LED Framing Shutter Shootout

We at Sardis Events will be putting various LED framing shutter lights head-to-head in the ultimate shootout. As a production company that is focused on excellence in performance; it’s important to note that we did this shootout to cater to our purposes, and we thought it’d be great to share what discoveries we found with you. This shootout is simply our professional opinion on our observations of these lights.

Our Lineup...
1. Clay Paky Axcor Profile 900
2. Ayrton Ghibli
3. Vari-Lite VLZ Profile
4. High-End SolaFrame 2000
5. Martin Encore Performance CLD

[glvrecords]

Clay Paky gobos seem almost printed on the wall it's incredible

[glynodonoghue]

This is a very interesting comparison. Thank you for taking the time to produce this video. By the way, Ayrton must have listened to you and other users, because they have now changed the foam insert to be lower. The body now sits horizontal, just like the excellent Claypaky foams.

[staticlightcompanyltd]

Great to see a real life unbiased comparison, Truly professional backed up with practical fact. Fantastic

[ENPIus]

Ghibli is a brilliant fixture. Great comparisons! Thanks for putting this together!!

[JordanBalderas]

Mann top notch! I think I'm ready to buy some lights now!

[ActionCamPOV]

This video is fantastic! Great editing too! I cant beleive you only have 6k views...but hope u keep them coming!

[examplewastaken]

Judged solely based on the light output and features, the CP is the winner for me. Colors all seemed on point (yes, camera may play a role in that), gobos where a bit weird but the focus was absolutely incredible. You are actually able to see the individual blades of the iris when fully zoomed in. There is a reason why you find either CP or Robe fixtures on every major concert stage.

[psauter]

My venue just bought several of the SolaFrame 2ks and we love it. The price for us was one of the least expensive out of all the fixtures we looked at.

[dougberry]

Fantastic video. Would love to see Chauvet Maverick MK3 Profile also against some of these products.

[peterrubie]

Thankyou very much for doing this it's been quite useful.

A couple of requests for next time you guys make one of these shootout videos; Show some pastel colors being mixed or even CMY flags at half. Often there's color fringing with these LED fixture but you only see it when the flags are partially inserted. Show framing shutters cutting an edge while a gobo is inserted. often they will cut all the light output out before they actually cut a gobo edge depending on the focal plane and which gobo wheel you're using.

Also, If anyone wants a comparison breakdown of fixtures I did up a little spreadsheet of these + more.

[JeffADavis-qbpw]

This was a great shootout video! The video editing was great, commentary to the point, and the results were in line with my observations on these fixtures from my own shootouts as well. nicely done!

[pauldavison]

fantastic video, well produced. thank you.

[lassi]

Really excited to see more content from you! A video about your production process from start to end would be just gold 🔥

[mishakoz]

Nice production value. Really cool stuff

[EmileChauvinLaser]

This is an amazing video, super clean, constructive, would love to see more like this, congrats ! :)

[VegasDominic]

Goldensea China / Terbly would be so proud 😊

[richardbelliveau]

First I have never commented on a video before/ever LOL. Thanks for the hard work and production. I hope to be able to help next time if I may.

Suggestions (humble):
1) Setting all the lights to a particular zoom value is not the way to do a center FC comparison. Make sure the diameter of all the beams are the same and then if you wish to measure FC you will get a least some useful comparison!
2) All instruments have a particular zoom size they perform better at. So not just one measurement of a particular zoom setting (like in the video) provides any useful FC comparison information.
3) It would be important to note to the viewers that the "camera" does a poor job of rendering any reasonable or useful example of color to the viewers.
4) Through most of the video the Clay Paky (a good product) was zoomed to the smaller zoom so OF COURSE it will be appear brighter and have higher FC!!! This is not a useful comparison for any of the fixtures.
6) It would be best not to use a low cost photography meter in a comparison of expensive electrooptical instruments. It's just not right.

Still you guys worked hard and did a great voice over and it is appreciated! Kind regards.

[MadsSaxoNielsen]

Really nice video! Please do more of these :)

[davidgrindley]

Great comparison. I personally love Martin's Mac Viper Performance and the Mac Encore series. Claypaky, Ayrton and High End Systems are great companies as well. I'm not a big fan of Vari*lite as I personally see Most fixtures being from Martin, Robe, or Chauvet pro.

[chadbeverly]

It's funny to see the different saturation of cyan, magenta, and yellow within the fixtures . It reminds me of the prg demon of the bad boy when it first came out how they specifically didnt put in a regular cmy color mixing system but instead put in an cyan, magenta, and yellow color wheel so they can take that saturation as far as they wanted. Only down side is cant really do a color fade by it's super fast at doing color bumps . And the VLZ from what I hear was fixture that was doomed from the beginning