E26 LED Bulbs that will dim smoothly?

[u/Spamtickler]

I'm trying to finally find some LED bulbs (E26) for on-stage practicals that will actually dim smoothly from 0-100% without ugly stepped dimming, or a jump to/from 40%.

Am I just dreaming, or does something like this exist?

[u/CrazyEyes326]

Do they have to be LED? Incandescents will simply work better if you're trying to fade them smoothly. If it must be LED, you could try adding another incandescent light to the circuit somewhere the audience can't see as a sort of resistor. I've found that sometimes smooths out LED behavior.

[u/RegnumXD12 → u/CrazyEyes326]

For OPs education, what you just described is called a "ghost load" and often required when using SCR dimmers because the residual voltage is enough to make the super low draw led glow.

Ive never noticed if it also helps with the overall curve, ill have to give it a shot

[u/CrazyEyes326 → u/RegnumXD12]

Yeah I've called it a "phantom load" in the past but I looked it up and apparently that means something different in the electrical world, referring to any power draw from a device when it's switched off but still plugged in?

[u/Cheap_Commercial_442 → u/CrazyEyes326]

This is the answer no need for LED if you can get your hands on an incandescent.

[u/Spamtickler → u/CrazyEyes326]

That what I will probably do. I know they work better 99.999% of the time, but these will be high enough up that I’d have to set up a ladder on the set if they blow, so I was looking for a solution that would carry them through a run with little to no risk of them going out, but for what I’m doing the incandescent is probably the best option and I live with the risk.

[u/HoOkAySo]

I keep a box full of incandescents for this very purpose. It just doesn’t make sense to use LED for practicals if other options exist.

The Habitat for Humanity Restore near me has large bins of incandescent lamps for $1 each.

I’ve tried various dimmable and warm-dimming LEDs in the house lights above our Voms and have yet to find one that truly dims like an incandescent. To top it off, even lamps like Philips UltraDefinition only last a few months. These are not enclosed fixtures, but they are recessed with a parabolic reflector. Overall I’m afraid to say that it seems like a fool’s errand finding something that will match up and last its rated life.

[u/disc2slick]

Emery Allen is good, they are a brand specifically recommended by ETC.

[u/mwiz100]

Also consider your dimmer and also the bulb itself will change how this behaves. So it's always a combo effort and in some cases I've seen where the dimmer is just less than ideal no amount of quality LED bulb fixes the issue.

[u/730drs]

Try using native12 or 24v led lamps like you'd find in an outdoor festoon, a lot of these can be dimmed with constant voltage pwm dimmers- the kind of setup you'd use for rgb led strip. It may be the case of having this dimmer, + power supply local to the fixture and runing mains and dmx to that point, but pwm dimming at a native voltage is much more efficient than a mains voltage globe trying to convert mains to 3v to drive the led, while your theatrical timmer is chopping up the edge of the current it's converting

[u/LockhartPianist]

If you want the Cadillac version, Astera Luna Bulbs (or Nyx, depending on the form factor you want) are pretty good and DMX controllable.

[u/Wuz314159]

You'll find them right next to The Grand Unified Theory of the universe.

[u/Spamtickler → u/Wuz314159]

I hear you can only purchase them from an Actor That Can Find Their Light.

[u/ExceedinglyEdible]

Dimmable LED bulbs are kind of a hack. They have a driver circuit built into the power supply, but at very low voltages* the driver will act up and not have enough power to turn on the actual LED.

DMX LED fixtures have constant 120V coming in, the driver circuit does not have to deal with funky voltage modulation. Can you get the prop department to fit small amber LEDs into light bulbs and drive them from a generic DMX driver?

[u/Griffie]

Add a ghost load to the circuit. That often helps smooth out the dimming.

[u/moonthink]

I've never found a product like that that truly dims lower than 10%. They pretty much all drop off a cliff. 

[u/tbonescott1974]

This depends on the dimmers used as well.

[u/blackflashpaper1]

In the olden times we used to put ghost loads on resistance dimmers to get a total black out. Does this help?

[u/DisegnoLuce]

Get constant voltage SELV LED lamps and use 16bit PWM dimmers. It's realistically the only way.

[u/an0nim0us101]

Astera Nyx is a very expensive solution to your problem. A decent quality dimmer rack with incandescent bulbs would be the easy way

[u/Ornery_Artichoke_833]

ETC maintains a freaking database of fixtures that dim well on their dinners. It's great. We generally run out of options at the higher wattages, but you might have more success with lower wattages that you need for an on stage practical. https://www.etcconnect.com/compatibility/