In 2017, our spies notified us of the qualitative and commercial improvements being implemented by Elation. We soon discovered the potential of their products, a good reason to give them our full attention.
Our first encounter up-close with Elation, we tested their DaVinci LED Spot, which, together with Picasso, spearheads a range known as “Artiste” – effective, solid, cost-effective and built well enough to shake up the European market. Behind the choice of these pictographic designations, we quickly understood that there was a massive project to establish a beachhead on the Old Continent.
Make no mistake, Elation – the professional branch of the American DJ group – has just celebrated its 25th anniversary and boasts a formidable strike force, with 400 employees located all over the world. Their products have been very popular in many countries.
For this second incursion into Elation, what we are attempting to capture is a normal-looking and yet very special fixture: an IP65-rated, motorized Spot/Beam/Wash hybrid, with a lamp source. This is a great idea for any rental company concerned about seeing their stock take on the weather. Now let’s see if the Proteus Hybrid proves to be a serious candidate.
Reconnaissance mission
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100 Proteus Hybrids in sneak preview perched on the Burj Khalifa in Dubai – the highest building in the world – facing winds of 140 km/h. 500 in the stock of one of the largest German lighting rental companies. Then the lighting designers of the Beyoncé+Jay-Z Tour decided to conquer the world, armed with 144 Proteus Hybrids. This is no longer a scouting mission, it’s the real invasion that is being staged now.
The back of the base looks bullet proof. This fixture is solid, really very solid.
We’ve managed to corner a specimen of this IP65 hybrid Beam/Spot/Wash fixture, with its Philips MSD 21R 470 W, 8000 K discharge lamp.
The specifications of this Philips lamp are already enough to burn your retinas. Judge for yourself:
Weight: 110 grams. Luminous efficiency: 49 lm/W. Average flux: 23,000 lm. CRI: 80.
Before we can open fire, we will have to draw Proteus out of its encampment. The single-unit flight case opens from the top and the side, and has two large accessory compartments. Looking at the bottom of the base of the fixture, we find four Omega brackets positioned on their steel plates, separated by a distance of 175 mm between centers. A recess in the body accommodates the safety cable. It takes muscle to pull it out by the two large handles, and serious effort to turn it over.
Once we get it settled on its broad feet, we will give you more details. Weighing in at 38 kg (the price you pay for waterproofing), with a super-dense head sitting on an almost modest base, it has an aluminum and plastic shell with ridges all over it. Yet, with its ballistic lines and all its parts held together by a battalion of silver Torx screws, it looks indestructible.
On its base, a touch screen is accompanied by tactile keys. On the opposite side, five connectors – one PowerCon TrueOne, two RJ45 EtherCon, two XLR5 DMX – are securely attached and protected by latex caps. Removing and re-applying these caps is not easy, but training can help. Cleverly designed, the fuse is also protected from the elements thanks to its waterproof cocoon. Even more subtle, a wireless DMX antenna is nestled behind the right-side handle.
The rubber caps block all routes to the brain of Proteus, rendering the fixture virtually watertight.
The wireless DMX antenna concealed in the handle.
Assault course
After this brief overview, let’s take it up a notch. The body of the fixture is locked in both pan and tilt by two strong latches. We pop these open so that we can completely manipulate this beast. The 150 mm lens stares at us coldly, like the muzzle of a cannon ready to fire.
Here, we’ve cleared the breech to access the electronics.
The ridges on its shell are actually breathing gills, which reveal another internal chassis. To find out for sure, we decided to use the most effective tool: a Torx H3 screwdriver.
Proteus’ armor consists of two central plates, the rear base and the front bracket, all fitted with watertight seals.
We remove the six screws from each of the two ventral sections. The piece of cast aluminum is machined from one solid block. An inner safety sling securely attaches it to the body of the fixture.
The magazine of eight interchangeable rotating gobos, flanked by fourteen static gobos and fourteen color filters. Behind these, there is the animation wheel.
While the components are stuffed in with a shoehorn, everything is perfectly located and intelligently assembled. To access the gobos, which are the only elements besides the lamp that need to be changed from time to time, the process is easier than we expected.
Two connectors must be disconnected, then the two screws on the sides. Then you can simply slide out the focal module to remove the gobo wheel.
At the front end of the module, a honeycomb lens is used to eliminate any irregularities in the beam.
The CMY module is more complicated to remove. Just to be on the safe side, we’re going to leave it where it is. There is just enough space to make out the simple flags on tracks with belt drives. There is no way to get a good look at it, so we precede to the next step of opening the arms by removing twelve Torx screws.
Two big surprises await us here. All of the wiring is routed through a waterproof conduit worthy of a civil engineering project, including the power supply for the lamp ignitor. What is even more disconcerting – and contrary to conventional practice – is that there is no circuit board, and the tilt motor has disappeared!
The thick hose may surprise you, but it is completely watertight.
We decide to go straight to the head first. This piece is a huge aluminum block held in place by eight screws. The output lens is attached to the end of it. Be careful to secure the pan and tilt locks, otherwise the balance of the head is such that the fixture tilts backward.
We then discover another large metal cube, on which all the circuit boards are located.
The tilt motor is also mounted on a spring-loaded sliding plate, protected from the elements. The zoom/focus module is revealed. At the end of its course, the frost filter hangs over the zoom mechanism. The two prisms, radial and linear, are the final elements.
Above the motor we find, as elsewhere in the fixture, bags of silica beads to absorb residual moisture.
Now, we tackle the most sensitive part: the lamp receptacle. The housing is easily removed, as only four screws hold it in place, and, behind it, we find an impressive cooling system. Completely waterproof, even the smallest of connectors are sealed in water-repellent resin. This huge module combines water-cooling, active ventilation, cast aluminum and an impeller. Elation took no risks with the temperature management of the lamp.
The front section, terminated by the frost, is a single piece running along the optical path.
This window facilitates access to the prism, which is located at the base of the zoom module. As we work our way through the innards of this fixture, we discover an increasing number of fans.
The cooling block is so impressive, we feel like we’re dissecting a state-of-the-art LED fixture.
After a few more turns of a few more screws, the heat sink is removed. There is full and unobstructed access. We can now see the Platinum 21R, Philips’ most powerful short arc lamp with an integrated reflector. Once the two layers of armor have been removed, it can be replaced quickly.
The most beautiful part of Proteus, hidden away from public view. The copper tubing of the cooling system snakes through the fins of the heat sink.
Once again, there is no risk of overheating with an impeller blasting air directly onto the ceramic of the lamp.
As our final step in disassembly, we remove the power supply unit located in the base. Here again, everything has been designed to be resistant to water and dust. The base is completely enclosed, only the sides can be removed.
A rare photo of an operator working on a fixture.
Before reassembling the Proteus, we stop to admire for a moment the level of precision and the effort that have gone into making it waterproof.
The protection has been pushed to its limits and seems more than enough to confirm the IP65 rating reported by Elation.
Triple agent
The temperatures in the base and around the lamp are constantly displayed on the screen. One setting allows you to choose between Celsius and Fahrenheit degrees.
When switched on, the display holds for forty-six seconds before allowing us to work with it. During this time, software versions scroll the screen in computer coding.
The display settles down on the menu page. In the upper portion of the screen, the temperature monitors are displayed in real time, as well as the DMX indicators.
To access the menu, you have to hold down the “mode” button for a good ten seconds. This necessary hold time is way of preventing water splashes from inadvertently changing the settings of the fixture. A glance through the menu tree allows you to change DMX or RDM modes and addresses, IP addresses for sACN and ArtNet or the factory-integrated wireless configuration. The tabs are straightforward and the navigation through them is logical.
The IP configuration menu allows the modification of both address and class.
Another very useful gauge monitors the residual moisture in the head or base of the fixture.
When you start the lamp, a preheat indicator lights up, as does the ventilation when the ignitor buzzes. It still takes about forty seconds for it to reach full power. It only takes five seconds to shut it down completely.
Throughout our entire test, the cooling system lives up to this fixture’s overbuilt standards. The fan blades spin noisily, 53 dB(A) measured one meter from the unit. This is not a big deal for a fixture intended for outdoor use, especially since the temperature management is impressive: the Proteus Hybrid remains as cool to the touch as ever, even after several hours of operation.
Measurements
As a precaution, we should always let the test instruments speak before any disassembly. First observations and first surprises. Our particular example, despite having a lamp that is already a little used, has a very high flux. If we had to make only a single comparison, the Proteus Hybrid is in the vicinity of the Robe MegaPointe. Proteus strapped on our test bench, the values do not lie.
Beam mode, narrow beam.
At the tightest beam angle, the enormous impact of more than a million lux blinds our sensor, denying us a proper reading.
Beam mode, 20° beam.
In Beam Mode, at 20°, we measure 17,250 lux in the center, exceeding 15,300 lumens, with a significant hot spot.
Spot mode, tight beam.
The maximum flux is reached at this setting, peaking at 18,300 lumens, with 98,500 lux in the center.
Spot mode, 20° beam.
In Spot Mode, at 20°, it drops slightly to 14,600 lumens, but with a more uniform flux.
Spot mode, wide beam.
At the maximum angle we get to 31° at the sharp border. To be absolutely precise, the fixture opens to nearly 40°, but it is almost impossible to make it sharp at this angle. However, the flux remains as impressive as ever, at 14,300 lumens.
Wash mode, wide beam.
The most frustrating is the Wash Mode, handicapped by the use of a frost lens that soaks up a lot of light. The flux drops to 12,000 lumens at a divergence of 27°, measured at i/10 (1/10th center illuminance).
Observation confirms the results of our curve calculations. This Philips lamp generates an estimated 23,000 lumens of raw flux, which is optimized by Elation in Beam mode. The Spot mode does quite well, also considering the type of the source.
The lenses of the optical system have some weaknesses, however – on the one hand in the uniformity of the beam and, on the other hand, at the extremities of the focal lengths.
In the field
Let’s examine the performance of Proteus in real-world conditions.
Dimmer
A fixture like this, which is as comfortable in the wind, rain and snow as a tank, is likewise equipped with a real light cannon in its turret. Its orders are quite clear: show no mercy, give no quarter – even if it means sacrificing the finesse of its intensity. The curve shows inertia up to 10%, then a steep swing up to 60%, at which point the dimmer is already at its maximum. The fine teeth of the shutter blades are visible at the lower values…
Focus
Intrigued, we track down the culprits. On this type of luminaire, it is always the zoom-focus combination, which is quite delicate to adjust, with a very wide depth of field.
This particular amplitude of the focal point begins in the depths of the fixture and can thus reveal some aberrations, but also some pleasant surprises, such as the possibility to focus on the mounts of the color wheel or on the inner honeycomb lens.
Could this be due to the activation of the third control channel setting, called “Color and fixed gobos changed to any position”? Nevertheless, it is possible to focus on the supports of gobo and color wheels, or even on the internal optics!
The zoom goes from one end of its range to the other in 0.75 seconds, which is relatively quick, given the size of the fixture. An autofocus mode is available, on two zones at 15 and at 20 meters, but I think it would benefit from a more detailed explanation.
At the tightest focussed angle, Beam mode allows you to go down to 2.7° with the full beam, or 0.4° using the smallest of the beam-reducing gobos.
In Spot mode, the maximum divergence with a sharp gobo is 31°. At the cost of a few yellow rings around the edges, it is possible to open it up to 39.6°. This is performance that allows the Proteus to perform sniper duty, which is exactly what it was designed for.
Pan-Tilt
The pan and tilt movements are closely linked to the weight of the head. Inertia naturally occurs when starting and stopping these movements. It takes 3.76 seconds to traverse one and a half revolutions (540°) of pan. For a tilt inversion, over 270°, it takes 2.1 seconds. However, the positioning remains accurate and the trajectories are clean.
Shutter
By contrast, the strobe, which also uses the shutter blades, is really fast. It can fire off 18 flashes per second.
Colors
Let’s dwell for a moment on the colors. We suffer a misfire on our first attempt to measure the initial color temperature. We get 5760 K, instead of the 8000 K indicated on the lamp. The reason is undoubtedly the presence of a “High CRI” filter at the output of the beam, in order to counterbalance the dominant characteristics of the MSD Platinum.
The subtractive color mixing system uses fairly light shades for yellow and cyan, which allow 87% and 38% of the flux to pass through, respectively. The magenta allows 9% of the light to pass through. This Philips lamp has little red and almost no violet. Under these conditions, pink, fuchsia or purple colors will be difficult to achieve.
CMY tones are generally a little cold and lack precision for the most intense ones.
The Yellow leans slightly towards green. The magenta is itself violet, an American practice.
The red and blue obtained from the CMY mixing.
The color wheel offers fourteen supplementary colors. The proposed set of these is consistent.
The red and blue are standard. The greens, yellows, oranges and aqua do well; although they have a slightly metallic aspect. As expected, the pinks and magenta unfortunately suffer from the lamp technology chosen by Philips.
With the CTO at full, the color temperature drops to nearly 3000 K.
The CTO flag offers a warmer tint, more pink than amber, which is interesting for skin tones. It will also prove very useful for “warming up” the color mixes, even if it means sacrificing a little bit of luminous flux.
Gobos
Finally, let’s have a look at the various effects. There are eight patterns on the rotating gobo wheel, divided between aerial and projection types, logically with a majority of mid-air designs.
The fixed gobo wheel has four beam-reduction gobos and ten basic gobos, which can be used in combination with prisms or the animation wheel.
A small problem we encountered on this Proteus, a first-generation test unit, is a slight shift in the axes of the gobos. This results in slightly off-centre rotations, with minor jerks.
In addition to the classic starry night, the patterns of the parallel bars, the arabesque swirls or the water design will be appreciated.
Effects and prisms.
The animation wheel is an infinitely scrolling, bidirectional disc with a streaked, dendritic pattern to give the beam the feeling of floating or a moiré pattern. The prisms employed in the fixture are a four-facet linear type and an eight-facet radial type.
These two prisms are squeezed, with very little gap between them, to fit into the narrow optical path of Proteus. It is not uncommon to see the edges of the prismatic image eaten by the edges of the optics at too large an angle, or halos being created by being reflected from the edges of the lenses.
An example of the animation. Thanks to the focal length, it is possible to switch the focus ahead of or behind the effect disc.
The cutoff of the outer disc is clearly visible through the unit’s optics.
An overview of the two different prisms, with and without gobos. The overlaps are practically piled up, but they have a certain impact.
Mixing the radial and linear prisms does not produce a new prismatic effect, but can be used to obtain abstract compositions that can be painted onto a set.
As previously mentioned about the gobos, the rotation of the prism is slightly skewed and occasionally jerky.
Special report
The Proteus is a long-throw moving head light with a record flux for this class of fixture, designed to produce high intensity beams in the air. But above all, it is the first Beam on the market to be IP65 rated, virtually impervious to dust and weather.
Under the torture of a jet of water, the Proteus’ menu eventually woke up from its sleep, but the luminaire didn’t flinch, continuing to penetrate the night with its tracer beam.
Its waterproof armor is a real success, which makes up for a relatively modest set of lenses and colors, and will allow lighting companies to deploy them outdoors, at festivals or as an architectural effect, without the need for expensive and heavy rain protection.
For the rental company who is looking for an all-terrain unit, for all conditions of wind and weather, at a truly competitive price, the Proteus Hybrid will undoubtedly be an ideal choice.
More info on the Elation Professional website.
