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Affordable LED Fresnels


mar

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We are considering upgrading the lighting in our studio from an elderly selection of 500W-650W fresnels (most Patt 803) and wanted to seek the wisdom of others who may have already made a similar switch.

 

Our budget is not enormous, up to around £250 per light at a push. I want to go for RBGW to reduce the number of fixtures in the rig and also retire my elderly LED pars in the same space.

 

I know the Elumin8 MP75 has been around for a while, anyone got any first hand experience of them in the wild?

I have also seen that CPC have a Pulse offering:

https://cpc.farnell.com/pulse/mfz160q/fresnel-stage-light-4x40w-rgbw/dp/DP36126?MER=sy-me-pd-mi-alte

which claims a higher lux and also has a better beam angle range for our small studio. Has anyone tried one of these?

 

Does anyone have any other recommendations for small, cheap but consistent RGBW LED fresnels?

 

Thanks in advance all.

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We've got a handful of the MP75 fresnels. They're nice little units. I'm not quite sure how well they'll hold up against tungsten, especially on white. Saturated colours is where they'll win.

 

I've tended to use them only on small studio-sided spaces. They're well built and pretty straightforward to operate.

 

It might be worth getting hold of some (either rental or demo) and do a direct comparison in your space?

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We have 6 MP75 and they're ok but not as bright as a Patt 123 except when you're looking for really deep reds, blues and greens when they really shine, if you pardon the pun. Put them in a pastel colour and they're nearer to a PAR56, I'd say.

 

The beam isn't bad, not bad uniformity and not really noticed fringing. They fade quite nicely if you put them on tungsten curve. You have to fiddle with the colour balance to get them to look anywhere natural on skin, though.

 

We did intend to have a look at the MP180 at some point, but that may have gone on the back burner now as we're also looking at colorsource.

Edited by alistermorton
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I've been keeping an eye out for something similar for a while as well, and one thing I have found very disappointing on many LED fresnels I've looked at (and not just the budget end of the market by any means) is the poor beam shaping/cutting afforded by the barn doors. I've even seen some painted with semi-gloss black paint. So that's something else to look out for if that's important to you.
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We have an MP60, the CW equivalent of the MP75. The barn door shaping is fine on wider settings although softer than a 743 on edging. The fan noise is acceptable. I had come across Pulse online and assumed they were rebadged Elumen8 so am interested in if they are better or not as we were going to get a couple of MP75s. No mention of fan noise on the spec!

 

I did pick up some bigger motorised zoom fresnels, a TZ250 RGBW and a TZ350 WW. They are a little intrusive when the fan kicks in to high but only when they have been running for a while. (The zoom is noisier but you can inch it which is quiet).

 

The main failing for me is lack of a decent yellow, a common situation with RGBW fixtures. We have cove tape that is the same, the green swamps the mix unless checked.

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We have an MP60, the CW equivalent of the MP75. The barn door shaping is fine on wider settings although softer than a 743 on edging. The fan noise is acceptable. I had come across Pulse online and assumed they were rebadged Elumen8 so am interested in if they are better or not as we were going to get a couple of MP75s. No mention of fan noise on the spec!

 

I did pick up some bigger motorised zoom fresnels, a TZ250 RGBW and a TZ350 WW. They are a little intrusive when the fan kicks in to high but only when they have been running for a while. (The zoom is noisier but you can inch it which is quiet).

 

The main failing for me is lack of a decent yellow, a common situation with RGBW fixtures. We have cove tape that is the same, the green swamps the mix unless checked.

 

A sample Pulse Fresnel has now been ordered, awaiting delivery, I will report further once I've tried it in the rig. It looks like the focus appears to involve moving the lens tube complete with colour runners. (Moving the LED assembly in the conventional tungsten style would of course be trickier if using the housing as a heat sink for conduction). The MP60 moves an internal fresnel lens for focus, the front lens you see is fixed and probably for collimation or beam smoothing. (I haven't opened any of them up yet).

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Delicolor, I look forward to hearing the results.

 

I did ask CPC if they had any more detailed tech specs but sadly nothing.

I’ve now got hold of a Pulse MFZ160Q and had a play with it on the bench (well, coffee table as I’m at home).

 

My first hiccup was that all my DMX 3 to 5 pin adapters are at work so I can’t connect my DMXCat tester to it. I touched some wires on a gash lead to check the unit was responsive to DMX, which it is. However proper testing will have to wait.

 

The lantern itself is visually OK and superficially similar to the MP75 with some differences. The barn door retaining clip is much cruder, being like a spring clip over a latch. The focus doesn’t move the front of the assembly as first thought, instead it moves the COB and heat sink assembly inside. It is shipped with the focus knob in the bag and it is a tad fiddly to fit (and comes out readily as there aren’t too many threads engaged, perhaps two full turns). It is a little shuddery, think of an old style Sil front lens. It looks to have a reasonable spread and spots down somewhat but not too tightly. The manual shows a local dimming knob on the rear but it is just blanked off. There is a dedicated fixing position for the safety bond, which is included. The “fresnel” lens is plastic and lightly pebbled on the front.

 

The unit is pretty quiet in use, I ran it up to full and the fan kicked in after a few minutes but wasn’t too intrusive. The reported temperature on the display got up to 45 degrees (presumably Centigrade, not actually defined) . The three primary colours are reasonably saturated with a cold white as the 4th channel. It has seven profiles but I should think theatre users will want to use the 4 channel mode, RGBW. (There is a 5 channel mode as well with dimmer if your desk doesn’t do virtual dimming, as well as strobe and an HSV mode).

 

Where it starts to get peculiar is when you measure Watts in and Lux out. It is brighter on single colours than mixtures. Whilst by no means scientific readings, I used the DMXCat light meter app on my Android phone and got the following Lux readings over a 2m throw spotted down. Off 13 lux ambient, Red 3469, Green 960, B 1269, W 2475, blue+ white 1699, all 4 channels full 1719 Lux. Watts in varied between 22W and 36W with channels up based on my consumer smart meter which probably doesn’t care about apparent power.

 

Looking more closely at the spec, it describes the light source as “160W 4 in 1 COB LED (40W constant output)” and the LED colour “RGBW (40W per colour)” .So this would appear to explain why the primary colours are much brighter. I’m now suspicious that some of our cheap LEDs might work in the same way from previous power readings.

 

It doesn’t look like it will Chuck out more light than the MP75 but the published figures from CPC didn’t make sense until hindsight is applied, explaining why the full on Lux is not cumulative.

 

There is a bit of fringing around the barn door edges in the beam when spotted down and squared off on test but how this looks on a stage awaits a trip up the Smallescope…

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Thanks for the rundown. I am curious about what power supply it has fitted as the MFZ160Q Product Sheet does not state the power consumption. The reason I am curious is because I have seen several cases of 18x18W 6IN1 LED PAR's having 150W power supplies fitted as their version of thermal heat regulation. A 18x18W should have a 350W power supply.
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Thanks for the rundown. I am curious about what power supply it has fitted as the MFZ160Q Product Sheet does not state the power consumption. The reason I am curious is because I have seen several cases of 18x18W 6IN1 LED PAR's having 150W power supplies fitted as their version of thermal heat regulation. A 18x18W should have a 350W power supply.

There is no reference to power consumption in the instruction booklet (which doesn’t include photometrics), just that the power supply is auto ranging. The leaflet says the fuse is F1A but the signage says F2A and that actual fuse is F3A!

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Thanks for the rundown. I am curious about what power supply it has fitted as the MFZ160Q Product Sheet does not state the power consumption. The reason I am curious is because I have seen several cases of 18x18W 6IN1 LED PAR's having 150W power supplies fitted as their version of thermal heat regulation. A 18x18W should have a 350W power supply.

There is no reference to power consumption in the instruction booklet (which doesn’t include photometrics), just that the power supply is auto ranging. The leaflet says the fuse is F1A but the signage says F2A and that actual fuse is F3A!

I just noticed on the box it says 160W although the most I have seen it consume is 38 watts or so (blue only). The RDM is a somewhat tidier implementation than Elumen8, the identify does something (flashes red channel) and the modes are meaningfully named. Surprisingly there are two sensors, the second one being wind speed! (It stays the same regardless of fan on or off). The fan kicks in at 46 C and goes off again at 39 C.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I’ve just obtained two Elumen8 MP75 Fresnels, which have been on back-order from CPC. Curiously, one is a Mark II, the only obvious physical difference being a Powercon and 5 Pin DIN connectors rather than captive power and 3 pin. The Mk 1 supposedly only had two channel modes (5 & 7) but both units have the same firmware (1.03) which supports 4 channel mode as well. They appear to have the same optics and the four colours are additive power wise unlike the Pulse that seemed to use the same power on full as just one colour (so got brighter if you went from say purple to blue).

 

The MP75 has lead screw focussing and is much more precise than the Pulse was. I haven’t tried the two different lanterns side by side yet.

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  • 8 months later...

I've got two MP75 Mk1s, one has had to go back for replacement despite having only being used a few times, turnaround for replacements was more than a week iirc, so it's probably wise to buy a couple of spares to have on hand as obviously you can't just change a lamp etc.

The barndoors are tight af, but the rotation not so much so are easily knocked and spun slightly.

Also the locking mech on the yoke is pathetically weak and undersized in my opinion.

I like the rear zoom knob, easy to reach and smooooooth.

That being said the light output is plenty for a studio space using 500-650w fresnels, but no competition against a 1k or higher, it would just swamp it out.

Full White (rgb plus w) is a good deal brighter than any colour mix.

The colour rendering is what you expect from RGBW, it would be nice to have the option of RGBAW or RGBAL at this price range.

I'll definitely buy 4 more to bring me up to 6.

It would be good to see a proper spec sheet showing the difference between the Mk2 and the original - I didn't find anything when I tried to Google it.

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