robe 600 led wash

[spantax]

Hi Joe, hope you are doing well?

 

 

It's interesting what you say about keeping some generics in there for skin tones and because it looks better on camera. This was actually a big concern for the photographer for the TPi Awards as well, as this was a pure LED rig with no generics or discharge fixtures (except for two follow spots used only to pick up the winners on their way to the stage)

 

The fact of the matter is that LED at this moment is at a level where you can make it look great both for a live audience and on camera without having to compromise. We had a total of 108 Robe LED Wash 300, 32 LED Wash 600, 19 LED Wash 1200 and 52 of the new DLX Spot's, and if you didn't know it was an all LED rig you would never have been able to tell.

 

Obviously, not all LED fixtures are able to do this properly, but the Robe's are definitely able to do it with very little tweaking as Robe take great care in getting the binning right and in calibrating each individual LED.

 

 

 

 

Spantax

[Joe Bleasdale]

Hey!

 

Great to hear Robe are pushing that, have any actually been used in TV studios in place of generics? I have seen very few generics replaced with LED in TV in regards to key light or anything "for the face". Plenty for set, effects, audience light but very few for face work as I say.

 

Sky Sports News which runs 18 hours a day runs with a boat load of LED obviously because it's an office, generics wernt really do able. I think even the key lights for each presenter have been switched to LED S4s now, but for te first few weeks they were normal S4s. Sky spent ages testing lamps on camera and only ended up with a few candidate and only one company could deliver in time and to budget.

 

Would be interested to see what else these lights get used on!

 

Thanks.

 

Ps you got mail!

[rossmck]

I have seen very few generics replaced with LED in TV in regards to key light or anything "for the face". Plenty for set, effects, audience light but very few for face work as I say.

 

Not Robe but http://goo.gl/25qTQ (youtube link, used goo.gl to stop it embedding it!) is an interesting video about ITV Daybreak's use of ETC Selador fixtures (these are used for everything, including key light)

 

Sky Sports News which runs 18 hours a day runs with a boat load of LED obviously because it's an office, generics wernt really do able. I think even the key lights for each presenter have been switched to LED S4s now, but for te first few weeks they were normal S4s. Sky spent ages testing lamps on camera and only ended up with a few candidate and only one company could deliver in time and to budget.

 

Interesting - which company and where did you get this information? (press release?)

 

The only image I can find of the Sky Sports News studio is this one http://corporate.sky...sky_sports_news which doesn't show much LED kit although I know they have at least a few Gekko Kezia's in use around Sky in the UK

 

Also, as far as I know - no-one is using LED Source 4s yet, doubt they'd be the best choice for key light in a TV studio anyway..

[Joe Bleasdale]

Forgot about day break. Some controversy amongst different TV LDs over that show. Some good opinions some bad. Personally I think it was done very well.

 

Re the info on sky, being there when the new studio was built and doing regular work there has it's perks. Maybe the S4s were just there for the first few weeks, I havnt been back in SSN for ages. A good few LED Gekkos in it though. No idea who makes them etc. I'm probably going crazy about the LED S4s!!

 

Thanks.

 

That picture is of the new studio. And confirmed my mistake, you can just see some of the S4s on the right and they are tungsten. Looks like that photo may have been taken just before going live last year.

 

What you cant see is the line of LED Gekkos on the truss directly above whoever took that picture!

 

One thing for certain, there are no Robe fixtures there!

 

Thanks.

[inthe128]

6 came into my venue last night for a gig, they were bright, fast, great colours and provided dynamic effects. Personally, the "rings" tricks and effects do nothing for me and if it's eye candy your looking for I prefer the Mac Aura, it's smaller and not as bright but serves a different purpose. Wash wise though the 600 is great. Don't know whether it could replace a generic rig though. Even when I use a very LED heavy rig, I still keep generics in there as they look better for skin tones and any camera work.

 

Thanks.

 

 

Any flicker at all with cameras Joe? Not really looked into that side as we are not due a DVD shoot this year. The current front is TW1,s which I am happy with, but feel the Robe 600's have a lot more to offer and many more advantages, regarding rigging, transport etc.

 

The rings I don't care about, not to say I wouldn't go through what they can do, but my feeling is that its not suited to this band, so not an issue. The Auras I have yet to see, I am back in Denmark next week and will go and have a look at them, but again not sure of their use for me in this project. Certainly on this tour eye candy is not the required look, more a classic rock vibe and really its just about looks with lots of timing involved, so a unit that gives lots of great colour is required for wash duties, my feeling remains the Robe fits the bill with some bells on.

 

You raise a good point Joe about how they may look on camera as front light, I have a meeting with a knowledgable guy next week and thats my first question to him, but as I say thats not going to be a problem this year.

 

Many thanks for the ongoing opinions.

 

 

[Joe Bleasdale]

Very much doubt there was any flicker on the camera, though I wasn't shooting so I don't know. But pro manufacturers solved the flicker issues long ago in their professional product lines. It's only the cheap products that really have flicker problems. As for what it's like in an actual TV studio with professional broadcast HD camera - I don't know. Even if it looks ok, the vision operator may see dodgy looks on his vectorscope, waveform monitors etc and if he's not happy it's a no no. I think the 600s have been used in TV studios, in fact I'm almost certain they have. But most likely not as key lights of any kind.

 

Just about every lighting manufacturer will say "we tested with professional cameras and it was great" which I believe. BUT until is ok'd by the cameras we use, and our vision operators, TV LDs etc I won't be completely sure - with any light, not just what Robe are offering. I don't know what the lumen output of it is, but maybe if it ticks the boxes camera wise, you could do a direct Shootout with your current rig and see if it's a viable replacement.

 

Thanks.

[paulears]

The one thing I really can't understand is the rush to swap out perfectly serviceable rigs with LEDs that simply replicate what went before. It can't be cost, because the older kit is often quite modern and not written off, accounts wise, plus the amazing upswing in LED costs for comparative brightness - and no doubt a very SHORT working life as the product is in rapid evolution, making the typical lifespan we have come to expect from a tungsten fixture look daft.

 

I can see the HVAC savings, but the expensive re-equip cost is out of proportion. For TV, Arri have their new Fresnels, with a swappable light engine - which although a great feature, does suggest that the lifespan of this element isn't going to be thousands of hours, but simply the time until a newer, brighter version is announced, when to make all kit equal, means swap outs of the key feature throughout the install life. Somehow this just seems like a few hundred pounds for the fixture, and a few thousand for a lamp?

 

Even when kit is hired - the hire fees for the latest, cleverest and brightest kit is way, way above what people could consider for more modest events. These Robes are half as much again to hire as a similar discharge lambed fixture. Have hire budgets gone up by 50% for the average production? Prestige top end maybe - but the post above about 6 coming into a venue is perhaps more the norm. Smaller scale touring must find it difficult to find the extra, without cutting it somewhere else.

 

I'm sure these are simply excellent, reliable, bright and useful tools - but they're more expensive than what went before. If you want to wash a stage with colour, then you could get the same level and effect from discharge sources for a lot less. What would you lose? The ability to look at nice patterns on the front, a bit of weight and a bit of heat. For 6 of these, you could have hired 10 older ones. For me, I suspect I could do more things with the old ones. Maybe I have my head in the sand, but I really can't justify the extra cost at the moment - I tend to use kit to illuminate, not look at?

Old fashioned views? Probably!

[Judge]

I have used a set of these twice now, on a circus stage where I had to light a large area that included air space, and a dance show with a very full stage. I really like them as bright and punchy heads. I was impressed with the amount of light and the quality of the colours. I am pretty much over the super saturated LED colours so am more interested in accurate pastels, and these seem to pull that off surprisingly well. I have yet to use them in any TV or video productions and would be interested to see how the whites read on screen, and what modern video cameras make of them. This is one area where I am a bit mehh about them and will continue to use a tungsten facelight.

 

Once you start to use them in smoke you see what a rowdy beam they have compared to fresnels, so this may be an issue. They cannot be controlled as well.

I have not used the concentric rings effect. On the shows I did I had little enough time to program as it was without spending ages toying with extra in-lamp eye candy. I do not really like the effect of looking into LED fixtures anyway - its just a bit too buzzy and distracting. This is why I tend to use them as side light and pipe ends rather than back light.

Having said all that, along with the Martin 101 these are the most convincing moving head LED units I have come across so far. The thing is that they still announce themselves "I AM AN LED FIXTURE!" and all this has to stop so we can get to the next stage. A stage which I-Pix have already arrived at I feel because you look at one of their units in the air and just think --"Thats a lighting fixture" rather than "thats an LED lighting fixture"