adapting to Architectural
ETC lets you take your longtime lighting needs outdoors with XT™ (exterior) versions of Lustr+, Vivid or Studio luminaires. A sealed lid, watertight glands, waterproof connectors, an adjustable knob for positioning, and an IP66 rating allow the fixture to withstand the sun and snow. The D40 architectural versions have built-in sensor systems to adjust power to guarantee that the LED emitters will always come on.

Managing heat is a big issue for LEDs. Their quality of light decreases or “droops” as power increases or as temperatures rise. However, ETC has designed into Desire luminaires a power-regulation system. When temperatures rise or when the fixture is set into certain operating modes, Desire products know to either hold back or to boost power to maintain the color and intensity setting.

Adapting to Stand Alone
Stand Alone is a more simplified, unmanned operating mode, in which all Desire fixtures can operate. Controllable on the user-interface panel on the back of the fixture, it runs through a sequence of preset looks for total control without, well, control. No DMX console is needed for this fixture to run in Stand Alone or in a Master-Slave operation, in which DMX-cable-linked fixtures run with commands from whichever fixture is designated as the Master.

Rental companies reap the rewards from these fixtures’ simple decorative functions for private parties, corporate shows, wedding gigs or other events. After each event, the rental company can reset each fixture to a neutral default setting so that each fixture starts out “fresh” for each customer.

Quick Setup
It’s easy to quickly adapt – with the Desire line’s Quick Setup selection. These options enhance the power of one light fixture for use in a range of applications. Simply activate the fixture’s performance by using either the user interface or a DMX console to start working in Stage, Architectural, High-Impact, Studio and General situations. Every setting can also be adjusted using Remote Device Management (RDM) from any RDM-enabled controller, including ETC’s consoles.

Calibrating color
LEDs produce a “notchy” light that varies from LED to LED. ETC color-calibrates each Desire fixture as it leaves the production line, storing within the fixture specific data about the LEDs, the exact colors they produce and their brightness. The Desire fixture can then accept a DMX signal representing HSI or RGB values and use the calibration data to produce the same color in each fixture. This system is useful for rental companies who want their fixture inventory to match through the years. It also allows designers to get the widest range of color quickly and consistently.

An eye on lens options
LEDs emit light in a concentrated direction. To redirect, reshape or diffuse the beam, secondary lensing options for Desire products are available from the Luminit® brand.

Round fields are available in 25°, 35°, 45° and 75°. For oblong fields: 20x40°, 30x70°, and 35x80°. For outdoor fixtures, customers order specific lens angles in advance, and ETC ships the fixture preinstalled, so as not to have the fixture opened and exposed to weather.

Luminit holographic diffusers are also made specifically for LED fixtures to smooth out digital pixelation. To understand these diffusers, envision a relief map with random indented speckles. These speckles redirect energy without reducing the light in any way. This is practical even for cosmetic purposes, such as covering LED fixtures that may distract audiences from the action on stage.

Everything you Desire
LED technology can help solve your lighting needs in every situation. Whatever you Desire, just make note. LEDs are the future. And ETC can lead you there.