Chauvet COLORado

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone had any experience with the Chauvet COLORado 1 tour RGBW. I'm particularly interested in photometrics at close ranges and color quality. I found the spec sheet, but was a little confused by the photometrics. The spec sheet says: installed optics 15deg, beam 13deg, field 27deg. What does the installed optics refer to? Any advice/info would be greatly appreciated!

- Musicman56
 
... The spec sheet says: installed optics 15deg, beam 13deg, field 27deg. What does the installed optics refer to? ...
In other words, without any external lens es or diffuser s on it, what they call a 15° produces a beam angle of 13° and a field angle of 27°.

To find the pool sizes at any given distance, apply the formula:
Pool diameter = distance * (2 * tan (beam (or field) angle in degrees / 2))
,
to find the multiplication factors (MF) of 0.23 (beam, 1/2 intensity of center) and 0.48 (field, 1/10 intensity of center). So 10' directly above, perpendicular to the floor, will yield a pool of not quite 5' in diameter. Being a soft-edged pool, it will be difficult if not impossible to measure without a good illuminance meter as well as a tape measure.

... Not to defend ETC, but:
1. All (almost all?) manufacturers lie about their luminaire's photometric performance. ETC provides more data/information than any other manufacturer, and thus may be the most culpable, and easily-challenged.

2. Determining 1/10 and 1/2 cut-off angle is particularly more imprecise with soft-edged wash fixtures than with ERS s.

3. In hindsight, just as one plans to change bottles in a PAR64, or lenses in a Source Four PAR, I'd factor the cost of various lenses into the purchase price of any LED unit (non-zoom).

.
 
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For close range you may want to look at the Colorado 1 TriTour, or one of the other newer fixtures that has the single emitter for all of the colors. Elation has a quad unit that is just coming out (ELAR Par I believe), I don't remember them all for Chuavet.

Anyway, I have the Colorado 1 TriTour which is an RGB fixture with the RGB all in one cell. They have the smoothest color field that I personally have seen from a color mixing LED with very little chromatic distortion in the shadows (rainbowing). They make a very nice white that is fairly flat and they have good color mixing over all.
 
For what it's worth, of the all of the "cheap" sub-$1000 LEDs I've played with, I think the COLORado is my favorite in terms of general features. There are brighter, and some with better color, and some with better fades, but these units seem to be a decent mix of qualities. You get what you pay for though, so don't expect high end performance.

I'd recommend finding a dealer with a showroom, and try a few out. The photometrics for these can be misleading. After trying several units and working with touring groups coming through with their own, it's much easier if you can see the light and the visual effects.
 
I have 24 COL 1 tours (RGBW) and 12 COL 2 Tours.

In my experience, I get about the same relative (ie, what I can see in the haze) beam out of the 15 deg lens as a NSP 1k can. The 30 deg is just a straight wash, about the same as a WFL.

I keep my 1's on the 15 deg lens and the 2's on the 30 for washes. The 1's lack punch on a large stage with the wider lens, but will still give a decent glow. The 2's with a narrow lens will punch through just about anything!

You will get some initial poor colour combining on uplighting at very close distances. Careful on things like cycs and scrims. As somebody else mentioned, the Tri is better for that. Let me know if you have any other questions: I love these lights!
 
Here, how about some photos? The first is a skating show. There is haze (a bit), but here I had every single light on the wide lens. The idea was the wash the ice. All 36 lights in the air.

The second is a crappy picture from a festival I did this year. All the 1's are narrow, the 2's are wide. There are 6 2's on the upstage truss, everything else is a 1.

The third is from a show for a local party band. All 1's on the US truss, narrow lens.

http://www.kg-dj.com/images/Lighting/skating.jpg
http://www.kg-dj.com/images/Lighting/festival.jpg
http://www.kg-dj.com/images/Lighting/timebend1.jpg
 

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