Audience blinders are perfect for those times during a production when the talent on stage wants to see the people who came to see them. During those moments, as the name of the fixtures suggest, the lighting crew gets to turn its attention from blinding the performers and start abusing the optic nerves of the audience as well, using thousands of watts of tungsten or high discharge lamp sources.
But this is 2013, not 2010. So it isn’t enough for a fixture to just wash the audience with more than 30,000 lumens of output. It’s got to be energy-efficient (i.e., LED-based) and multi-purpose, too. Enter the Solaris LED Flare.
What It Is
The Solaris LED Flare is more than just an LED audience blinder, it can function as a strobe and a wash light too — in fact, with its 96 10W RGBW LEDs, its uses are pretty much limited to the designer’s imagination.
It can punch light anywhere it is focused. Just be careful if you happen to find yourself in front of this fixture when it’s on at full power and make sure you avert your eyes. I was, and didn’t, and can attest to how powerful this little light is. After looking away for 20 minutes, I can still see stars.
The Flare comes in a small package, comparable in size (8.3 by 19.6 by 5.7 inches) and weight (15 lbs.) to other strobe fixtures on the market. The difference is in the lamp source and the capabilities of RGBW LEDs. With 16 million colors to choose from, there’s no need for a color scroller for the front.
Color Changing and Snapping
If you’re not likely to need every one of those 16 million color choices, it does give designers the ability to specify that precise variation of magenta they are looking for. Like any LED fixture, the Flare also offers snapping colors. Rather then scrolling from one color to another, the Flare can snap between colors as quickly as you need. If you still want that scroll across colors, the fixture can be programmed to do that as well.
As Complex As You Want
The Flare offers a number of different control modes for any level of control the user desires. For simple control of the RGBW LEDs, you’ll be looking at the 3- to 4-channel control modes. For more sophisticated control, for eye candy and pixel mapping, the Flare offers a 56-channel mode. The Flare is able to divvy up the 96 LEDs into individual controllable zones — up to 12 zones, with eight LEDs per zone. If that level of control is a bit much for you, the Flare also offers two, three, four and six zones of control.
Eye Candy Options
By adjusting the number of zones, you can begin to experience a different sort of eye candy blinder. Not only can you pixel map the zones for eye candy effects, you can begin to use the same fixture to produce multiple color washes, depending on how many zones you have set up.
Strobing
The Flare loves to strobe, and with its 1200Hz refresh rate, you can adjust it so that you feel like you are in an old movie. And unlike strobes relying on traditional high discharge lamps for a light source, the LEDs free you of the need to “rest” the lamp. Want an entire song to go crazy with strobe action and possibly send your audience into a seizure? The Flare can do it for you. With the zone controls, you can actually send different zones into different rates of strobe and color for added effects.
Power and Cooling
In total, the Flare uses 1,000 watts of power. That may be a relatively high power consumption rate for an LED fixture, but it’s about one-third the power needed for typical high discharge lamp strobes.
The LEDs, like more traditional lamps, need fans for cooling. But the Flare’s four built-in fans, while a bit noisy at times, give you the ability to vary their rate (and noise level), depending on usage. When you start working the fixture hard, the fans ramp up to full speed and make some big noise. Maybe not noticeable 30 feet in the air on tour, but potentially problematic for a theatre or TV studio.
Conclusion
The Solaris LED Flare isn’t just an audience blinder; it’s a versatile fixture that offers a combination of zone control, strobe function and the choice of 16 million colors — plus impressive levels of luminous output. The bottom line: it can add value to the rig because it can do more than one thing, and it requires only about a third of the power consumed by comparably-bright conventional fixtures.
Solaris LED Flare
More than a Blinder: The Solaris LED Flare can be used as an energy-efficient audience blinder, but its 96 10W RGBW LEDs can be pixel-mapped for eye candy effects or used as a ?color-changing strobe or wash fixture.
Pros: Pixel Mapping zones, 1200Hz refresh rate, 30,000+ lumen output.
Cons: Loud fan noise.
Source: 96 RGBW Cree LEDs
Max Power Draw: 1000W
Size: 8.3 x 19.6 x 5.7 inches
Weight: 14.3 lbs.
DMX Channels: 3 to 56
Power Connection: powerCON
DMX Connection: 5-pin
How Much: Price on request. (Contact TMB Sales at tmb.com for a price quote.)
For a video demo, go to www.plsn.me/SolarisFlare
