LED profiles/fresnels

[OllieT]

I am involved with the lighting for a school. Our stock of generic Dexcel fresnels and profiles is getting very low as they are all just falling apart (I don't think they were of the highest quality 15 years ago!). We had about 20 650 watt fresnels for over stage, 8 1k fresnels on the FOH bar and 10 or so profiles. We are now down to 2 working profiles, 10 working 650 watt fresnels and no working 1k fresnels. We do hire a rig of intelligent lighting (both movers and wash lights before we bought our own) for our one big musical a year, and have the experience and console to run this. I am also rather concerned that within a few years it is going to become very difficult to buy the bulbs for the generics, which makes LEDs attractive. It is also nice to be reducing the amount we hire, so that the hire bill goes down, and that the standard of stuff the rest of the year goes up!

 

 

In an attempt to update our stock and reduce energy consumption we bought 16 Chauvet colordash parquad 18 LED wash lights, 10 of which we have over stage and we have 6 on our bar FOH. The ones over the stage work brilliantly to provide a stage wash and the fact that they are color mixing makes life much easier, however there are too few to be used without being fleshed out by the rapidly dying 650w Fresnels. The 6 that we have on the FOH bar seem to lack the punch to really do the facelight- along with the color temperature not being quite right for facelight.

 

My proposed solution is to buy an LED equivalent of the 1k fresnel (preferably color mixing), and move the 6 wash lights from the FOH bar to over stage- removing the dependence on the 650w fresnels, and providing better color temperature and more punch for the facelight. The throw is about 20 meters from this bar and the stage is 8 meters wide. The fixtures need to be well built and reliable- hoping for a 15 year plus lifespan, (they won't be moved around at all once they are up on the bar).

 

My question is does anyone have any recommendations of suitable LED fixtures to do as described. My gut feeling is that it would require too many profiles to be cost effective, and that about 6 fresnels are probably the best bet, but I may be wrong! Budget is not great, which is why I am looking into this now, so that they can start putting aside some money every year until they can afford to do it.

 

[paulears]

I was confused at first by the notion these weren't bright enough, then you mentioned 20m throw to the stage - that's a huge distance and at that distance I can't see anything being that much use because of the travel and the beam spread. Surely you want something with a lens out front - wash lights from front of house positions have never been very useful. There are a few RGBW fixtures that have ordinary lens tubes, but is this what you have in mind? I assume a new bar in a sensible place is out of the question?

[indyld]

Rather a side note to this rather than addressing the main OP, but I'd not be hoping for a 15 year lifespan from anything that isn't a tin box with a few wires and a replaceable lamp in it. Once a bit of kit has LEDs and a switch mode power supply in it, the question of longevity becomes firstly how long the manufacturer warranty is, then how long parts will be available for - along with who has the skills to fit them. Admittedly, school use isn't quite as harsh as a production or hire environment but the only things that I see on a daily basis that are still going 15 years on are the tin boxes.

 

Best to factor a shorter life into budgeting considerations. :P

[OllieT]

Apology's: I have been and measured today; the FOH bar is about 8 meters from the front of the apron; I have no idea where on earth I got 20 meters from and thinking about it now 20 meters is crazy!

 

The kind of thing I am thinking of is something like the etc lustr (which I know are eye wateringly expensive) or the Chauvet equivalent; https://www.chauvetprofessional.com/products/ovation-e-930vw/. The challenge is to get the spread needed in few enough fixtures that the cost doesn't become undoable; hence my idea for fresnels.

 

Point taken about the lifespan; I don't think is was very switched on last night, looking at it now I can see that is a silly expectation.

 

I was really wondering if anyone had used LED fixtures to do as described and had any tips or recommendations for fixtures?

[Brian]

The tradeoff is simple... The wider your spread the dimmer the result.

[IRW]

At 8m, ETC Colorsource Fresnels may well do the job, and would cost a reasonable amount less than lustrs, whilst still giving you the ETC tech support and warranty Edited June 19, 2019 by IRW

[sleah]

At 8m, ETC Colorsource Fresnels may well do the job, and would cost a reasonable amount less than lustrs, whilst still giving you the ETC tech support and warranty

They will do the job! Our stage is about 10m and 1st FOH bar is 7/8m away and I use 5 x Colorsource fresnels to light it. I then have another 5 2.5m further back which covers the area in front for when they use a thrust or perform on the floor in front of the apron.

Used to use 6 x 600w Selecon fresnels per bar and the Colorsource blow them away, certainly in terms of colour :)

 

I'd say a Coloursource LED engine (you either stick fresnel or profile lenses on) is about equiv. to a 1kw halogen.

 

Ball park £1500 per LED engine including the fresnel lens, which is slightly more expensive than a profile lens :blink: .

Edited June 20, 2019 by sleah

[timsabre]

How do you find the Colorsource engine for doing whites or pale shades? I used some in a venue a couple of months ago and I struggled to get a nice looking tungsten equivalent light out of them that didn't look "led". Whereas the Chauvet Ovation FC ones can be made to look much more tungsteny and I think are cheaper.

[OllieT]

At 8m, ETC Colorsource Fresnels may well do the job, and would cost a reasonable amount less than lustrs, whilst still giving you the ETC tech support and warranty

 

These sound hopeful although they are expensive

 

How do you find the Colorsource engine for doing whites or pale shades? I used some in a venue a couple of months ago and I struggled to get a nice looking tungsten equivalent light out of them that didn't look "led". Whereas the Chauvet Ovation FC ones can be made to look much more tungsteny and I think are cheaper.

 

This lack of white is my main concern; and main dissatisfaction with the Colordash pars: trying to get a natural looking facelight with them is maddening and to be honest impossible. Does anyone have any experience with the Chauvet Ovation FC fixtures? The Chauvet website doesn't make it easy to compare the multitude of models ect.

 

I think before committing to anything I will certainly try to get a demo in situ to make sure that these are going to do what we need!

[david.elsbury]

I demoed the Chauvet Ovation profiles for a venue and was very impressed with the quality of light out the front.

[alistermorton]

We're going to be doing a side by side with tbe ovation and both colorsource and lustr+ and possibly the new Martin profile too. I'll pass on our findings. Edited June 20, 2019 by alistermorton

[OllieT]

We're going to be doing a side by side with tbe ovation and both colorsource and lustr+ and possibly the new Martin profile too. I'll pass on our findings.

 

That sounds great, let us know how you get on!

[alistermorton]

Probably won't be until mid July ...

[OllieT]

We're going to be doing a side by side with tbe ovation and both colorsource and lustr+ and possibly the new Martin profile too. I'll pass on our findings.

 

Hi Alister,

 

Did you do this demo? I would be really interested as to the results

 

Thanks

Edited October 1, 2019 by OllieT

[alistermorton]

In the end we omitted the Ovation. We were more interested in theatre colours and the Ovation was considered a bit punchy, probably fine for musicals etc.Shame, as there's a fres too.Might have to revisit that. Still, I think it may be a contender.

The Martin FC was disappointing. The pastels and near whites had a definite red tinge and would probably need a lot more faffing around with colours before they were a reasonable match to the colour wheel starting point. The saturated colours were a bit strange, too, the green was a bit acid, the red was very strong and this affected the magentas, yellows and oranges to. Which sort of shows you the danger of basing a decision purely on wha tyou see at a show, becaue of course they've tuned the display to flatter the fixture, and at Plasa it had looked impressive. Same as speakers can sound impressive at shows, but you need to audition them in isolation.

 

The rest of the stuff we looked at was ETC. Well, it matched our desk ...

 

We looked at a Colorsource pearl for reference, which had excellent skin tones, as you'd expect, but of course you're back into having to gel it as it's a tunable white. One of our group works in TV and had come across them before.

 

On to the ColorSource spot, which everyone thought was good. Colour wheel and colour chips were close, not perfect, but you got a good starting point. Looked good and natural on skin in the various equivalents to the colours we tend to use. Problem is the there isn't a dedicate colorsource fres, you have to convert the S4 body with a fres adapter, which gives you a fixture the size of a 2k fres (and it's a pricey conversion). Also tried the cyc converter on it, which was quite impressive, until we saw the colorsource cyc dedicated cyc washer, which was really something else.Better coverage and a slightly better range of colours.

 

As an alternative to a fres we had a look at the colorsource par, which matched the colorsource for colors, and might work ok instead of a par, although beam shaping could be interesting.

 

Finally, the lustr. This just blew everything away, the colours were excellent, the skin tones were outstanding, made the colorsource look a bit lacking, which it isn't, it's just the lustr is so much better, but at nearly twice the price you'd hope so.

 

All the fixtures we looked at had plenty of output. We're used to mainly 650W fixtures (prelude profiles, quartet fres) with a few older CCT 1k and 2k sil profiles and some 1k fresnels (cantata, the venerable but still excellent 743) and we didn't at any time feel that we would have insufficient output.