LED

After a few years of watching, LED lighting has come to the point where brightness, features and cost are affordable for us and probably most small churches.

Why LED?
For us as we live in older rented facilities where we cannot do upgrades to the AC feeds, LED provides more lighting options per watt. We recently have been trying Microh's LED KDII Par64 RBG.

These lights are comparable to a 300w Par56 in brightness, but draw only 30watts. A side benefit is that they can be used in locations where kids are running around without having to worry about small burnt hands (we have a lot of the under 5 crowd!)

So far we have found these lights to offer very saturated red, green and blue colors, but due to their RGB design, yellows and oranges are harder to mix.
Since LED lights can only be dimmed by turning them off and on a flicker free design is essential for video, and these seem to work well.

The LEDP64KDII can be operated in several stand alone modes, including a music chase mode or by using 4 DMX channels (dim,R,G,B).

They donot produce an acceptable white light and I wouldn't consider using them for a front or side fill on any person, but for accent lighting, superb! (YMMV, try before buying)

Considerations when buying LED's
Brightness - equal to XXX incandescent watts
Flicker Free - for less video interference
Number and Brightness of LEDs
Color of LEDs
Ability to produce white
Stand alone or DMX operation
Number of DMX channels required.