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ETC has always valued color. In fact, we geek out on color so much around here that we’ve given a name to all of the stuff that goes into high-quality color creation: Color Integrity. With the launch of our most recent LED fixture, Relevé Spot, we thought it was the perfect time to take a deep dive into the work we’ve always felt was most important to our LED products.
What is Color Integrity?
When you pick a color, whether from a gel book or a console color picker, you should trust that you’ll get the color you want, but ETC takes it a step farther. Not only will you get the color you want, but that color will stay the color you want no matter how long your show or how hot your venue. How can we make such a big, bold promise?
We’ve spent decades researching everything from droop compensation, to LED binning, to RGB and HSCI color control, to some of the most custom created and highly scrutinized arrays on the market. But what does color integrity actually mean for you and your fixtures? Let’s start with droop compensation.
Thermal Droop Compensation
In layman’s terms, droop compensation is the ability for our software to silently control a quality light output despite the fact that the fixture’s temperature is constantly changing from the moment you turn it on to the moment your show ends. Our software engineers have spent months of their lives making sure that a change in temperature does not mean a change in light output.
This is the secret ingredient behind a quality fixture, something you would never notice until it becomes the most important aspect of your show.
LED Binning
Temperature control doesn’t matter if you don’t have quality components. How often do you just turn on a single fixture? Rarely (if ever) right? That means the color and light quality of one fixture needs to match the color and light quality of every other fixture in your rig.
With Relevé Spot and all other ETC LED fixtures, we’ve gone so far above and beyond confirming where our LEDs come from that the term LED Binning seems so underwhelming in the grand scheme of things.
It all starts with tight relationships with premiere LED manufacturers, relationships that we’re lucky to have. This means we’re able to guarantee tight binning and industry-first access to LED color combinations. When lime LEDs first entered the scene, ETC was there to snatch them up! We had been waiting patiently for the industry to embrace what we already knew – lime LEDs filled in a missing portion of the white-light spectrum that had huge benefits to you, our color connoisseurs and lighting designers.
Read more about where individual LEDs came from in this blog article from last fall.
And more about LED binning in this article from one of ETC’s color experts.
Calibration
But binning is just the beginning and calibrated color modes take accuracy to a level above and beyond your dreams. So accurate that your spectral output – the make-up of your light – is pure and beautiful and full. Pick an emotion and an intention, and then pick the color.
When we decided to make Relevé Spot, we knew the color technology had to be the best ever because you, our theatrical customers, know and love color in a different way than most entertainment light manufacturers do. One thing we never want is for you to turn on your light and say “That’s yellow.” Because we know that yellow is so much more. It can be fiery, or electric, or soft, or harsh.
We give you all of these yellows with Relevé because you need them all. Your theatre needs them all. (And yes, we do this for all of the other colors too.)
Lifetime Testing
All of this would be useless if the fixture wasn’t built to last. In the industry, there are several different metrics to determine how long LEDs will last. It’s rare, however, to find a company that tests a full fixture using all final components to give you an accurate lifespan.
That’s why we’ve taken life testing to a whole new level. We are in the process of testing each of our LED fixtures to industry standards at third-party labs. We let you know how we’re doing as official numbers come back from the lab.
Click here for the full story.
As you can see, we put a lot of effort into making sure we give you the highest quality fixtures with the highest quality light on the market. But there’s so much more to the color integrity story! In the next blog article, we’ll take a closer look at the science behind additive color and why 6000 lumens is far brighter than you may think. Are you ready to see what Relevé Spot is really capable of?
