Fixture Reviews

PaulRiley

Member
Hi guys,

One of the venues that I help out at is looking at upgrading their lighting rig from entirely conventionals to a LED/Conventional hybrid rig. It's a largish venue, seating around 850 people and the stage is about 35'x75' I think.

At the moment, we've come up with a wishlist of what LED fixtures we would like which are:

For moving heads:
Ayrton Ghibli
Elation Artiste Picasso

Static Profiles:
ETC Source Four Series 2 Lustr*
Robe Parfect 150 RGBW
Elation Colour 5
Martin ELP-CL*

*These seem very similar yet the ETC is more expensive. Is there a difference between them in terms of what they're able to do or what they look like in terms of colour and white production?

Fresnels:
Chauvet Professional Ovation F-915 FC
Chauvet Professional FD-205WW

I was wondering if any of you guys had any first hand experience with any of these fixtures and wouldn't mind sharing your thoughts and opinions on them. I've also tried looking up reviews online and I haven't had much luck so if you guys could point me in the right direction, that would be much appreciated.

We've arranged a demo with a local dealer but we're trying to come up with a list for when they come to visit us.

Thanks for all and any help!
 
I would suggest adding the Ovation E-910FC to the list for the static profiles. Very good unit, I use them with a company that I program shows for several times a month. They're very reliable, and the color range and punch are fantastic. I haven't used the F-915FC, but as it uses the same color system as the E-910FC, It's certainly something I'd be interested to use. I've been at a few LED static profile shootouts over the past few years, and the Chauvet really does come out a clear winner in my opinion in the color agile category. Their HD lenses are also tack sharp, very good quality.

Also for washes, if you don't need zoom & frensel lens and can deal with putting in the spread filters, check out the Chauvet P56FC & Elation SEVEN PAR Series.

For the moving heads, I've seen in person in-depth demos of both the Ghibli and the Artiste Picasso, but have not used either in an actual show situation. Both very good units. I like the color temp (I saw the 6500K model) better on the Ghibli a bit more than the Picasso, but it's a toss up. Both are great fixtures, and both have high CRI filters that you can drop when needed. I honestly think it's a toss-up between the two, the effects package on the two is almost identical. I'd choose whichever unit has better after-sales support near you and also whichever one you can source locally when you need to add more of the same unit for a particular event. I will say that I have used the Mistral-TC from Ayrton on a bunch of shows now, and I really like those. Great unit, very fast, no issues so far other than the user interface of the menu is a little wonky. But that's really not something to base a purchasing decision on.
 
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I forgot to put in the list, we've also added the GLP Impression X4 Bar 20 to the list as well.

I will check out the Ovation E-910FC and see what everyone else thinks. Would you say it is better than the ETC?

Thanks for all your help!
 
If the only color you want to make is a high-CRI warm white 90% of the time, ETC Lustr+ will do you better. If you intend to use a lot of colors, as I do, you'll prefer the Ovation 910. The Ovation 910 can still make a very good warm white, that's just a color that the ETC Lustr+ was designed to excel at. The only color I've found that the 910 reliably can't get to is a warm-ish cyan color, pretty much everything else is within its color range. I particularly love the range of blues it can make with the nice, punchy dark blue LEDs, and the lavenders you can get with just the blue + amber LEDs.

What's the rationale behind the X4 Bar 20? Unless you specifically need the tilt, I'd go for Color Force II (spendy, best money can buy) or Chauvet Ovation FC battens (less spendy) for cyc/drape wash.
 
I think you'll find the ETC Colorsource Spot more of a apples to apples with your other spot selections, as opposed to the Lustr+. The Lustr+ is a fantastic fixture if you're looking for incredibly subtle colors. I find most designers or programmers end up mixing with RGB or close to that anyway.
 
If the only color you want to make is a high-CRI warm white 90% of the time, ETC Lustr+ will do you better. If you intend to use a lot of colors, as I do, you'll prefer the Ovation 910. The Ovation 910 can still make a very good warm white, that's just a color that the ETC Lustr+ was designed to excel at. The only color I've found that the 910 reliably can't get to is a warm-ish cyan color, pretty much everything else is within its color range. I particularly love the range of blues it can make with the nice, punchy dark blue LEDs, and the lavenders you can get with just the blue + amber LEDs.

What's the rationale behind the X4 Bar 20? Unless you specifically need the tilt, I'd go for Color Force II (spendy, best money can buy) or Chauvet Ovation FC battens (less spendy) for cyc/drape wash.

The X4 Bar is in there for the tilt like you mentioned as we have a cyc but it doesn't get used in every production we stage so we are trying to kill two birds with one stone as such as the idea is to use the X4 to either light the cyc when it's in use or use it to help add light to the stage - via the tilt function.

I will definitely put forward the Ovation as opposed to the ETC as we won't be making a warm white with a high CRI 90% of the time like you said.

I think you'll find the ETC Colorsource Spot more of a apples to apples with your other spot selections, as opposed to the Lustr+. The Lustr+ is a fantastic fixture if you're looking for incredibly subtle colors. I find most designers or programmers end up mixing with RGB or close to that anyway.

I will check out the ColorSource spot and see but if it's pretty similar to our other spots, then I will recommend that we swap the Lustr out for the ColorSource.

Thanks guys for your advice.
 
Today I was pleasantly surprised helping with some ETC Colorsource Spot fixtures.

We mounted a wash on a FOH position replacing S4s. 45ish feet over stage level, using the old 10d lenses. Some incandescents were left for specials so we compared the CS to S4 newly relamped to 750W. The CS were slightly brighter even when color matched.
 
Static Profiles:
ETC Source Four Series 2 Lustr*
Robe Parfect 150 RGBW
Elation Colour 5
Martin ELP-CL*

*These seem very similar yet the ETC is more expensive. Is there a difference between them in terms of what they're able to do or what they look like in terms of colour and white production?

The Lustr 2 uses a 7 color engine. That increases more subtle colors and natural color rendering on skin tones and other non-white surfaces.

The more color points, the more metamers. So you can have more control of your color options.

Here’s a cool article about color in LEDs: https://blog.etcconnect.com/2019/04/led-faqs-part-3-chromaticity-diagrams/

The Lustr 2 is gonna be your best light for a front light.
 
Good Morning,
I'm demo-ing the Martin ELP CL and the Lustr2 this week.

I have both lights up and I was comparing color of both units to a conventional with gel.

I'm finding when choosing a color, the Martin is adding in the Lime (led) at full. It does allow it to appear brighter, however the lime is washing out any color I bring up.. I can roll out the lime and the color looks more correct, so I question if there is some setting I have wrong.

I'll be calling Martin today to see, but thought I'd pop in here to find if anyone else has had any issue like this?

I'll see if I can get pictures later.
 
It would be great to see LED charts like this that compare the LED's output at white. I think this is what we all are perceiving as ghostly or hospitaly or whatever other term people describe when venues (entertainment or coffee shop) swap new LED fixtures in.
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We just had the Artistes for a show in June and they were terrible. We hated them, just about the only thing they were good for at 26' was white light specials. The second you dropped in any kind of pattern the output dropped considerably and couldn't keep up and be seen with any other light on stage. The shutters were nice, but in general a 26 degree S4 with a 575 lamp was brighter UNLESS you had the thing zoomed all the way down to basically being a pin spot. We knew before the show we weren't going to ever rent them again.
 
@Pc2, re: Lime mixture, the fixtures have a High Output mode and a High Quality mode. If you're in high output mode, it's probably goosing those lime values up. If you flip into High Quality mode, it may behave more like what you'd expect. As @theatricalmatt pointed out, console profiles can play into this as well if you're trying to use a color picker. Usually for ETC consoles the profiles have been color calibrated by Carallon in the UK, but new fixtures don't necessarily end up in the library right away because Carallon hasn't yet tested them and built the profile, or maybe Carallon has built the profile but ETC hasn't released a new console firmware release to update the fixture library. If it's the latter, I'm pretty sure you can reach out to ETC and they will provide Carallon's profile if they have it (someone please correct me if I am mistaken).

@macsound, re: Fixture Color Data, both ETC and Martin can provide TM30 reports. Martin's are published on their website, ETC you may have to request. To get an apples to apples though, you really need to be looking at the same color under both and may have to ask both MFR's nicely if you need something specific. TM30 data is only good for whatever specific metamer color mix you're looking at and is not representative of the overall quality of a fixture in any other color or even the same color mixed as a different metamer. (i.e. what Martin publishes as their best 3200K white could be a tangibly different LED recipe than what ETC chooses as 3200K -- which is important to remember because however good the fixture mixing 3200K my not be representative of how they will perform in deep saturated colors or at 5600K, if either of those are important to you for day-to-day use.)


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Good Morning,
I did call ETC and adjusted the profile of the Martin in our console.
I then added a few traditional units with a few gels to compare color using only the color pickers swatches just to see.

Hopefully the pictures load.
The 4 beams of light in order
S4 750W , ETC Lustr2, Martin ELP CL, SeaChanger w/ S4 750W
@Pc2 I checked all four to be sure, apparently I don't have permission to view any of the photos in you album. Optimistically they're great photos but I was unable to view any of them.
Toodleoo!
Ron ( Possibly Donald's walls are blocking your photos from Canadians? ) Hebbard
 

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