The legendary manufacturers offer a mid-sized profile with a compact price tag
The entertainment technology industry has saturated itself in top end, high output, large scale, profiles the last few years. Every time High End Systems pushed the boundaries of lumens output in a profile, their competitors stormed back months later with their competitive model. As ETC has a habit of doing, they viewed their entire range to search for a new offering to the lighting community that can fill a niche. In this case, less is more. Less size, less weight, and most importantly—less cost, come to mind as this fixture still manages to contain all the bells and whistles of their high output fixtures. The Lonestar is designed to be the workhorse for the theater, House of Worship, cruise ship, and medium sized markets.
Face it, the majority of shows need not require a 30-50,000 lumen output light. Those fixtures are great, but they are physically large, way brighter than the other lighting options on a typical sized stage. Yet LDs demand all the attributes they can get out of one light. They don’t want to sacrifice any bells and whistles just to take up a smaller stage footprint—and now they don’t have to. Zoom, iris, gobos, frost flags, animation wheel, color mixing and color wheel, variable CTO, framing shutters—check. They’re all included in one compact fixture.
Output and Color
15,400 lumens of white light is nothing to smirk at. This shaft of light will cut through a wall of PARs and wash fixtures to offer a bright enough source to compete. The native color temperature of the lamp is 7,000K, a little on the bluish/cold side of white. That’s easily addressed thru a variable CTO that can lower the hue all the way down to 2,200K.
The 16-bit electronic dimming is smooth and linear to the eye, even at low values. Standard shutter/strobe effects are all done within the light engine. The LED engine life is rated at 50,000 hours, including a brightness warranty offered for five years.
The CYM mixing system is fairly standard for a High End fixture with the ability to mix pastel colors brilliantly while doing well to emulate saturated colors. Color snaps are a breeze and rainbow effects are easily emulated. Dark, mixed colors will of course reduce the light output, but the workaround is brilliant.
The engineers behind this fixture were clever enough to expand their color wheel selection to include 9 + open color slots. With 15,400 lumens of output, they needed the maximum way for all saturated colors, not just the typical red, blue, UV, and green colors other manufacturers offer. A good designer will recognize the value added with these extra dichroics built into the one wheel. Half colors perfectly split the beam in half and are well laid out for designers who wish to use a red/blue, green/blue or lavender/CTO splits or roll between two back-to-back complimenting colors.
The CRI is >70, while a TM-30 filter in the color wheel raises the overall CRI value of the output to 85 CRI.
Shaping the Beam
Sparing no expense, it’s nice to see a medium sized fixture that includes both a tremendous zoom range as well as an iris mechanism. The zoom is impressive as it lowers down to 3.8°, which coincidently matches up with the front glass aperture of 120 mm (4.72”). A pencil thin beam of light can fade to the full 55° width in about one second and is a great effect. If users are looking for a quick beam snap from one degree to full open—the 16-blade iris can perform this function in a blink of the eye or a nice pulse chase.
With this fixture standing under two foot tall I am pleasantly surprised it includes a full framing system. It performs well being able to move to any predestined shape in under half a second. Making chases from various framing effects (i.e., the horizontal slim bar to vertical slim bar chase) is easy to accomplish with the Lonestar, though I wish they offered a macro channel full of pre-canned effects. A 60° rotation either way of the mechanism is optimum for programming.
Breaking up the beam can be done in a number of ways. A single gobo wheel offers nine indexable/variable speed rotating gobos. Gobos are replaceable with glass and aluminum gobos. There’s plenty of both textures as well as aerial breakouts to please every user. Several are slight variations of older High End favorites. I note there are no colored breakouts included, which is preferable to those who utilize the gobo roll function, where the entire wheel just spins. It’s easy enough to add in half colors from the color wheel if needed.
While the zoom function can keep the gobo image sharp, this fixture contains variable light and medium frost flags one can use alone or together. I do note that with both in place, I can barely see a texture from a gobo coming thru the beam. HES does offer an optional heavy frost flag for the fixture that can totally diffuse any pattern in the focal path.
One can also run the animation wheel for a continuous texture loop. The wheel in this fixture can emulate fire and /or water effects easily as it can also be used simultaneously with any gobo. It looks good as an aerial shot as well.
The two separate prism effects are the standard 5 hole ”star” or the four facet “linear” patterns. They are indexable or auto rotating in either direction with separate control channels. They can be used simultaneously.
Size Matters
The Lonestar was engineered to fit easily in any prerig truss as well as hang at any angle via Mega-Claw or cheeseboro clamps. The durable black shell of molded plastic wraps stealthily around the aluminum and steel frame. One can order the fixture in white if desired.
With multiple handles, the fixture weighs in at 50 lbs. making one tech-handling simple. The fixtures ship in a cardboard box with a custom insert or one can buy a three-hole road case from ETC as a separate item.
Control of all attributes takes only 48 channels, which includes fan speed and mSpeed. The fixture can accept DMX via 5-pin XLR or RJ45 EtherCON connectors (which also accept sACN and Art-Net. PowerCON TRUE1 connectors accept any input voltage from 100-240V. Accessories include a snoot and top hat.
At a Glance:
Full Featured, Yet Still Affordable
The Lonestar fills a niche for medium to small sized venues whose designers still want an affordable fixture with every bell and whistle.
ETC/HES Lonestar
PROS
15,400 watts of power with all the bells and whistles. Sleek look and size along with an IP20 rating. Competitively priced.
CONS
Could use a faster framing system w/ built in macros, but this is quite acceptable.
SPECS
- Lamp Source: 290 W Ultra-Bright LED engine
- Light Output: 15,400 lumens
- Total Wattage: 615 watts
- Zoom Range: 3.8°-55°
- Iris: 16 blade
- Colors: CMY, 9 slot color wheel
- Native Color Temp: 7,000K
- Variable CTO: Down to 2,200K
- Prisms: 5-facet star and 4-facet linear
- Frost: Light and medium flags
- Animation Wheel: Ideal for textured effects and aerial breakout
- MSRP: $6,250.
Manufacturer: High End Systems, an ETC Company
More Info: www.etcconnect.com/Lonestar
