LED color-changing fixtures are seeing rapid adoption in houses of worship for new construction or significant renovations. Their lower energy consumption, lower waste heat emissions, and the optional ability to change color as well as color temperature give the church lighting designer significant flexibility in matching the color temperature of other lighting in the room, as well as changing the color to set moods and create environments for services and special events. All the churches I’ve talked to about their AVL systems who have color-changing LED house lighting have been very enthusiastic about what they bring to the table as a tool for the LD.Elation has recently expanded its LED house lighting product line with the Fuze Pendant fixture, which provides a wide variety of control options, making this fixture a flexible retrofit option that’s versatile for new construction.
Overview
The Fuze Pendant is built around a five-color 230-watt LED light engine. In addition to the standard red, green, and blue LEDs, the Fuze Pendant also provides white and lime LEDs. (Lime helps fill in the color gamut of the fixture and increases the ability of the fixture to render more accurate colors.) At full output, the fixture output is rated at 11,000 lumens.
Colors looked great and were nicely saturated,and the addition of the white LEDs provides for nice pastel-like colors.
The unit can be controlled via DMX, using anywhere from 1-17 DMX addresses depending on the fixture profile selected. The fixture supports RDM, allowing it to be configured remotely via DMX. Alternatively, the fixture can be controlled via a 0-10v DC control voltage, which makes retrofitting the fixture into an existing 0-10v architectural control system (often used for controlling dimming fluorescent lighting ballasts) an easy option. If wireless control is desired, Elations E-Fly wireless DMX system is built-in. This can also be very useful in a retrofit situation when running control wiring isn’t practical.The fixture is a variable color temperature fixture, ranging from 2,400K through 8,500K. The color rendering index (CRI) of the fixture is rated at 90 when the fixture’s color temperature is set to 3,200K. For emergency situations, the fixture can also accept a 48V battery input voltage to keep house lighting available in the event of AC power loss.
The fixture comes standard with a 45-degree lens; 25-, 40-, and 50-degree lenses are also available.For connectors, 5-pin and terminal connection for DMX in and out are provided. For power, a locking IP65 power connector (a short Edison cable is provided) or one can provide power using internal connectors; 0-10v control cable terminal block. In addition, an emergency battery power terminal block and a safety cable eye bolt are included.For setup, an OLED display at the back of the fixture provides menu access via four push-buttons. RDM can also be used to configure the fixture.DMX profiles include a single-channel, intensity-only profile; a four-channel intensity, color temperature and virtual color wheel profile; a five-channel RGBWL profile; a 10-channel RGBWL profile (16-bits for each color); a ten-channel “standard” profile that includes 16-bit intensity, strobe, RGB, color temperature, color wheel, dimming modes, and control functions; a 17-channel mode that includes full access to all fixture features as well as 16-bit resolution to intensity and color channels; and four-channel and nine-channel HSI profiles. Clearly, there are enough options for anyone to find a balance between DMX address consumption and feature set.
Operation
For testing, I chose the 17-channel mode for the most flexibility. Connecting up the fixture was trivial, and I experimented with the RDM access first. Using my Chauvet RDM2Go, I was able to identify the fixture, set the fixture profile to be used, and the DMX address the fixture was to use. I had no problems communicating with the fixture via RDM.I hung the fixture in the auditorium of Crossroads Fellowship Church in Raleigh, NC to evaluate the beam quality (thanks to TD Larry Leake for use of the facility), placing the fixture such that the lens was 25.8 feet off the floor.
On camera, I detected no flickering using the default refresh rate of the fixture.
The field of light was smooth, fading gradually out from the center out to the edge of the beam. At full brightness and default color temperature, brightness at the center of the beam was 16.5 foot candles (fc). Moving out from center, the intensity hit the 50% point of 8.25 fc at 110 inches (9.16 feet), which comes to a beam angle of 40 degrees. Given my more informal measuring methodology, I call this a match to the 45-degree specified angle. The intensity hit the 10% point of 1.64 fc at 260 inches (21.6 feet), providing a field angle of 80 degrees.I took foot-candle readings while varying the color temperature of the fixture across several points, and was pleasantly surprised that the foot-candle output stayed in the 15.7-16.5 range. Most fixtures I’ve worked with that have variable color temperatures fall off significantly as you vary the CT, so I was impressed by this.
Brightness at 100% Blue was 3.4 fc; 100% Red was 3.15 fc; and 100% Green was 4.11 fc. (These should be taken with a grain of salt because LED fixtures can output some light frequencies that fall outside of the range that some meters can read.) Colors looked great and were nicely saturated, and the addition of the white LEDs provides for nice pastel-like colors.The fixture faded quite smoothly, yet I felt there was a very slight jump to black at the end of a two-second fade (using the default linear fade curve), but nothing that anyone would notice if they weren’t looking for it. A 30-second fade up and down was also extremely smooth.On camera, I detected no flickering using the default refresh rate of the fixture.
Should your cameras have an issue, there are control functions in the fixture that let you change the refresh rate from between 900Hz to 1,500 Hz in 10 Hz increments, and additionally offers 2,500, 4,000, 5,000, 6,000, 10,000, 15,000, 20,000, and 25,000 Hz options as well.I really found nothing to complain about in this fixture. It works well, has excellent beam characteristics with a smooth, even fall-off that should make it easy to blend with adjacent fixtures to provide an even room wash. At an MSRP of $1,500, it’s not an inexpensive option for your house lighting, but I believe it is in the same range as other high-quality house lighting options.And, a quick thanks to A.C. Lighting for providing me a Vista software license for assisting with my lighting reviews—it’s much appreciated.
