My 2016 visit to LightFair International in San Diego revealed the most startling discovery: Among the hundreds of lighting vendors on the convention floor, I did not see one tungsten halogen, discharge, or fluorescent lamp. Everything was LED. Yes, LightFair does cater to the architectural side of lighting design, but almost the same was true at LDI last fall. LEDs have now reached a level of technological development where they are nearly as bright as the past generations of incandescent and discharge lamps. But it's not only lumens per watt that we are concerned with, LEDs are also now routinely delivering color rendering index (CRI) above 90, making their use not only applicable to architectural and commercial applications, but also to live worship applications.
In the worship market, most churches have either already—or will soon—join the movement to retrofit or change out their old inventories of incandescent stage lighting fixtures to the power-saving and high lamp life benefits of LEDs. Electronic Theatre Controls (ETC) was a pioneer with its Source Four LED. Other lighting manufacturers quickly followed, developing their own LED stage lighting fixtures, one being Chauvet.
We have seen several generations of Chauvet LED fixtures. Their new Ovation model line of LEDs includes several useful lighting fixtures that could replace most of a church's older and less efficient incandescent stage lighting fixtures. We heard nothing but positive reviews of Chauvet's new Ovation line, and were very happy that they sent us two Ovation E-910FC LED Lekos to test in our light lab and theaters at California State University Long Beach.
Reviewing Ovation
The Ovation E-910FC is a color mixing profile spotlight fixture. Although similar in appearance to many other LED lekos, it sports some very important and clever features that are unique among its competitors.
The Ovation E-910FC is a product of several important discoveries we learned about stage lighting with LEDs. The Ovation E-910FC uses 91 red, green, blue, amber, and lime LEDs to produce almost any color you would want to project. The lime colored LEDs add so much flexibility to the color variety of the fixture. Lime fits perfectly into the wavelengths where the human eye sees the best, making the fixture seem brighter to the audience. Lime also hits a sweet spot for color mixing and helps the overall CRI ratings of the fixture, reaching over 90 for most colors.
The mix of LEDs adds the possibility of creating a white light that renders flesh tones in a very pleasing, and almost tungsten-like appearance. In fact, the Ovation E-910FC can replicate “white” color temperatures from 2,800-6,500 kelvin through its “Virtual Color Temperature” feature. This makes it extremely easy to dial in a relative white color temperature for almost any live or broadcast application.
The real winners of this price war will be the houses of worship that find it worthwhile to “go green” and, at the same time, add to the color flexibility of their stage lighting systems.
David Martin Jacques
Professional Lighting Designer.
When it comes to video, the Ovation E-910FC also has adjustable pulse width modulation to get rid of any possible camera flicker that can occur with some LED fixtures. This is crucial for houses of worship that integrate video into their services. We tested this feature and found the Ovation E-910FC flicker-free on several cameras.
All-important color
The color range was quite impressive. We were able to produce just about every color we wanted. As part of our fixture testing, we utilized both of our review fixtures on a production of “Bird in the Hand.” This production demanded a wide range of colors throughout the play. The designer was easily able to create subtle tints as well as intense deep, saturated colors. One of the advantages of LED is that the technology does not use subtractive color mixing (where wavelengths of light are absorbed by conventional color gel, making the resulting color less intense). Through additive color mixing the blues are almost as bright as other, lighter colors.
In addition, the Ovation E-910FC has a Virtual Color wheel. This feature matches 31 popular Rosco colors. You can also tweak each color to your specifications, as well as program your own colors and create your own color palettes.
The Ovation E-910FC has an impressive OLED control panel screen located at the rear of the fixture. This screen allows you to control the numerous features of this fixture. Along with the basic controls of DMX address, modes providing full 16-bit dimming (per color and master), selectable PWM, RDM and on-board dimming curve selection. You can also access the Virtual Color Wheel and the color temperature presets, control channel presets including 3-, 5-, 7-, 10-, 12-, 13-, and 15-channel control. You can dim individual colored LEDs as well as choose a master dimming control. Along with the LED panel, the rear of the fixture has 3- and 5-pin DMX connectors, and PowerCon connectors that allow you to daisy chain up to six Ovation fixtures on 2A circuit.
The Ovation E-910FC has a 16-bit dimmer with a silky smooth dimming curve. Since dimming curves have been the weak link of LEDs in the past, CPM requires reviewers thoroughly test LEDs' dimming capabilities. The Ovation E-910FC displayed no flicker at low levels, no drop off or snap on, or any of the weird non-linear dimming typical of early LED fixtures.
Final impressions
The fixture's build quality is as good as any fixture on the market. It is solid with super heavy-duty control handles, screws, and levers. The accessory slot has convenient thumbscrews so that no tools are necessary to open it. Electricians on top of 16-foot ladders appreciate this. The shutters were smooth and never jammed. The lens barrels slid effortlessly, and the locking mechanisms were easy to adjust and stayed secure. All of this demonstrated a very high level of engineering design and quality control. Kudos to Chauvet for this high-quality product.
The Ovation “HD” lenses are somewhat revolutionary. Finally a manufacturer makes it easy to identify the different optical lens barrels. Along with lens angle numbers clearly printed on the color frame ear, they are also color-coded. In addition, each lens type has a unique graphic “slash” that match the old symbol keys used in light plot drafting standards. The 19-degree has a green background with an “X,” the 26-degree has a red background with a diagonal slash, and the 50-degree has a blue background with a “V” on it. Clever, and very welcome when searching for a specific fixture among many different lens tubes. The lenses are also compatible with existing industry standard lenses. So if you already have an inventory of lens tubes, chances are that the Ovation E-910FC can use it.
We found that the optics of the lenses deliver beautiful flat fields, even with gobos. There is no chromatic aberration or strange LED shadows in the field. We also discovered that the internal LED color mixing was smooth, with no optical distortions. The lenses come in various beam angles, including 19-, 26-, 36-, and 50-degree optics, along with 15-30 and 25-50 zooms.
Physically, the Ovation E-910FC weighs 15.4 pounds (without the lens). Its size and weight are almost identical to many other LED lekos on the market. Like most LED fixtures, the real beauty is in the power savings. The Ovation E-910FC only uses 240 watts at 120V. This, along with its 50,000-hour lamp life, makes the Ovation E-910FC one of the “greener” fixtures in the industry.
Overall, the Chauvet Ovation E-910FC is as good as any LED leko on the market. This, no doubt, will lead to consumer-friendly price wars among this very popular segment of LED fixtures. The real winners of this price war will be the houses of worship that find it worthwhile to “go green,” and at the same time add to the color flexibility of their stage lighting systems. Yes, the initial expense may seem high, but the advantages of flexible color mixing along with the low maintenance of LED technology make the Chauvet Ovation E-910FC a real winner.
bluish tint to it. The fixture looked fine on video; no flickering was observed at any of the shutter speeds I tested.
The fixture has five dimming speeds that are selectable via the control menu. Speed 0 is no fade time at all; speed 4 is the slowest dimming curve. At even speed 1, the light “dimmed” to zero too slowly to match my tungsten fixture in a quick blackout cue; leaving it at 0 would make sense for a theatrical environment. But it won't match a tungsten dimming curve exactly.
The fixture does include a gobo frame and can have gobos inserted into it just like a tungsten ellipsoidal fixture. However, it appears to be a non-standard size. My Source Four Jr gobos were too large to be inserted, so I was unable to test this aspect of the fixture.
