Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Craig Leerman]

Got the Chauvet Rain56 today!  Started setting up for the shootout, and taking a few measurements.

Here are the LED cans.  From left to right they are the Chauvet Rain 56, The ADJ Par64LED, the Wiedamark can, and a long nose can I got from Northwest Lighting. I'll call this the Northwest can.



The Weidamark and Chauvet Rain56 use 10 mm LED bulbs, the ADJ and the Northwest use 5mm bulbs.

The Northwest can has its bulbs arraigned in circles like the Chauvet Colorsplash, but uses only 4 DMX channels. All the red rings are on 1 chan, all the blue rings on another, and the green rings on a third channel. the last chan is a dimmer and strobe control.



I didn't hook up any control units today, all I did was mount the fixtures on a pipe and base stand along with some control fixtures.



The control fixtures are from left to right:  A Par 38 can that uses standard screw in base lamps up tp 150 watts, a ETC Source Four Par with 575 watt bulb and variety of lenses, and an Altman  6" Fresnel with 500 watt bulb.

I know many folks want to compare these to a Par 56 with 300 and 500 watt bulbs.  Unfortunately, I don't have any 56s, and the only guy I know in town that has any 56s uses raylights with 600 watt DYS bulbs.

First Impressions

Each can has its own Pros and Cons.  I'll go into depth on each can later, but first impressions only here are:

Chauvet Rain LED Seems well built. It uses 10mm bulbs, but they seemed spaced really far apart. You could easily fit double the amount of bulbs in this fixture.  The double yoke stand does allow for floor mounting without a base, but its pretty flimsy. No gel frame clips.

Wiedamark Nice rugged can, with lots of LED bulbs. No gel frame. Strange bulb layout

ADJ Par Nice can, but only comes in black.  Because everyone can see this can in just about any larger music store, I bought one to compare with the others. Has gel frame clips.

Northwest can I found these from a guy on ebay, and bought the only pair he had listed. The other three cans seem to use custom built PAR housings, but this appears to be a stock off the shelf PAR 64 can, with the guts retrofitted inside. While the outer can is nice, the way some of the interior guts are attached is low end. Both cans arrived to me with the transformers having vibrated loose off their screws!  Some Lock Tite would fix that, as would a lock washer or nylon nut, instead of just a plain nut.

In addition, while it has gel clips, they appear to be metric, and I have to bend a standard P64 gel frame to fit!

I'm not that impressed with the quality of this one.

Lets plug em in!

With cold weather outside, and limited room inside, and no white wall space, I improvised.  I set up the cans on a pipe 10' away from a garage roll up door. I clipped a beige painters drop cloth over the door so I would have a smooth surface to check out the
light beams.

I am using a cheap Kodak digital camera. For pictures of the light beams, I turned off all the overhead lighting close to where I was,but left a few on at the other end of the building so I could see.

While my camera does not capture the entire quality and correct color, it does give you an idea of what the light looks like.

Here is the Rain ALL ON.  The beam measures  aprox 48" (4') in diameter. The beam quality is poor at 10', with what appear to be visible rings of color, especially a red hue around the edge.  It does look way whiter than the pic shows, but you can see what look like rings in the picture as well. Its edges are the most defined of all 4 cans




Here is the Northwest can ALL ON. The beam measures aprox 65"  (5 1/2') across. The beam quality is "splotchy" at best, and the edges are soft.



Here is the Weidamark. Its beam is about 55" (41/2') across and has slightly soft fuzzy edges. It has the least splotchy beam, but at ten feet still shows some beam hazing and discoloration on white. This has the most even color beam of all 4 fixtures.



Here is the ADJ can.  It's beam is aprox 84" (7') across. Clearly the widest beam of all 4 cans. The color in the center of the beam is good, but toward the edges it suffers and gets discolored. Its edges are very soft and non defined.



a quick meter check

I used a Greenlee light meter to quickly check the output of the 4 cans in both lux and footcandles. I measured the light at 10' in the center of the beam. I switched the meter between lux and footcandles and took seperate readings. The slight differences between the lux/fc readings are the result of my holding the meter slightly in a different spot, turning the sensor head, or my body shadow blocking some light.

The ADJ was the least bright, but was the widest, so that was to be expected. It measured 85 lux / 7.5 fc.

The chauvet Rain measured 93 lux / 9 fc.

The NW can measured 155 lux / 15 fc.

The Wiedamark can was the brightest measuring 199 lux / 18.5 fc.

In comparison, the Fresnel measured 4370 lux / 415 fc (Not sure what beam spread the fixture was set at)  And the S4 can with narrow measured 16550 lux / 1534 fc!


Tomorrow I'll do some real comparisons.

[Eric Wong!]

Awesome work!

[Lee Jacobson]

Craig,

 Good stuff! Let me say I think the "odd" spacing of the LEDs in the wiedamark can helps it to be more even in terms of light. Clearly, the rain can, with its circles, shows circles of color. The  W does not. I think the W's LED spacing is much more "distracting" when playing with them in the shop than when using them on a show. They put out "so much" light that the placement of the LEDs is not evident, at least in my limited experience with them. I do find them quite a bit less bright than a typical P64 can, but again, they win on numbers. Each P64 can has only one color, while the Ws, we've figured can do somewhere between 9 and 13 colors, all of them usefull. Keep up the review. Post pics of all the W's colors. Seems like I'll be grabbing another 22 of these in the next week or three. Just inked an event for March, literally across the street from my shop, where I'll need 12-16 of them, and there is enough $$ in the event to allow me to cover my costs, buy 22 cans, and bring home a little $$ for wifey....

Lee

[Shane Smith]

Good work batman!

[Rob Timmerman]

What white balance was the camera set to?  

Any chance of some beamshots using the same exposure settings?

If you want some more scientific comparisons, you might try contacting the LED Museum (http://www.ledmuseum.org).  I don't know if he'll have time, but he's got a spectrometer and a ProMetric photometric system.

[Tony "T" Tissot]

Thanks.

Great work and much appreciated.

Nice of me to ask for more, when you are kind enough to volunteer your time and results like this.

Any Shots looking "into the cans"?

[Dean Riley]

Do you have a web link for the Weidamark cans you were using? I found the manufacture's website but can't find that particular fixture.

[Craig Leerman]

Here are their 2 size cans on their ebay site:
 http://stores.ebay.com/Wiedamark_China-Direct_W0QQcolZ2QQdir ZQ2d1QQftidZ2QQtZkm%A0


Here they are on the Wiedamark Home Page:
 http://www.wiedamark.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&P rodID=2015
 http://www.wiedamark.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&P rodID=2039

And here is another cool LED light from them:

 http://www.wiedamark.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&P rodID=2009

[Dean Riley]

Thanks Craig, I just purchased one of the Wiedamark cans, from the eBay link you gave me, to check it out. I already purchased 4 of the ADJ P64 LED cans. Maybe prematurely??

[Craig Leerman]

Quote:

Maybe prematurely??

Not necessarily.  The ADJ can is a good unit. The Wiedamark can is a little brighter but the ADJ can has a nice large wide beam.  I could see using either on a gig.

I'll get back to work on the shootout hopefully tomorrow.  I have had family visiting here in the evenings, and I can't really do any beam comparisons during the day as the garage has a skylight!