Tungsten Filament Lighting
Conventional theatre lighting relies almost entriely on tungsten filament lamps which provide a point-source of white light.
Widely used – ETC’s Source 4 Profile and Selecon’s Acclaim Fresnel.
In day-to-day life we see tungsten filament lamps being phased out of many applications where newer technologies are better suited, due for example to their lower power consumption or greater durability.
In stage lighting, however, there remain many situations where alternatives are not available and thus we need to consider how we can deliver the benefits of tungsten filament lighting with minimal power consumption. Recent developments include:
- Infra-red coatings which trap heat in the lamp and thus reduce losses
- Micro- (and possibly nano-) structured filaments which have much greater surface area and thus deliver more light
- Improved optics
- Lower wattage lamps (maintaining colour temperature at lower lighting levels and thus reducing need for colour-correction gels)
There are great energy savings to be made simply by careful selection of currently available equipment. This was demonstrated in Arcola Theatre’s production of An Enemy of the People. A combination of luminaires were used including ETC Source 4s and Selecon Acclaims with lower wattage lamps than usual, as well as low voltage luminaires such as the Pacific 80V (click here) and Aureol 12V (click here). Lower voltage tungsten lamps tend to give higher efficiency. Click here for a full description of the An Enemy of the People set up.
Further details on lower energy tungsten filament luminaries can be found at
www.etcconnect.com or www.seleconlight.com