eLumen8 Kudos 700 Beam – Demo / Review
A powerful LED Beam moving head
We recently had the pleasure of having 2x demo eLumen8 Kudos 700 beam fixtures for a few weeks to be able to demo and review them at live events.
Our current stock of moving lights doesn’t include “true” beam fixtures so it was quite interesting and fun to see how we could incorporate them within our setups and events.
The eLumen8 Kudos Beam 700 certainly didn’t dissapoint us. It’s a powerful LED beam moving head fixture that produces a sharp, bright beam of light no matter what combination of optical elements you throw it at. Even when layering a colour, a gobo and both prisms, the fixture still threw out an amazing amount of light!
The fixture produces a very tight 2° beam via it’s giant 6″ front lens. It’s lightsource is a 110w LED which we thought may not quite live up to the 300W LED moving lights that we often use at some of our events…. but safe to say, they kept up without any issues!
Feature Set
Lightsource
The Kudos 700 Beam sports a very powerful 7500K white 110w LED that with the impressive optical system of the unit produces 20,000 Lux @ 10m.
The LED can be dimmed from 0-100% very smoothly and also switched on/off at a variable rate to produce a powerful strobe effect.
Colours
It also features 12 rich and vibrant colours + 2 colour correction filters – 5600K + 3200K as well as open white.
The colours are on a dedicated colour wheel which is amazingly fast!
Gobos
There are 17 fixed gobos in the fixture + open, the first few gobos on the wheel are “reducers” which reduce the beam size of the light even more so a pencil thin beam effect can be acheived.
Prisms
Amazingly, in this compact moving head, there are 2 prisms (1x 8 Facet Circular and 1x 16 Facet Circular) which are on seperate effect motors.
This means that each prism can be independently placed in the beam path. Both prisms can also be overlayed and rotated in both directions. This creates some amazing mid-air effects!
Pan & Tilt
Of course, being a moving head, the feature sports a pan and tilt motors. These motors offer 16 bit positioning – the movements from this system are booth smooth and also very fast!
The ranges of each are: Pan: 540°, Tilt: 270°
Frost & Focus
The Kudos 700 beam offers both a simple frost filter (12°) to enable the fixtue to act like a wash.
It also offers motorised focus, so that your beams can be focused to either get the sharpest mid-air beam or sharpest gobo projection.
Inputs, Outputs & Physical Features
Power
The Kudos Beam 700 offers both power input and thru via PowerCON connectors. This is quite a handy addition as multiple fixtures can be added to one power line. It also offers an on/off switch too.
Data
The fixture can receive data for control via DMX, DMX is inputted to the fixture via 5 pin XLR (In/Out), unfortunately it doesn’t offer 3 pin in/out however.
It also offers RDM (Remote Device Management) capability too.
Transit Locks
Both the pan and tilt motors can be locked into place for transport so that the fixture cannot move. Unfortunately we did find they were a bit stiff and often difficult to engage/disengage but we put this down to the units being brand new, with a bit of time we’re sure we’d find the knack (and we did!)
Quick Release Clamps
The quick release clamps enable the fixture to be mounted both quickly and easily. Unfortunately we didn’t hang the fixture during the time we had it but we did try the quick release clamps on the fixture, these were very easy to attach and slotted into place without much fiddling.
Our Photos
Conclusion
In the few weeks we had the fixtures we grew to like them very much! At first we were not quite sure where they’d fit in with out shows as we hadn’t used beams before except in our hybrid moving lights. Thankfully they fitted in just perfectly and looked amazing with our other fixtures on our vertical podiums!
They matched very well with our other fixtures in terms of their output although their colour temperature was slightly different (understandably!)
We used them on DMX for our shows and events but we also used the manual mode for testing purposes in the warehouse and office, this was quite a handy feature to have! We also run the auto test feature in the menu when we first got them into the office to ensure all was working correctly, which of course they were!
The throw on these units is also INCREDIBLE! By our unit is a large open space and at the opposite side of that open space is a row of industrial units. We decided we’d see if the fixtures could project that far and to our amazement the beam EASILY threw over 550m (distance worked out by google maps) to the buildings on the opposite side of the open space. Of course by this time, the units beam had increased so the projection was quite a large size but it was still easily visible and illuminated the immediate area surrounding those units!
What we liked:
– The 110W LED was very impressive and offered a great output
– Colour changes and bumps were VERY fast
– Dual Prisms created an awesome animated effect through haze
– Fast pan & tilt
– PowerCON In + Out
– The coating/effect on the arms of the fixture offered great grip which made it easy to pickup and place
– The compact size for such an incredible output
– Power consumption – just under 160w, you can create quite a lightshow with a fair few of these fixtures from one power source!
What we thought could be better:
– Pan & Tilt locks were a little fiddly but seemed to get better with use, they were very strong though!
– The power supply wasn’t silent, the fixture itself was quiet but it emitted a faint high pitch tone (only really noticable when close)
– 5 Pin XLR In/Out, it would have been nice to see 3 pin XLR In/Out too
– Whilst the on/off switch is useful, we felt it didn’t really need to be there but that’s just our preference!
Thank you for taking a look at our demo/review and we hope this has been useful to you.
Please follow our social media and youtube channels to keep up with more demos and reviews from our team.
Thank you also to Prolight Concepts Group for allowing us to demo and review these fixtures, it was a pleasure to play… I mean test them!
Jack Wilson
Director
Kent Media Group Limited