New LED Washes

Robert F Jarvis

Well-Known Member
We currently use CHAUVET DJ COREpar 80 USB LED lamps on our small stage and like them and have been asked to move some to the main stage to setup a "Dream Scene" in "9 to 5". I was wondering though if we could get something more powerful to hang on the LX1 bar? We need RGBWA and as the CHUAVETS are 80 watt equivalents (how you compare LED to Halogen beats me) so we'd want at least twice that. Fully DMX etc. I'm looking at ETC Colorsource but there seems to be an infinite number of variations. And at a distance; do the individual LED array lamps differ from the COB devices? I know that at a short distance the individual LED units can cast color fringes at the edges. To see what I mean when I say "Individual LEDs" look at the CHAUVET DJ LED SlimPAR64 RGBA.
 
I can only speak from my experience, which is somewhat limited, but here goes.

The Colorsource PAR is a great instrument, but I suspect that it is only going to be slightly brighter that the CorePars since the CS Par is around 100 watts of LED emitters. Price for these seems to be in the $700-ish range, but you will likely end up spending another $100 per instrument for diffusion and masking products.

Depending on your price-point I would also take a look at the following:

ADJ's COB Cannon at around $400. It's RGBW, packs about 150 watts of emitters and offers lenses for 80-degree, 50-degree, and 40-degree beam spread.
Chauvet's

After that you move up into the higher-end zooming wash fixures like the Chauvet PRO COlorado 2 at about $1200 and the Altman AP-150-RGBW (135 watts) at around $900.

I'm sure there are other things worth considering, but I have worked with all of these and generally liked them.
 
Thanks. I just ordered a couple of ADJ Cannon COBs to see the difference. Do you know if they have barns doors available?
They do have a barn door available. It took me a while to find an online retailer that has them listed.
The only place I could find them at a decent price was B&H Photo for $30.
I was not super impressed with the quality of the barn doors, but it's the only thing out there

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...NKOvV2mhjqwZDsP11NJ6xgEkWo-HB2MAaAgXWEALw_wcB
 
Great, ordered a couple so I'll be able to try them out mid week. We're really sad that CHAUVET doesn't make barn doors for their CORpar 80's - for the price these are a grand slam for our smaller stage.
 
Maybe not what you're looking for because they are movers, but tomorrow we're doing a shoot out of Chauvet's Rogue R2 Wash and Elation's Fuse wash looking to replace a bunch of pars color washes saving space, power and weight. I can take some pictures and report back if it helps.
 
They do look impressive but we would require a lot of these to cover the stage and as a volunteer theater the price is beyond us. But thanks for the heads up and I hope everything goes well tomorrow.
 
The R2 Wash is a nice fixture. The church I help out at just picked up a pair and they are on par with the 500W Par lamps they are accompanying (no pun intended). Another fixture if you're looking for a static RGBAW wash is the Blizzard RokBox 5. I think it's around $500 and we use them as downlight for our stage at about 18' trim. Plenty bright.
 
Coincidence, Just talked to a buddy at Winter Haven Theater and he was telling me about his Blizzard Rock Boxes. Once I try those ADJ Cannons I'll give the rockbox a try. From what I saw up his place these were square panels with an array of LEDs (I.E. Not COB). These would be good for large scale wash but I think I'm right in saying that when you get near them you can cast a colored fringe shadow.
 
They do look impressive but we would require a lot of these to cover the stage and as a volunteer theater the price is beyond us. But thanks for the heads up and I hope everything goes well tomorrow.

Our stage is is about 45' wide by 50' deep and after today we decided that minimally we could cover the whole stage with 9 of the R2's. Our trim is 26' and the pool they make is downright huge and almost triple the output of our pars. We're probably going with 20 of them just so we can get more individual pools but for just a full stage wash, we wouldn't need many.

To compare, the R2 is on the right, there IS a par on in between the two pools and we had zoomed the washes to fill about the same size pool as the par. Had to take the R2 down to about 30% to match the output of the par.
IMG_0746.JPG
 
Our stage is is about 45' wide by 50' deep and after today we decided that minimally we could cover the whole stage with 9 of the R2's. Our trim is 26' and the pool they make is downright huge and almost triple the output of our pars. We're probably going with 20 of them just so we can get more individual pools but for just a full stage wash, we wouldn't need many.

To compare, the R2 is on the right, there IS a par on in between the two pools and we had zoomed the washes to fill about the same size pool as the par. Had to take the R2 down to about 30% to match the output of the par.
Wait - what's on the left?

Not surprised you had to go at 30% - those lights are bright. I've got six on a stage about 1/3 that size.
 
Wait - what's on the left?

Not surprised you had to go at 30% - those lights are bright. I've got six on a stage about 1/3 that size.
The left was an elation Fuse Z350, even brighter, had to drop to about 20% on that one to get a similar level to the pars, BUT our consensus was they'd be better for a higher trim. There was a pretty distinct round hard edge pool that didn't diffuse much, where as the R2 had a nice drop off on the edges that blended nicely. The R2 was also a warmer white (and slightly warmer in general), than the Fuse.
supposedly these are the same color. Blues were great on both though.
IMG_0750.JPG

IMG_0740.JPG
 
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Now that is the sort of try-out and demonstration with some real meaning. A very informative post. Needless to say twenty of these guys at $1,600 (or if focusing a lot more I guess) puts you around $30,000. I think you could buy our theatre for that (LOL). I'm pasting some of this stuff in my "If Ever" book. Best of luck
 
Now that is the sort of try-out and demonstration with some real meaning. A very informative post. Needless to say twenty of these guys at $1,600 (or if focusing a lot more I guess) puts you around $30,000. I think you could buy our theatre for that (LOL). I'm pasting some of this stuff in my "If Ever" book. Best of luck
We're getting them from BMI at just under $1,400, Full compass quoted them at $1,471. The Fuse on the left was right around 2k.
 
These would be good for large scale wash but I think I'm right in saying that when you get near them you can cast a colored fringe shadow.

I thought as much too, but I haven't seen too much of that in practice. Each lens holds an RGBAW LED behind it so they are about as close packed as possible. We recently used these for a show where I had them washing scenery as pipe ends and on dance trees in the wings. It was a pretty even blend even at short throw.

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Those R2 shootout photos are great and confirm what I've found as well. That's a pretty neat little fixture!
 
Regards comparing LED's to halogens, I have been using a ration of 1:5, so 100W LED is equivilant to a 500W halogen. The newer LED fixtures coming out now with Lime, are slightly brighter. This is a generalisation.
Maybe if you're talking no color, but drop a low transmission gel in a halogen and the LED quickly overpowers it. That deep saturated bright color is what makes all the difference.
 

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