etc Luster 2, what should I know?

[GBtimex]

Dear lighting guys and gals,

My humble theatre just purchased 8 new ETC Source 4 Luster 2. Yay for us. We currently use an ETC Ion for our board and while we do have some LEDs (PL series 1 cyc lights) but this is a big step forward for us. Does anyone have an advice about these fixtures? We are using them as front of house booms but I have never programed with them before.

Any advice or guidance that you would like to share would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks lighting community,

Gbtimex

 

[theatricalmatt]

Give them all the same personality. If you don't rent much in, set their addresses (not overlapping with the LED cycs you mentioned, natutally), then write that address on the yoke with white grease pencil.

Make a showfile on the Ion for the rep plot and patch in all the LEDS with the appropriate personality. When you have a visiting designer, it's easier to move the fixtures to the channel range they want to use, and the fixtures will alreadyou have the correct personality.

While you're building the rep showfile, set up some standard effects specific to each fixture. Some of the default Ion effects will only work if the fixture is in, say, HSI mode, so make some effects that will work on both. Give them a new number range (the 800s, say.)

Take some time to make all the fixtures match. You may need to write a custom curve so both sets respond uniformly. If you assign a Lustr and a PL-Cyc the same gel [@ 5/27 for Rosco 27, a primary red] do they match? if not, it's worthwhile writing some custom color palettes so they do. Putting them in the base file means you can import or merge them when you start working on a new show.

 

[notoriousRBG]

Also, with the fancy color engine, when you mix colors yourself from scratch it's easy to end up with not very efficient/bright mixes of the colors you want. I find it's better to start mixing from gel colors (which ETC has spent a lot of time calibrating) and then make changes as necessary.

 

[SteveB]

It's also easy to configure a partial screen with either a color Direct Select page, or a custom Magic Sheet, that has 20-30 pre-built color palettes. You can then get close initialy, then a snapshot to the color picker page lets you fine tune. Saves time if you don't know the Lee/Apollo/Rosco gel numbers.

Recall as well that as every show file is new, you can readily overwrite the existing color palettes with variations and it will not affect the basic file you use.

 

[Ric]

We have ours set with 2 different configurations. HSI & RGB

HSI (C) for the majority of them. This gives them an 'always' colour (just dial up intensity & you get light), and the default on our desk sets that to be a reasonable warm white.
This approximates them as if they were incandescents, so that you could place a gel in them if required.
You can then also dial up the colour on the desk as needed. I find HSI to actually be easier to dial a good colour in quickly and is more intuitive.
...A little more toward red, a little more toward green... (H), stronger or less saturated... (S)
The C gives some colour correction, which again is easier to understand.

RGB is for the units that we have set for 'rock n roll' looks.
Colour bumps through them work much better /faster than through HSI.

I've not set any units for Direct (7 colour) mode, though they are the modes that are actually colour calibrated in Ion/Cobalt desks.

Create your own colour palettes, for your most commonly used colours.

 

[danTt]

<snip>

I've not set any units for Direct (7 colour) mode, though they are the modes that are actually colour calibrated in Ion/Cobalt desks.

Create your own colour palettes, for your most commonly used colours.

I believe it's actually the other way around. Direct mode is not calibrated. If you want the board colorpicker/gel matching to work, you need to use an HSI/RGB mode, which allows the light to be more involved in the color creation process. If you want to be able to finetune colors after that, you can enable +7 mode to "tweak" the settings--though make sure you home the +7 channels if you're changing color, or things might be unpredictable.

Also it's worth memorizing the gel company numbers.. 2 for gam, 3 for lee, 5 for apollo. It makes colormatching/working with designers that think in gel colors a lot easier. Channel 1 @ 5/68 is much faster than Channel 1, click the color tab, click the rosco button, scroll until you find 68, and click that.

 

[theatricalmatt]

A correction to the above - Apollo is 1/. Lee is 2/, GAM is 3/, and Rosco is 5.

I find different designers work differently - some work by referencing gel colors, some will ask the board op to make color choices, some really want to click on the color picker themselves. (Much easier with an RVI!)

 

[Lextech]

Color pallets are your friend if they make sense to you in programming. They also need to match across fixture types. What I do, since I rarely stray out of the Lee and Rosco range is match to a color, say Lee 106 and make it CP 106. Need an R80, CP 80. Since Rosco is mostly below 100 or above 300 and Lee mostly sits in 101 to 200 something this has worked out well for me. I have done this in all three spaces to try and stay consistent, but it gets interesting sometimes as we are using D60 Vivids and Studios, ColorSource Spots, S-Par 1s and Batten 72s, as well as VL1100 and some older RGB LEDS.

 

[danTt]

A correction to the above - Apollo is 1/. Lee is 2/, GAM is 3/, and Rosco is 5.

Unless something's changed in 2.5 (which would be dumb on ETC's part), 2 is definately gam and 3 is Lee.

 

[theatricalmatt]

Unless something's changed in 2.5 (which would be dumb on ETC's part), 2 is definately gam and 3 is Lee.

Ack. You're right on that. I corrected someone else's mistake just to make one myself.

 

[ScottT]

Unless something's changed in 2.5 (which would be dumb on ETC's part), 2 is definately gam and 3 is Lee.

Don't worry, it hasn't.

 

[Ric]

I believe it's actually the other way around. Direct mode is not calibrated. If you want the board colorpicker/gel matching to work, you need to use an HSI/RGB mode, which allows the light to be more involved in the color creation process. If you want to be able to finetune colors after that, you can enable +7 mode to "tweak" the settings--though make sure you home the +7 channels if you're changing color, or things might be unpredictable.

I didn't explain well which calibration I was referring to. Direct mode on the units themselves isn't calibrated, and there is likely to be minor colour variations between fixtures.
The other fixture colour modes are calibrated from unit to unit, so they match always.

I was referring to the direct mode profile in the (Cobalt) software. That is the only profile that's calibrated, and best matched to gels.
If you use RGB/HSI profiles in Cobalt ( I'm not sure of EOS/Ion) then they are not calibrated / matched to gels.
The profiles with calibration show a line around the colour wheel, which limits the actual range of colour choices.