Elation PARAGON Road Test

The long-awaited Elation Lighting Paragon series consists of three fixtures: Paragon S, Paragon M, and Paragon LT. The Paragon S gives you 20,500 lumens with a 550W engine at 23kg, the Paragon M 37,200 lumens with a 900W engine at 32kg, and the Paragon LT gives you 50,000 lumens with a 1300W engine at 44kg. The full range is IP54 rated, and these LED moving head profiles have a lot of R&D behind them. The deeper you dig, the better it gets.

Construction

Despite a lot of time and money being spent on research and development, the overall styling of the fixture is quite conservative. That’s a good move in my books. The housing of the fixture itself is made from polycarbonate, a durable thermoplastic known for its high impact and heat resistance (it’s also commonly used as lenses in safety goggles). It is fingerprint and abrasion resistant. It is also very hard to scratch. You can always tell when a light has had design input from someone who actually uses them. You can see it in the small, often understated details. One thing I thought was neat was the rubber feet around the lens of the light. This stops scratching, and allows you to balance the light on its nose, as you often have to do during a bump in or bump out. To build on this, the chassis of the light is also designed so that it can take the whole weight of the fixture without causing any damage to the structure. I love the handles on the LT yoke too. The Paragons are IP54 rated with HEPA filtration so users can work on it and open it up like you would a non-IP rated fixture without the need for pressure testing to seal it afterwards. It still gives a high enough IP rating to use in an outdoor gig. Of course, IP65 would have been better, but given that you would be changing gobos and swapping lenses it does seem like a practical trade off. This translates into a lightweight fixture that is perfect for noise critical environments but with enough protection that it can be comfortably used outdoors. The inside of the light looks nice too. It looks like a lot of care was taken to make sure the wiring was done right. It also has the wiring diagram and everything is printed on the inside of the cover. There was obviously some input from the service team and users here.

Optics, Colour and Brightness

The whole Paragon range is bright, almost a class brighter. Not that it was a surprise. They all use CMY colour mixing and offer a range of good deep colours. I was a fan of the red, a hard colour to get right with a subtractive colour mixing system. The SpectraColour CMYRGB array is available on the LT as well. They all have a CRI that can go from 70 up to 93. One of the more common approaches taken to improve CRI (Colour Rendering Index) is to add a CRI filter, with the trade off being a loss of intensity. The TruTone system offers something different without the intensity trade off. Elation’s TruTone variable CRI technology offers a different approach to increasing lighting fidelity which allows you to adjust the CRI using high and low colour temperature white LEDs placed in a single, high density optical array. It enables you to adjust the CRI by using more or less of a certain LED. It gives a good beam and a flat wash. The gobo package looks great, and there is a good mix of familiar style gobos mixed with a few that I have not seen before, which was refreshing.

Applications and Features

The Paragon range has a very wide feature set, of exceptional quality and well refined. The Paragon S has seven rotating glass gobos, nine fixed metal gobos, a fully interchangeable animation wheel, dual prisms, dual frost effects, and a high-speed iris. The animation wheel can be swapped for custom designs or an optional seven-gobos. Its 240° indexable framing system has full-blackout shutter cuts. The Paragon M includes two wheels of seven rotating glass gobos, animation wheel, overlapping dual prisms, dual frost options, and a high-speed iris. The animation wheel’s interchangeable design supports custom patterns or an optional seven-position gobo module. It also has a 240° indexable framing system, +/-45° individual blade angles, and full-blackout shutter cuts. The Paragon LT has 14 rotating glass gobos, a high-speed fixed gobo wheel, variable orientation animation wheel, overlapping dual prisms, dual frost, and a high-speed iris. Its indexable framing system allows full-blackout shutter cuts as well, matching the rest of the series. The zoom ranges vary depending on what lens you have on the light but typically they go from under 5° out to about 50°. An impressive range, especially when you see it on the smaller Paragon S. Its worth noting too that the zoom is really fast and quiet. They move well and index accurately. The framing system is smooth and crisp. All three feature an interchangeable lens. You can use a fresnel lens, a frosted PC lens, or a profile lens. They can simply be screwed on to the front. It can be done very easily, with just a few screws, and does not require you to change fixture mode or update the DMX address. There is a sensor in the fixture which lets the light know which lens it has on, which is great news if you are a production house. If you buy one with all of the interchangeable lenses, you really have three lights in one, not just a hybrid. You only need a 3mm Allen key to work on any of the field serviceable areas of the fixture such as lens attachment, covers, cassette removal etc, and the Philips head screws delineate workshop serviceable areas. In the market, hybrids have gained a name for themselves as being a great value for money option, but with a compromise in quality, especially with the feature sets. This is not the case with the Paragon. It reads as a very safe investment if you look at it that way. You can deploy Paragon on just about any high-end application for theatre, concert, TV, corporate, or festival.

Control and Programming

The Paragons have NFC (Near Field Communication) for quick configuration on the display face and on the top of the fixture. The fixtures also don’t have to be turned on in order to do this, so it can be done in the case via the Elation NFC app. This is very handy when you need to prep gear. The Paragon S has four DMX Channel Modes (41/64/41/64). The M has two DMX Channel Modes (43/65ch) and the LT has four DMX Channel Modes (44/67/47/73). A reasonably small channel footprint, given how much the light can do. Their power draws are 900W, 1400W and 1900W respectively. The Paragons are quiet and do not make much noise. Quiet lights used to be for TV and theatre, but it is becoming something that lighting techs from all types of live entertainment and installation applications are coming to expect.