Visio, Lots of buttons and RGB confetti
The Visio-Pasolite 100M LED is an interesting fixture with a lot of unique technology for a production light. The unit is a RGB+WA LED with a lot of control options over the colour mix of the individual LEDs.
Most importantly is that the RGB white mix is controlled separately from the white or amber LEDs. In theory this feature allows better control in generating user defined “white” light letting the RGB white find its best balance independent of the white or amber light to achieve the colour temperature without having to stretch the performance of the RGB LED sets. Now my observations didn’t really see anything special going on light wise, as the RGB was added or subtracted I could not see any difference in the colour quality, but as I’ve said before it’s almost impossible to make any intelligent comments on colour temp without test equipment.
What I did see though was at close ranges 1’to 3’the green and red LEDs seemed to overpower the white output and put a clear colour cast on my hand but it evened out as I got a little farther away. This leads me to wonder about recommended distances for RGB type fixtures, an investigation for another day.
The unit is well built with a serious passive heat sink and a steel/aluminum chassis. Standard XLR style DMX connections and a tethered power supply a-la laptop style. Colour controls allow independent mixing of each RGB channel and a lock button to hold the current settings. The unit features six memory pre-sets for your favourite colour mixes as well as pre-loaded mixes for 3200k and 5600k.
The digital readout allows the selection of pre-set colour temps, dimming levels and the readout for the independent RGB mixing levels. The unit uses PWM dimming that some consider a no-no for LED dimming but at its rated 25k frequency it shouldn’t be a problem for most situations.
Overall this unit is well built and has some innovative features but I just didn’t really like it. It wasn’t very powerful and maybe that added to the uneasy feeling about its colour performance.
Truth be told I’m not a big fan of the tuneable RGB scenario in any light. Now the Visio does remove one of my major issues which is colour recall with its six memory pre-sets and individual RGB digital readouts but I’m still a single colour guy at heart. Too many options, too many setting, too many places to make a mistake and too many chances to need to reshoot, I like it simple give me 3200k and 5600k (and maybe 4000k for special situations) and I’m set.
If you’re in the other camp where RGB tune-ability is important and you don’t need too much power and reasonably priced this may be the light for you.
Make note however that no matter how I asked the question I could not figure out if you can actually buy this unit anywhere or if it was on Ebay. Also of concern is that in their product brochure it shows a model being lit with the Visio LEDs but the majority of illuminated fixtures are good old tungsten studio lights. In the pic in the brochure there is a strong and obvious “red” shadow behind the model on the white backdrop….not encouraging now is it?
BTW..dollars to donuts without a doubt Visio is the company that actually manufactures a number of lights marketed under the IKAN brand, maybe that's where you're supposed to buy them.
Here’s the numbers:
Pasolite 100M
3200K 97fc@1meter
5600k 130fc@1meter
$1300.00
