Far more likely they just used ordinary stage lights where “huh, if I set channel 4 to full intensity I get a pretty purple, lets use that one”. The manual probably included a safety warning with specs like “21.7 mW/cm² at 5cm and 8.9 mW/cm² at 25cm distance”… but who reads the manual? And even if they did would they know what those numbers mean?
What it means is a “safe” exposure time of about 11 seconds (per day)… and that’s if you only have one of them. They might’ve had 20. And by the way I took that number from real equipment you can buy for events like this one. Professional operators would be very careful using them.
Pro tip from someone who works in the industry: if you see the white or fluorescent colours glow really bright… get the fuck out of the room unless you have absolute faith in the OH&S chops of the venue and lighting operator.
I’ve never encountered lights that don’t have UV filters in them.
There’s no way to control the UV filter via DMX/Artnet/sACN. It’s a fixed dichroic filter in front of the discharge lamp. It’s an extremely cheap filter, as well, so I doubt it would be excluded from cheapo knock-off brand lights.
Certainly on any light available in the US and EU. It just won’t get certified for sale.
Besides which, I haven’t used a discharge lamp in years. It’s all LED now, even the cheap stuff.
There is no way “set channel 4 to full” would disable any safety features in a moving light that would allow it to output damaging UV light. And the only other way it would hurt someone is if it was focussed on them, and they actively stared into it. Like, staring at the sun kind of level of staring at a light.
So, get rid of that “ordinary stage lights” pish.
This is absolutely a case of “we should get UV lights”. And instead of getting safe UV cannons for fun florescent paints, they got UV disinfectant lights. Probably still makes florescent paints glow, but it’s the wider band UV stuff designed to kill biological cells (ie disinfect). Which is exactly what it did to people’s skin and retina.
I work in the film industry side of lighting and we use HMI’s all the time (sometimes without the UV protective glass if the gaffer is a cowboy…). I’ve never really run into this with theatrical/event lights when we do use them…but then again you seem to know about situations like this.
There are so many old gaffers who have cataracts now because of all of those years looking directly into the hot spot of a carbon arc.
You’re probably correctly blaming the board while I think it was Aliexpress lights with actual UV emitters.
Far more likely they just used ordinary stage lights where “huh, if I set channel 4 to full intensity I get a pretty purple, lets use that one”. The manual probably included a safety warning with specs like “21.7 mW/cm² at 5cm and 8.9 mW/cm² at 25cm distance”… but who reads the manual? And even if they did would they know what those numbers mean?
What it means is a “safe” exposure time of about 11 seconds (per day)… and that’s if you only have one of them. They might’ve had 20. And by the way I took that number from real equipment you can buy for events like this one. Professional operators would be very careful using them.
Pro tip from someone who works in the industry: if you see the white or fluorescent colours glow really bright… get the fuck out of the room unless you have absolute faith in the OH&S chops of the venue and lighting operator.
I’ve never encountered lights that don’t have UV filters in them.
There’s no way to control the UV filter via DMX/Artnet/sACN. It’s a fixed dichroic filter in front of the discharge lamp. It’s an extremely cheap filter, as well, so I doubt it would be excluded from cheapo knock-off brand lights.
Certainly on any light available in the US and EU. It just won’t get certified for sale.
Besides which, I haven’t used a discharge lamp in years. It’s all LED now, even the cheap stuff.
There is no way “set channel 4 to full” would disable any safety features in a moving light that would allow it to output damaging UV light. And the only other way it would hurt someone is if it was focussed on them, and they actively stared into it. Like, staring at the sun kind of level of staring at a light.
So, get rid of that “ordinary stage lights” pish.
This is absolutely a case of “we should get UV lights”. And instead of getting safe UV cannons for fun florescent paints, they got UV disinfectant lights. Probably still makes florescent paints glow, but it’s the wider band UV stuff designed to kill biological cells (ie disinfect). Which is exactly what it did to people’s skin and retina.
Nice. Thanks for the insight.
I work in the film industry side of lighting and we use HMI’s all the time (sometimes without the UV protective glass if the gaffer is a cowboy…). I’ve never really run into this with theatrical/event lights when we do use them…but then again you seem to know about situations like this.
There are so many old gaffers who have cataracts now because of all of those years looking directly into the hot spot of a carbon arc.
You’re probably correctly blaming the board while I think it was Aliexpress lights with actual UV emitters.
No, some event organizers will absolutely use disinfection lights because they’re pretty. I found the bigclive video where he talks about that happening at a Hong Kong fashion show.
Oh, and now bigclive has a video this incident.