ETC Introduces New Desire Studio HD White-light LED Luminaire

At LDI 2011, October 28-30, Orlando, Florida, ETC will introduce the Selador Desire Studio HD -- one of the company's three new white-light luminaires designed expressly for studio and stage use. The Studio HD uses a combination of warm white, cool white, and color LEDs to provide multiple color temperatures, from 2,700 degrees to about 6,500 degrees Kelvin. The addition of five colors from the award-winning Selador x7 Color System gives the Studio HD array an unbeatable advantage in the most demanding professional broadcast, film, and video lighting situations, the company says.

"Adding a touch of color creates a richness and full-bodiedness to the punch of the white LEDs," says ETC's Matt Armendariz-Kerr. "The Studio HD's color mix was developed in consultation with television-lighting experts and produces a stunningly beautiful, high-quality light in a fixture engineered to simplify production work. HD's white color can be easily adjusted right at the fixture, on the fly, adapting to entertainment-lighting pressures like on-location shoots. This might mean a quick tweak of magenta or green levels or even specific hues. HD gives professionals the precise color of white light they want and in the instant they need it."

"If you have to light people, Studio HD is the light," says ETC Selador expert Novella Smith. "Not only can you fine-tune HD to skin tones, but you flatter and complement all pigmentations." Once the Studio HD is matched to a performer or presenter, those values can be saved into a lighting control console. "This saves broadcast lighting directors and technicians enormous amounts of design time and setup, and it makes the talent look great, show after show."

John Netter, operations supervisor for the department of cultural services in Schaumburg, Illinois, tested the new fixtures out at the CVOS-TV station (Schaumburg Prairie Center for the Arts). Netter praised the powerful Desire Studio HD fixture for its "stable, predictable color temps over a wide range of levels." He says, "In the studio, I often like to shoot with the lowest light levels I can, in order to get the shortest depth of field and soft backgrounds. This can be a struggle with traditional quartz fixtures, as dimming them shifts their color output. Not so with the Desires. Rock-solid 3,200K at any level. The Studio HD can match the brightness of our 1K Fresnels when we need them to, and can be used at low levels when we want them to. Moving to an outdoor location requires a simple menu-driven change to perfectly match the outdoor color temp, whether we're shooting on a cloudy day, a shady spot, or in direct sun. With the choice of stand-alone operation on location and DMX control in the studio, tweaking is quick and easy."

The Desire range also includes the Studio Tungsten and the Studio Daylight fixtures. "When high-efficiency punch is more important than subtle color control to your lighting needs, check out the Studio Tungsten and Studio Daylight," says ETC's Tom Littrell. Both specialty luminaires offer bright, single-color, non-variable arrays at specific color temperatures. The Studio Tungsten uses LEDs designed to produce white light at 3000 degrees Kelvin, to emulate conventional tungsten light. Designers working in video, film, or even architectural situations requiring 5,600 degrees Kelvin might consider the exceptionally efficient Studio Daylight. The Studio Tungsten and Studio Daylight arrays were developed in response to worldwide demand by lighting pros for single-color, high-intensity LED light sources.

ETC's Desire D60 LED-fixture series is also making its American debut at LDI. The D60 gives the lighting professional an even brighter 60-LED version of the Studio white-light LED arrays, as well as the full-color arrays based on the x7 Color System: the Vivid, Lustr+, Fire, and Ice. The full Desire Studio line now comprises three series, based on LED-emitter quantity and on interior or exterior use: the D40 and the IP66 outdoor-rated D40XT (both with 40 Luxeon Rebel emitters) and the aforementioned D60, with 60 Luxeon Rebel emitters.