Novatech has purchased 50 x Ayrton Perseos this year using them for several prestigious events such as Now or Never Festival, Illuminate Adelaide and State Of Origin. During the rugby event, they showcased fantastic backlight looks and various beam effects whilst at the Now or Never event, their flexibility shone once more, seamlessly adapting to diverse genres and always providing that next fresh look option.
Primarily, Novatech was after the next real workhorse light, something super useful and reliable, with a few specific qualifications. Top of the list was flexibility: the last decade has seen a plethora of “hybrid” fixtures aiming to be a combined beam + spot + wash fixture, and usually only succeeding at 2 out of 3 at best.
“We needed something that would fill all these roles with few compromises,” commented Rowan Lee, Technical Support & Research at Novatech. “IP-rating also narrowed down our options a lot; IP fixtures are a real benefit on outdoor stages, and of course essential for all-seasons events and activations. Additionally, we have found that fully-sealed IP fixtures tend to require less maintenance overall than their conventional counterparts, therefore spending more time on gigs and less in the workshop, directly benefiting the bottom line.”
Given the requirement for IP rating and workhorse reliability, naturally LED source was the only sensible option for a fixture of this class, and Rowan admits that Ayrton has been at the bleeding edge of production-ready LED fixtures for some time. Although Novatech demoed some impressive options from the competition, ultimately the Perseo won out with Rowan saying that they check all the boxes and overall they’re a pleasure to use.
“In any field, there is always a discrepancy between the very latest technology that’s developed in a lab and what’s matured into a product you can buy, and this is very obvious in the world of LED fixtures,” continued Rowan. “In my opinion, Ayrton has consistently been closer to the bleeding edge than any other major brand, in both final specs and performance, and creative use of the technology. There are substantial technical challenges to getting LEDs to outperform conventional lamp-based fixture designs (that are themselves the culmination of many decades of development), but Ayrton has found a great balance between designing unusual products around the unique characteristics of LED sources and solving these problems in innovative ways for their more conventional fixtures.”
Rowan added that the result has consistently been class-leading fixtures that are enjoyable to use, and easy to maintain – an often overlooked detail. One place this acknowledgement of LED’s uniqueness stands out is in their offering of most fixtures with options for their LED sources; customers can choose between a high-CRI version ideal for television, or a high-output version more suited to typical rental and touring work.
“The Perseo’s optical performance is surprisingly good!” remarked Rowan. “Many fixtures advertise a substantial zoom range but then you find out that the first and last 5-10% of the range suffers from diminished output, inconsistent focus, hazy edges, etc. The entire optical system is well thought out and carefully implemented. The Perseo delivers on all its promises here with minimal variation in brightness through zoom and very little image distortion and focus aberration. Focus flatness is often tough for LED sources but not an issue here, across the respectable factory gobo load we get consistent focus throughout.”
Rowan further comments that Perseo’s framing system is fast and effective, although it’s hard to stand out here as most new fixtures have quite good framing mechanics, but the 100% coverage on all blades is certainly appreciated. Lastly, despite being a crispy 6900K default, the linear CTO filter produces a range of pleasant and rich tones while avoiding the harshness that often still betrays an LED light source.
“These fixtures have consistently excelled,” said Rowan. “In their inaugural outdoor performance in a winter park, exposed to the elements, they not only exhibited impressive visual versatility from wide gobo looks to sharp beams but also operated flawlessly throughout. To date, we haven’t encountered any issues with them.”
It looks like Novatech has their busy summer of events covered by their Ayrton Perseos and we look forward to seeing them in action.
