K EYE K20 HCR

CLAY PAKY’S NEW WASH LIGHT

By Julius Grafton

The march of LED continues apace, the latest entrant from Italy is the long named K Eye K20 HCR. K20 is the fixture size, while HCR stands for High Colour Rendering. The ‘K’ originally stood for ‘key lighting’ but Clay Paky quickly reasoned this was too limiting.

Product naming is an art form, Clay Paky scored an ace with the Sharpy. There’s only so many options – and you wouldn’t want a wash light called ‘Wally’, would you?

Turn it on in ‘white’ mode and you get 11,000 serious lumens. The zoom range is 6 to 50 degrees.

With 37 LED’s, K20 sits well over its smaller sibling the K10 – loaded with 19 LED’s. As you expect it is a mover, but there is a forthcoming static version which amazingly is almost half the cost of this unit. More on that later.

This 20kg device has a six colour engine, with RGB, Amber, Lime and Cyan, controlled over 12 channels. There is a colour match ability to match to either Rosco or Lee colour numbers which helps a lot of designers who like to get particular about the colours applied.

Fan noise is ‘very low’, so a truss load of these should be virtually inaudible. The static version is rectangular, and sits on a regular yoke. Having watched a lot of shows of many varieties, there is a strong place for a static wash unit. Plenty of events need the wash on the stage, without the need to remote deploy it elsewhere. The forthcoming static version of the K20 is also more weather resistant than the unit reviewed here.

But the big headline here is the colour temperature, where virtual perfect white light with a CRI of 97 is delivered.

By chance Lighting Designer Paul Collison was on hand when I saw the K20. He was particularly excited by the dimming ability, which has always been a limiting factor with LED.

“The fact that it emulates the tungsten fade so well means in a theatrical situation you’re not having to compensate for the LED – because it behaves like a tungsten (source) and it honors the colour shift”, he said. “(Light) detail such as this is what we’re employed for. This (unit) has a level of detail.”

Indeed the K20 has various dimmer modes, to match the fade of various tungsten lamps – from 700 watts to 2,000 watts. Allied with accurate colour rendering and a tricky Osram (owners of Clay Paky) algorithm, it will deliver pro performance for theatre or TV.

An optional top hat helps kill halation, enemy of the low ballet ladder where all you want is the beam, not the stray glow out the side.

Give it a go!

Brand: Clay Paky

Model: K Eye K20 HCR

Pricing: $12,599 inc gst

Product Info: www.claypaky.it

Distributor: www.showtech.com.au