Disappointed in S4 EDLT

I took a picture of a gobo shot thru an Ovation tube at LDI. It's the Chauvet Logo on the left. (Shot with a Pixel 2)

IMG_20171117_134935.jpg
 
We've got a bunch of the Ovation tubes and they're fantastic.
 
Just to clarify any confusion on what is seen in Dave's photo. The "Stone Bed" gobo is in a 19deg from our new Ovation E-930VW, the Chauvet Professional Logo is from a 26deg in our Ovation E-260WW, and the "bubbles" are from a 36deg in the Ovation E-910FC. Below is a brighter photo of the bubbles (in white so they are more easily seen). That is from 5 overlapping fixtures across 30ft with an ~18ft throw. I designed the rig, so, if there are any questions I can clarify, I'm happy to do so.
1.jpg
 
I wish I had the luxury of working at throw distances where 19° fixtures work (other than vibration issues amplified over a large throw distance), but my world is portable production where my front lighting is only a couple feet off the front of the stage, so I'm in 36° land, and would love to even be at 50° if the results are good enough.

It's not optically challenging to do a flat focal plane at wider angles, it just costs a little more for another element or two. Hopefully the Ovation is good enough; otherwise I have to use up movers for static elements.

Ford, you've got my email address. Looking forward to connecting with you.

Thanks!
 
Hello TJ,
Sorry for the delay in response. As was noted above, I was at LDI last week.

I am sorry that you are not pleased with the performance of your 36 degree EDLT lens tube. As my coworker, David, mentioned earlier, while the EDLT lens tubes are much better than a standard lens tube, there can still be some imperfections in the imaging in certain circumstances that can really only be remedied with a more complex, and expensive, optical system. And, as was also noted in some of the comments, the 36 degree will suffer from this more than the narrower lenses.

I see that you intend to test the EDLT against other solutions. I am glad you are planning this as we welcome the comparison and I am very eager to see your results. Please let me know what you find.

If you have any more questions that I can answer or you would like to discuss this offline, please let me know.

Jim Uphoff
ETC
 
Hello TJ,
Sorry for the delay in response. As was noted above, I was at LDI last week.

I am sorry that you are not pleased with the performance of your 36 degree EDLT lens tube. As my coworker, David, mentioned earlier, while the EDLT lens tubes are much better than a standard lens tube, there can still be some imperfections in the imaging in certain circumstances that can really only be remedied with a more complex, and expensive, optical system. And, as was also noted in some of the comments, the 36 degree will suffer from this more than the narrower lenses.

I see that you intend to test the EDLT against other solutions. I am glad you are planning this as we welcome the comparison and I am very eager to see your results. Please let me know what you find.

If you have any more questions that I can answer or you would like to discuss this offline, please let me know.

Jim Uphoff
ETC
Thanks for reaching out, Jim.

My incredulity comes from the fact that others are apparently fine with extremely poor gobo projection. In a field where subtlety and nuance are obsessed over, unfocusable gobos being acceptable seems incongruous. I'm not a theater guy; my world is rock n' roll and corporate stuff, so apparently my requirements are different, and/or nobody else uses gobos.

For what it's worth, I would gladly pay at least 50% more for an "EDLT v2" that had a flat focal plane at wider beam angles.
 
Thanks for reaching out, Jim.

My incredulity comes from the fact that others are apparently fine with extremely poor gobo projection. In a field where subtlety and nuance are obsessed over, unfocusable gobos being acceptable seems incongruous. I'm not a theater guy; my world is rock n' roll and corporate stuff, so apparently my requirements are different, and/or nobody else uses gobos.

For what it's worth, I would gladly pay at least 50% more for an "EDLT v2" that had a flat focal plane at wider beam angles.

Another thing you could try would be to change the size of the pattern on the gobo itself. The smaller the pattern (meaning the more distance from the edge of the glass) the cleaner the imaging will be on the wall.

Of course, this will also change the size of the image on the wall so you would have to take that into account.


Jim
 
Another thing you could try would be to change the size of the pattern on the gobo itself. The smaller the pattern (meaning the more distance from the edge of the glass) the cleaner the imaging will be on the wall.

Of course, this will also change the size of the image on the wall so you would have to take that into account.


Jim
I understand, however what I'm trying to do is project a large gobo image on a wall/curtain. Making it smaller via a narrower lens tube or a smaller gobo image defeats the purpose unless I can significantly increase my throw distance, which is almost never possible.
 
So, did @Ford manage to get you a Chauvet lens to test? Nosey old geezers like me want to know.
 
Funny you should bring this up, as we just did the shootout last night. Tony from the rep firm brought over the Ovation tube as well as an ED-190WW (Pretty sure this was the model) LED body. I still need to process my camera pictures, but I do indeed have results.

Stay tuned!!
 
OK, here was the test setup - I brought two ETC S4 full-size fixtures, both lamped with 575w 300Hr bulbs. I have 4 revs of ETC lens tubes - no label, "Rev G", "Rev J", and EDLT. Tony from the Chauvet rep firm provided the Ovation lens tube as well as an Ovation ED-190WW LED leko body. Note that I'm fairly confident this was the model, but I forgot to record it, so if I got that wrong, I apologize. All lens tubes are 36˚. Unless otherwise noted, all tests were done at 100% brightness.

The gobos we used are mirror-imaged scenic gobos, B-sized glass in the iris slot of the fixtures. Other than being mirror images of each other, the gobos are identical. All focusing was done to maximize sharpness at the center of the image. I'm aware that I could focus mid-field and minimize the distortion at the edges, but that wasn't the test.

Photos were taken with my Canon 5DS camera set to manual exposure and manual focus. Images were in some cases cropped, but no other processing was done to them. Exposure was not changed once initially set at the beginning of the test.

I conducted the test to my own satisfaction. I'm sure there is nitpicking that can be done, but I was in no way compensated for this test, so no whining about my methods.

We ran several tests - the ETC tubes against each other, the EDLT against an Ovation tube in a S4 body, and the EDLT against the Ovation LED with Ovation tube.

Here are the ETC tubes compared against each other:
ETC compare-sm.jpg

Here is the newest non-EDLT tube (Rev J) vs the EDLT tube
J vs EDLT-sm.jpg

Here is the EDLT vs the Ovation tube in a S4 body
EDLT vs Ovation-sm.jpg

Here is the EDLT vs the Ovation LED leko and tube. Note the color temperature differences.
EDLT vs Ovation LED-sm.jpg

And for fun, here is a dimming comparison between the Source Four and the Ovation LED. Note the color temperature differences.
brightness-sm.jpg

My own conclusion is that the EDLT and Ovation tubes are close enough in performance to each other as to be a wash. Both the EDLT and Ovation tubes have significantly better contrast than the non-EDLT tubes, but they have the same focal plane curvature issues, which solving would require a more complicated lens design with more elements. Focal plane curvature is more pronounced at wide beam angles, but as usually the final size of the projected gobo is the most important factor, substituting a narrower lens tube is not a solution.

I would love for someone to make a real gobo-projection lens tube. Maybe I'm the only one that cares about this, and I can point to evidence of crap gobo optics being used even at high-profile events so apparently customers are OK with out of focus gobos, but I'm not thrilled. In the absence of some other product I don't know about, I'm going to have to put critical gobos in my movers, which have substantially better optics than lekos.

Thanks to Chauvet for arranging the demo.
 
One additional point of interest - the Source Four iris slot focal plane is fairly far away from a hard-edge focus of the fixture with no gobo - in other words, dropping in a gobo requires significant refocusing from a hard-edged open beam. In contrast, the Ovation leko iris slot required almost no focus tweaking from hard-edge focus. I have no idea if this is even remotely relevant, but it was a difference I noticed.
 
Thanks for taking the time to put together a nice set of results. Very informative.

As a side-note curiosity, when you focus the fixture to a hard edge, are you doing it to the edge of the circle or to the edge of a shutter? In my experience, sharp to shutter produces a better beam with a few more lumens than eyeballing the edge of the ellipse, and it offers a consistent point of reference across all lens tube flavors which is useful when using frost.
The shutters are also relatively close to the accessory slot in a S4 so you shouldn't have to travel too far to get that sharp once you're sharp to shutter. I'm not sure how the gate's focal point relates to using the lens tube as the focal point in terms of distance between the two.
 
Thanks for taking the time to put together a nice set of results. Very informative.

As a side-note curiosity, when you focus the fixture to a hard edge, are you doing it to the edge of the circle or to the edge of a shutter? In my experience, sharp to shutter produces a better beam with a few more lumens than eyeballing the edge of the ellipse, and it offers a consistent point of reference across all lens tube flavors which is useful when using frost.
The shutters are also relatively close to the accessory slot in a S4 so you shouldn't have to travel too far to get that sharp once you're sharp to shutter. I'm not sure how the gate's focal point relates to using the lens tube as the focal point in terms of distance between the two.
It depends on what I want the fixture to do - if I want a hard-edged circle, shutters don't help me and I need to focus to the open beam. If some other shape, then certainly focusing to the shutters makes sense.

As I noted, I have no idea the practical value of my observation; it was just something I noticed.
 
Yet another note - the Ovation tube looks arguably worse in the Ovation fixture than in the Source Four body - the gobo has less contrast when lit by the LED engine compared to the HPL lamp. I didn't take the time to look at the LED light source in the Ovation body, but I wonder if the relatively larger size of the LED array in the Ovation fixture compared to the small HPL filament affects this.
 
Hi TJ,
I wish the rep had brought a E160 or E260 (or, for Color an E910), I think you’d have been happier with the performance of the LED.
THE ED190 is not as well optimized.

The good news is that we’re working on an upgrade to the ED190 that should make you pretty happy...
The bad news is that the rep brought you the oldest possible fixture to test this with.
Harrumph.

Overall though, it sounds like you’re looking for a moving head, instead of a leko.

Just tell me if you want anything else to shoot-out.
 
Hi TJ,
I wish the rep had brought a E160 or E260 (or, for Color an E910), I think you’d have been happier with the performance of the LED.
THE ED190 is not as well optimized.

The good news is that we’re working on an upgrade to the ED190 that should make you pretty happy...
The bad news is that the rep brought you the oldest possible fixture to test this with.
Harrumph.

Overall though, it sounds like you’re looking for a moving head, instead of a leko.

Just tell me if you want anything else to shoot-out.
Hey Ford, I'm actually looking for a fixed gobo projection setup so I don't have to tie up a mover to do static looks. The top of my wishlist is a leko lens tube with a flat focal plane. Evaluating the Ovation lens tube was the main objective; the LED engine was just a bonus.

The other wishlist item I have is a white PAR wash replacement that is of reasonable cost. I tend to do a white PAR wash because of easy blending and because you only get so much mileage out of turning people colors. :) The ETC Source Four PAR (my current solution) is great because of its oval-shaped beam and easy lens changes as well as its high output. I know you have some white PARs, but they're basically the same price as the Rogue R2 wash, which is kind of silly, and using a whole row of Rogues for basic stage wash is equally silly, however I guess it speaks to the great value of the Rogues. ETC makes the SourceForward PAR which is pretty much my ideal fixture other than physical size and cost.

If I could wave my magic wand, a white-only (or I suppose a multi-colored fixture with enough output to compete with a white-only fixture) flat PAR-shaped fixture (I love the form factor of the SlimPAR Pros I've been using forever) with interchangeable holographic lenses that puts out 4000-5000 lumens of warm-white light for $300-$400/fixture would be really awesome.

Thanks for your help in sending out the tube to take a look at.

TJ
 
For a simple gobo pattern like the one you were testing with, I would be interested to see how a standard metal gobo does. I would think that not introducing an extra piece of glass in the optical chain may improve quality.
 

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