Nanlux Evoke 900C at NAB 2023

We spoke to Nanlux at NAB 2023 about their recently released Evoke 900C.

The Evoke 900C is a 940W LED RGBACL Spotlight, with a CCT range of 1,800-20,000K with full +/-G/M adjustability.

The Evoke 900C is Nanlux's first high-powered RGBACL spotlight and it sits in an interesting place as it falls right between 600/700W fixtures and larger 1200W options such as the Evoke 1200.

The Evoke 900C is claimed to deliver high-quality light with an even beam. It can be used as a soft or hard light source by attaching lighting modifiers.

The Nanlux Evoke 900c, just like the ARRI Orbiter and Prolycht Orion 675 FS, doesn't use any white LEDs. Instead, all of the different color LEDs are blended together to produce white light. Hive Lighting has also been using 7 LED-chip blending. Instead of the traditional 3 colors, Hive uses red, amber, lime, cyan, green, blue, and sapphire. The advantage RGBACL has over RGBWW is that it is capable of giving you a larger CCT range and it can produce more saturated colors with more output. RGBWW lights tend to struggle to create saturated colors like yellow and they don't always have as much output when generating saturated colors. They can also have a large drop-off in output at different CCT settings.

Even though I think usability and color accuracy are more important, most people want to know how much output a light has, so let's get that over with.

Above you can see the claimed photometric data for the Evoke 900C.

According to Nanlux, the Evoke 900C is claimed to be able to output 12,940 lux @3m / 9.84′ (when set at 5600K, with its 45° reflector). If we use the inverse square law, that means that the Evoke 900C can output 116,460 lux @1m / 3.3′.

So how does that stack up against other high-powered COB spotlights? Well, let's first look at its closest competitors, the Prolycht Orion 675 FS and the Aputure LS 600c Pro.

*Not tested

**Independently tested

As you can see, the Evoke 900C has substantially more output than both the Prolycht and the Aputure, but it is also drawing 222W more than the Prolycht and 180W more than the Aputure. The beam angle on the reflectors for both those lights is also wider than that of the Evoke 900C.

Ok, so what about if we compare the output to other similar COB fixtures when used at 5600K? Below you can see the results:

* Independently tested

** Not tested (claimed output)

As you can see the Nanlux Evoke 900C is certainly no slouch when it comes to output, even when compared to lights like the Aputure LS 1200d Pro and Nanlux Evoke 1200.

If you want even more output, you can couple the Evoke 900C with the Nanlux F-35 10° Fresnel Attachment. If you do that the claimed output when setting the fresnel at 11° is a whopping 389,430 lux @1m (5600K).

The Nanlux Evoke 900C will be available in a few different kits. Below are the prices;

How does the price compare to other high-powered COB spotlights on the market? Below you can see:

As you can see, the Evoke 900C is the most expensive out of all of these fixtures, but it is the only RGBACL light with a power draw above 900W. It is more expensive than the higher power draw Nanlux Evoke 1200/1200C and the Aputure LS 1200d Pro, but none of those lights are RGBW or RGBACL.

There's a wide range of lighting modifiers and accessories that will work with the Evoke 900C.

Matthew Allard is a multi-award-winning, ACS accredited freelance Director of Photography with over 30 years' of experience working in more than 50 countries around the world.He is the Editor of Newsshooter.com and has been writing on the site since 2010.Matthew has won 48 ACS Awards, including five prestigious Golden Tripods. In 2016 he won the Award for Best Cinematography at the 21st Asian Television Awards.Matthew is available to hire as a DP in Japan or for work anywhere else in the world.