Full Color Spectrum

The LED advantage!

◦ LEDs have been the latest addition to the lighting toolbox

◦ Rapid technological advances has allowed for increased brightness and quality in color rendering

◦ We now have LEDs as bright as 10k sources that can plug into a standard household outlet

◦ LEDs now cover a wide range of categories including Panels, Ribbon, Fresnels, Pars and many more

◦ Single, Bi-Color, Full Spectrum color options for various applications

◦ Instant response time, no lag as you get with tungsten or warm up with HMI’s

◦ Extremely power efficient

Bi-Color LED

◦ Bi-Color fixtures simply crossfade between ”daylight” LEDs and “tungsten” LEDs

◦ This give a range of color temperatures thru mixing the two LED sources together

◦ Depending on the electronics, some LEDs will need to compensate for color shifts associated with dimming

◦ When using extreme ends of the CCT spectrum, only half of the diodes are in use

Full Color Spectrum

◦ Full spectrum fixtures use additive color systems to achieve a broad gamut of colors

◦ This includes a wider range of CCT whites, as well as pastels and saturated colors

◦ Manufactures are now offering multiple control methods to achieve your desired color

◦ Control options include CCT, Gel Colors, HSI, and Individual color channels e.g. RGBW

◦ Full Spectrum allows for effects like emergency vehicle lights, fire, lightning, club lights and much more

Correlated Color Temperature

◦ Color temperature is a scale, in degrees Kelvin used to identify a particular color makeup of white light

◦ Unlike the human eye a video sensor does not dynamically adjust to these variations in white

◦ Color rendition is always relative to the white balance of the camera

◦ Any light with a high color temperature will appear bluer to the camera

◦ Any light with a lower color temperature will appear more orange

◦ Scientist decided to compare the color make up of any source to that of a theoretical “perfect black body radiator” when it is headed

◦ 2000k = Candle flame / 3200k = Halogen Bulbs / 4500k = Late afternoon sunset / 5600k = daylight/HMI

Green / Magenta shift

◦ White light is controlled on two axes. One is CCT going from Orange to Blue, The other axis is Green to Magenta

◦ You may see G/M shift referred to as ”Tint”

◦ Fixtures allow to adjust the green value to match fluorescents which are typically green

Additive vs Subtractive color mixing

Multi Source vs Homogenized

◦ Multi Source will have issues with color separation and close distance as well as when shadows are introduced

◦ Homogenized LED sources mitigate this problem by combining all the colors into a single source

Bi-Color vs RGB vs Full Spectrum

◦ Bi-Color limited to a 2 color mixing system and inefficient power

◦ RGB provides great saturated colors but does not render whites well

◦ RGBMA provides a great CCT range from around 2600k up to 8500k as Green/Magenta Shift

◦ RGMLWC provides an extended CCT range from 2000k up to 10000k