Tech Column

Toronto Start-up Hopes To Shine Brightly

David Geldart thinks he has a brighter idea for LED lighting panels. As president and founder of Lumenaar LED Production Lighting, Geldart has bootstrapped the start-up company to the brink of launch with a vision of bringing a newer, brighter form of LED lighting to the stage, cinemagraphic and still image work space. While LED boxes are carving out a niche in productions and have many attributes that make them attractive over those HMI light sources, they still don’t have the punch and power needed to push the old technology off the set. It may never happen; it may happen tomorrow. Such is the nature of technology and the pace of change. What sets Lumenaar’s range of 35, 65, 100 and 200 watt panels apart from the competitors on the marketplace is what Geldart calls “the secret sauce.” “With LED the problem is the compromise between colour and brightness,” he says. “You can get accurate colour but you lose brightness, but if you want brightness you lose colour.” It all started about a year ago when Geldart was approached by Korean-Canadian entrepreneur Simon Park. At the time Geldart had switched off from animation and media and returned to his art roots, running an LED lighting company, focused on residential-commercial track lighting and specialty lighting, with a special focus on art gallery lights. “He said he had a patent to deliver colour with brightness in LED, which no one else could do,” Geldart says. They call it Spectral CBET – Colour Balance Enhancement Technology – and a couple of prototypes later, the product’s just about ready for launch, having secured their UL/CSA and other industry standard approvals mid-September following a roll out at NAB this past spring. The difference with the Lumenaar system, he says, is that instead of coating the Blue LED emitter with phosphorus dye to create yellow, which in turn dulls the intensity, their LED uses a standard phosphorus which doesn’t diminish brightness as much. The lights are controlled by an intermediate panel that acts much like an analogue filter. The result is a lightweight luminous box with digital controls on the back which can separately ramp up brightness and colour temperature. Where it’s different, he says, is that colour temperature isn’t a straight line when you go from the warm end at 2,600K through the cool end of 5,000 and above. “It’s actually a curve,” he explains. “Our lights stay on that curve and don’t drop off, so the colour is much more accurate.” At the same time, he says, the brightness doesn’t drop. Toronto-based still shooter Matthew Plexman got his hands on the 100-watt prototype and used it for a commercial shoot and says he was impressed with the technology, though the units he had are much bulkier and heavier than the final production designs now rolling out. “It was extremely bright compared to the rented LED panels I’ve used in the past,” he says. “It was much brighter than the 1000-watt tungsten light I was using with a light box.” The added bonus was that there was no heat. The prototype controls were a little clunky, but in the final product Plexman likes the idea of being able to quickly dial up the brightness or colour balance to match either a natural daylight source or a tungsten. “Being a soft light, the output it has is pretty phenomenal,” he says, adding that the see Tech page 26

Tech from page 24 power draw is low, which is a bonus. “A lot of guys like me do location work and we’re in homes and offices and you don’t want to be blowing circuits. Compared to the other LEDs, these are really comfortable to work with because it’s soft light, and that’s what we use mostly.” Of course, lower power consumption and lower heat generation are two big reasons LEDs are turning heads. LEDs also have longer lifecycles. Lumenaar claims its lights offer 40 per cent savings more in power against other LEDs; are 1.6 more efficient; and 1.6 times brighter, meaning fewer lights will go further, adding to the cost benefit analysis. At 26 per cent brightness, the Lumenaar 100-watt panel draws about 28 watts, and at 100 per cent, draws 104 watts. They are also lightweight, making them easy to move and position, and, since they are digitally controlled, can be ramped up or down remotely to lock in the right lighting mix. “We’re also working now to put white linings on the inside of the barn doors to reflect more light as well,” Geldart says. LED lighting on sets still has a long way to go, though some broadcast studios have adopted them for their comfort factor and power consumption characteristics, and some television series sets like them for lighting office scenes and night scenes because of the colour control aspect. Still, technology, like time, marches forward. “Really it’s all about the light,” Geldart says. “There is no such thing as colour, really, is what I tell people. It’s only the reflection of the light which hits it. So if the colour of the light hitting it doesn’t have that spectrum, you don’t get that colour.” With certification in hand and prototypes refined, Geldart and his partner, who has also partnered with the factory to make them in Asia, are looking to the next step, which is sales and marketing the product. “We’re looking at stage and event lighting and cinematography, certainly the rental houses which are an important market, and directly to people who want to own their own equipment,” Geldart says. So far the venture has been self-funded, but Angel or Venture Capital investors may be next on the horizon as they seek to get in on a nascent market with vast upside potential.

Ian Harvey is a Toronto-based journalist who writes for a variety of publications and covers the technology sector. He welcomes feedback and eagerly solicits ideas at ian@pitbullmedia.ca.

Profusion from page 23

handed out to a steady flow of people inquiring about the society membership, submitting entries to the competition in the upcoming 58 th CSC Annual Awards Gala, through to discussions on lighting techniques and, of course, cameras. For some, such as Montreal cinematographer Ray Lavers, the CSC was the big draw after learning about ProFusion 2014 on the CSC Facebook page. “I actually came for the CSC. I wanted to see and talk to the people at the booth to learn more about the society, its programs and the workshops being offered,” Lavers said, also remarking that the tradeshow was much more than he expected. “ProFusion was a bonus. It’s totally blown me away! I can’t believe how much equipment’s here. It’s just nice to get your hands on the equipment you

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read about, just to see how it feels. I wish I was staying an extra day.” A large slice of the ProFusion experience is dedicated to education. I’m sure if anyone had the time and inclination, they could have spent each moment of ProFusion 2014 attending demonstrations, tutorials, seminars or workshops. It was all there for the grabbing. Carlos Esteves csc, who conducted a seminar on lighting that looked at the practical side of lighting and the LED revolution, says that tradeshows are morphing into information centres. “Modern technology is very complex and specialized, and tradeshows have become part of technology’s information highway,” according to Esteves. “No matter whether it is the nuances of lights, cameras, lenses or whatever, it’s all developing at frighteningly fast speeds and people need to be informed and educated to keep on top of their game. As trade shows become more sophisticated, so will their knowledge based programs.” ProFusion is no longer the new kid on the block and has established itself as the top imaging tradeshow in Canada, aspiring to replicate the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) trade fair in the United States and IBC (International Broadcasting Convention) in Europe. For the future, ProFusion plans to have much more to show and much more to tell. Besides more first-in-Canada product launches and expanded educational programs, organizers say they’ll be reaching into the postproduction and software markets to make ProFusion an even more all-encompassing experience for professionals. Ladies and gentlemen, time to mark your calendars for next year.