Rogue Wash - R1 or R2?

Chris Pflieger

Well-Known Member
Given my budget, I have a dilemma - Four Chauvet Rogue R2 washes or six R1 washes?

The details:
The rig 22' above the rear of the stage; 36' wide, 33' deep.

We're a pretty conservative church (i.e. hazing is absolutely out!), so I just need it for color wash accents and occasional backlighting and top lighting during the odd productions.

The R1's would give me more flexibility because of having more fixtures, but I'm not sure if they'd be bright enough.


The bit of information I don't know when designing is what levels are sufficient for washes. I know I should shoot for 125 fc for the key/fill up front, but what about the rest of the stage?


FWIW, the R1's would save me $600...
 
Four R2 Washes for sure. At that height, the extra punch will be great. I've used them both quite a bit and I can tell you that the R2s are what you want in this application. The four R2 washes will give you almost twice the output of the six R1 washes. Both are fantastic products though!
 
In case it helps, here the facility:
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http://i1.wp.com/www.wallen.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/newslider2.png

The washes will be mounted on the bars at the very top of the picture.
 
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Do you have a relationship with a local dealer? The best idea would be to get a demo of both.
 
I was asking this same question 9 months ago, and ended up with the R2 washes. I've been very happy with them. The R1s aren't going to cut through the ambient light of your room enough - I think you need the R2s.

BTW - you mentioned getting two colors out of the fixture at the same time - while that's sort of true with the fixture's ability to split into different colors, that's really only useful if the fixtures' faces are visible by the audience - it's an eye candy effect. The multiple colors effectively get merged into one color in the beam, both in the air and on the illuminated surface.

That said, any LED fixture can effectively replace multiple gelled conventionals due to the ability to change color mid-show, and in the case of movers even more so by being able to be re-aimed as your program moves.
 
I was asking this same question 9 months ago, and ended up with the R2 washes. I've been very happy with them. The R1s aren't going to cut through the ambient light of your room enough - I think you need the R2s.

BTW - you mentioned getting two colors out of the fixture at the same time - while that's sort of true with the fixture's ability to split into different colors, that's really only useful if the fixtures' faces are visible by the audience - it's an eye candy effect. The multiple colors effectively get merged into one color in the beam, both in the air and on the illuminated surface.

That said, any LED fixture can effectively replace multiple gelled conventionals due to the ability to change color mid-show, and in the case of movers even more so by being able to be re-aimed as your program moves.
So unless there's haze (not a chance at this church), the multi-color isn't useful. Good enough, I don't want to have to assign 31 channels for each fixture.
 
Sometimes our church moves as slow as molasses...

I do believe we're getting six R2 units. Is there a big difference in operation between 8 bit and 16 bit mode?
 
I think all of the modes of the R2 are 16 bit, at least for the pan and tilt. That is where it's important for smooth movements. 15 and 17 ch mode are basically the same, but 17 gives you 2 channels of "eye candy" effects with the different pixel groups. Even without haze, these can be somewhat useful. I don't mind 8-bits for color channels in most situations. But I also don't do a lot of color changes that last several minutes. For Cyc lights where people want to do 10-minute long "sunrise effects" then having 16- bit color channels is more important.

The R2 wash is the best bang for your buck wash fixture out there. It would still be a good choice even at a much higher price. Very good quality, color rendering, and reliability. The wide zoom range makes them really useful in a lot of situations. They do have fans, but are pretty quiet; I know a few smaller theaters that use them with no issues. I have recommended these to a lot of people over the last couple of years, and nobody has anything but good things to report.
 
So I looked, and 22ch mode gets you 16-bit color channels. If none of your color fades will be longer than a minute or so, I don't think you will notice any difference than 8-bit mode (15 or 17ch).

As far as balancing light and levels. To me, 125fc is actually pretty hot by current standards. The general rule was around 100fc for video, but cameras have come a long way. I find 80fc(even less sometimes) to be perfectly acceptable. Depending on your setup, and the look you are going for, I like my fill to me slightly dimmer than the key, and my backlight to be maybe 10-20% less than the key light. That is dependent on the color of someone's clothing/hair, the light color, and the background color. I usually record my backlight at full intensity, then use an inhibited master to bring it down based on what it looks like on a video monitor.
 
6 Rogues went up yesterday and these lights are great!

Admittedly, I don't have much experience with... well, most stuff; but these R2's are making me happy. They're bright, the colors are nice and deep. The fan noise is pretty much covered by the white noise from the audio amps, so that's not even an issue.
 

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