News

20 Nov 2019

Robe T1 Profile

ROAD TEST

by Matt Britten.

Matt Britten is Head of Lighting at Scene Change, “Australia’s Most Awarded AV Company”. Scene Change have offices in Adelaide, Brisbane, Hobart, Hunter Valley, Melbourne, and Sydney, providing video, audio, lighting, staging, IT, and other event technical services.



It’s tough for an AV company to find one lighting fixture that does everything, because no fixture can possibly do everything really well. At Scene Change, we concentrate on making sure what’s in our lighting stock works for us. A lot of our events are run in venues with low ceilings, restricted headroom, and some tight weight limits. Where we might like to use a 45kg unit, we’d struggle in a lot of our cases.


A lot of our work is corporate, and corporate is all about framing shutters.

Our next two most important criteria are the quality of the colour rendering, and the amount of noise the fixture makes; we do lighting for orchestras and maestro doesn’t want to hear whirring fans.

We also do a lot of work with cameras for broadcast, recording, and IMAG, and we want to keep them happy, so features like minus green and colour correction are also important.

After defining what we’d like in an ideal all-round fixture, and researching the products on the market we thought might fit, we went into a testing phase. Tested against their competitors, the Robe T1 Profiles came out on top in almost every category. They suit our market perfectly; they’re a high quality flexible light source that’s small, lightweight, and quiet.


Colours

Colour is important in everything we do. The T1 Profile’s reds and blues are better than anything I’ve ever seen come out of a LED source; the rendering is just so rich.

I like that there’s an additive source so you don’t have to use the CMY mix; it means you can get deep reds and blues which you can’t always get out of CMY. The whites are perfect, and run at beautiful temperatures.

The tungsten emulation mode does exactly what it says it does. It’s not often you can say that there’s no negatives about a fixture’s colour rendering.

We really appreciate the plus and minus green, which we’ve found the camera operators always require. Rosco and Lee have always made green filters for tungsten fixtures, so it’s nice to see a LED source get true colour rendition right for camera.




Gobos, Animation, and Prism

I try and restrict my use of gobos when I’m programming, but I can say that the T1’s gobos are good, as is the prism and the animation wheel. I have no issues with any of them, and the T1 maintains a smooth, flat field, and a nice zoom when they’re in use. As a moving light with effects in use, it does what it does well.


Zoom

The zoom range runs 7 to 49 degrees, and we give our T1s a fair workout across the entire range. I might be using it as a lectern wash, then a super tight performer special, before going out to a lovely wide room wash. One of my only criticisms of the T1 is that it feels like it’s slightly lacking in output when it’s out super-wide.


Framing

The framing system, one of the main reasons we invested in the T1 – is extremely fast and incredibly accurate. When we tested the T1s, I ran a 12 hour sequence on the framing system which I let run overnight. When I came back in the following morning, the T1 was still hitting its marks.


Control

We predominantly use MA Lighting grandMA2 or dot2s for control. The included wireless DMX on the T1 works perfectly, and we always get great range.

With the T1s in their cases running on their internal battery, it’s possible to change their DMX address, but not change their mode and most other settings. While I’d like to see that implemented, it’s fair to say that if you’re doing your preparation properly, you should be taking your fixtures out of the case and powering them up.


Manual Handling, Construction, and Support

The T1s come in cases from Robe, which are well built with plenty of space for the fixture. At just 24kg, it’s an extremely easy unit to work with physically. They’re well built, and we’ve had no service issues with any of the units in our fleet.

The support and service from Robe distributor Jands, from the initial loan of demonstration units, through the purchase process, to delivery, was impeccable, and I’m very impressed with them.


Conclusion

Robe market the T1 Profile as ‘The One’, as in ‘the only one you need’, and they’ve done their very best to make that true. The T1 is rock solid. It ticks all of the boxes, and it does what it does really well.

The T1 Profile is the perfect fixture for the mix of work Scene Change does, and they have performed beautifully since the day we got them. We’re very happy with our decision.



Brand: Robe
Model: T1 Profile
Product Info: www.robe.cz
Australia and New Zealand: www.jands.com.au





The Specs:

Light source type: MSL 550 W Multi-Spectral LED engine

LED life expectancy: min. 30,000 hours

Zoom range: 7° – 49°

Fixture total lumen output: up to 10,075 lm

Colour mixing: CMY/RGB or RGBAL

Variable CTO: 2.700K – 8.000K

+/- Green correction function

Adjustable CRI from 80 to 90+

Framing shutters, rotating gobo wheel, animation wheel, prism, iris, frost

Electronic strobe effect with variable speed up to 20 Hz

Protocols: USITT DMX-512, RDM, ArtNet, MA Net, MA Net2, sACN

Pan movement: 540°, Tilt movement: 280°

H: 726 mm, W: 400 mm, D: 258 mm

Weight: 24.3 kg


All images courtesy Robe via https://www.robe.cz/t1-profile/#gobos



CX Magazine – Nov 2019   Entertainment technology news and issues for Australia and New Zealand – in print and free online www.cxnetwork.com.au
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