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REVIEWED
REVIEWED: ADJ Focus Flex
The ADJ Focus Flex is a lighting fixture I’ve been waiting to hit the market for a while now. A compact, punchy and pixel-mappable LED moving head wash fixture, the Focus Flex sports an impressive feature set considering its size and weight.
At just 7kg and 329mm at its largest dimension, the new Focus Flex certainly packs a punch for a fixture in this class. The LED array offers seven 40W 4-in-1 RGBW 50,000-hour rated LEDs, which sit behind a motorised lens assembly that moves in and out for zoom. The lens assembly can go from a tight 6-degree spot/beam, right out to a super wide 57-degree wash. The zoom works elegantly and smoothly yet is also able to move quickly and accurately when needed, ensuring optimal performance for different environments.
The main pull of the Focus Flex is the pixel-mapping capability. Each segment of the seven-LED array can be individually controlled in its largest 50-channel DMX mode. As well as individual control, you also have access to a range of in-built programs that can be selected and manipulated to achieve various effects. You can select the background and foreground colours of the macro, as well as the speed and fade of any program.
The pixel-mapping effects are particularly exciting because they allow a standard wash fixture to become much more than just a wash. ADJ have really put the 'flexibility’ into the Focus Flex by allowing the fixture to perform as a wash and a beam as well as pixel-mapping for eye candy.
If all of this seems a bit overkill, don’t worry – you can ‘dumb down’ the Focus Flex and use it as a standard RGBW wash. Or, even more easily, use its virtual colour swatch to select your desired colour.
For those who are looking for a traditional wash moving head, you won’t be disappointed. The output is impressive for many reasons. Its soft-edged beam falls off beautifully without any colour fringing that you sometimes see on other moving washes. The Focus Flex can also operate in a virtual CMY mode (in certain DMX modes) to enable control alongside other CMY-enabled fixtures, making colour-mixing a doddle.
As well as its colour range, the ADJ Focus Flex offers a tuneable white from 2700k to 10000k – a beautifully warm white to a sharp, vivid, bright white – thanks to its variable colour temperature channel. Along with its variable refresh rate, this makes it a great choice for video and camera work, as you can set it up to ensure there are no shutter artifacts and no flickering.
ADJ also gives us a colour shift mode that will colour-correct red to green, again putting the Focus Flex into the camera and video production market. Dimming is smooth and super accurate all the way down to zero, with just a small snap off at the very bottom end (without using one of the in-built dimming modes). The dimming modes allow you to adjust the in-and-out times of the dimming effect, imitating lamps that don’t switch on and off as quickly as LEDs can.
The dimming modes also have a dimming speed control option, so you can set how long the on/off fade takes (from 0.1 seconds to 10 seconds). As the dimming is electronic, the LED itself is dimmed, ensuring no extra moving parts are required. The LEDs can also be switched on and off to produce a rapid strobe effect – and it does that rather well too!
Thanks to its minimal size and weight, just one person can easily rig the Focus Flex in any orientation. The mounting attachment on the bottom has a quarter-turn omega bracket, allowing for fast and easy setup, and can be rigged to any structure. The included omega bracket has a hole for attaching a clamp, which is both convenient and quick. There’s also a safety cable point.
Size and weight also contribute to the speed of the Focus Flex. Large fixtures usually lag behind smaller ones in terms of their pan and tilt speed, but the Focus Flex avoids such problems. Thanks to the 16-bit pan and tilt, it performs micro-step movements with ease, resulting in ludicrously fast movements right down to extremely slow and smooth transitions.
Speaking of pan and tilt, the Focus Flex can tilt 265 degrees and pan up to 630 degrees (selectable as 630 or 540 degrees in the menu but set at 540 as standard) – quite a range of movement that means you can hang it or place it on a floor or podium and yet still reach all the important areas. It’s also possible to invert the pan and tilt as well as set a speed mode.
On the front of the fixture is a menu system that’s easy to use and will be familiar to existing ADJ lighting users. The LCD screen means menu options are shown in full text, making it easy to navigate and operate. All control is done via directional, enter and mode buttons. And a USB port, labelled as a service port, allows for firmware upgrades.
Just hold down the mode button for a few seconds and the menu system appears – this is handy when you need to change settings or re-address the fixture quickly. The LCD screen and menu system also has a battery mode, so you can set up the Focus Flex without needing power. The menu provides plenty of functionality, but the main sections most DJs will use are manual mode, internal program mode and DMX setup mode. Yes, manual mode – even though it’s basic, it’s handy for testing and for setting up a static look without needing any DMX control.
On the fixture’s rear you’ll find a locking power connector with a link through for connecting multiple Focus Flex fixtures (or other devices) in daisy chain. You’ll also find an antenna for built-in WiFly EXR wireless DMX. The antenna can be moved to optimise signal, but you’ll need a separate WiFly EXR transmitter to control the fixture wirelessly.
There are 5-pin DMX in and out ports for non-wireless DMX control. It would’ve been nice to see 3-pin DMX ports too, as ADJ’s fixtures are aimed at multiple markets and not all mobile DJs use 5-pin DMX cables. Although, pin converter cables are relatively cheap and easy to obtain, so while it’s something to consider when buying these lights, it’s probably not a dealbreaker (no doubt many of you will have the converters already). Another nice addition would’ve been an added network port, so we could fully utilise the pixel effects without using up a big chunk in a DMX universe.
Sadly, due to limited time and only having one fixture available for test, I didn’t have chance to play with the light for too long before it had to go back to ADJ. But in testing I found it to fit perfectly into what I was looking for. I loved the performance of the Focus Flex – its output really surprised me from such a compact fixture – and I was also impressed by the dimming, speed, zoom range, in-built programs, macros…. just generally the control you have over the entire fixture!
Overall, the Focus Flex seems to be the perfect upgrade to our existing wash fixtures and its versatility makes it a definite upgrade for us in the future. If you’re looking for a compact yet punchy moving head wash that can double as a beam and offers stunning eye-candy effects with complete control, then the ADJ Focus Flex should be on your short list.
At just 7kg and 329mm at its largest dimension, the new Focus Flex certainly packs a punch for a fixture in this class. The LED array offers seven 40W 4-in-1 RGBW 50,000-hour rated LEDs, which sit behind a motorised lens assembly that moves in and out for zoom. The lens assembly can go from a tight 6-degree spot/beam, right out to a super wide 57-degree wash. The zoom works elegantly and smoothly yet is also able to move quickly and accurately when needed, ensuring optimal performance for different environments.
The main pull of the Focus Flex is the pixel-mapping capability. Each segment of the seven-LED array can be individually controlled in its largest 50-channel DMX mode. As well as individual control, you also have access to a range of in-built programs that can be selected and manipulated to achieve various effects. You can select the background and foreground colours of the macro, as well as the speed and fade of any program.
The pixel-mapping effects are particularly exciting because they allow a standard wash fixture to become much more than just a wash. ADJ have really put the 'flexibility’ into the Focus Flex by allowing the fixture to perform as a wash and a beam as well as pixel-mapping for eye candy.
If all of this seems a bit overkill, don’t worry – you can ‘dumb down’ the Focus Flex and use it as a standard RGBW wash. Or, even more easily, use its virtual colour swatch to select your desired colour.
For those who are looking for a traditional wash moving head, you won’t be disappointed. The output is impressive for many reasons. Its soft-edged beam falls off beautifully without any colour fringing that you sometimes see on other moving washes. The Focus Flex can also operate in a virtual CMY mode (in certain DMX modes) to enable control alongside other CMY-enabled fixtures, making colour-mixing a doddle.
As well as its colour range, the ADJ Focus Flex offers a tuneable white from 2700k to 10000k – a beautifully warm white to a sharp, vivid, bright white – thanks to its variable colour temperature channel. Along with its variable refresh rate, this makes it a great choice for video and camera work, as you can set it up to ensure there are no shutter artifacts and no flickering.
ADJ also gives us a colour shift mode that will colour-correct red to green, again putting the Focus Flex into the camera and video production market. Dimming is smooth and super accurate all the way down to zero, with just a small snap off at the very bottom end (without using one of the in-built dimming modes). The dimming modes allow you to adjust the in-and-out times of the dimming effect, imitating lamps that don’t switch on and off as quickly as LEDs can.
The dimming modes also have a dimming speed control option, so you can set how long the on/off fade takes (from 0.1 seconds to 10 seconds). As the dimming is electronic, the LED itself is dimmed, ensuring no extra moving parts are required. The LEDs can also be switched on and off to produce a rapid strobe effect – and it does that rather well too!
Thanks to its minimal size and weight, just one person can easily rig the Focus Flex in any orientation. The mounting attachment on the bottom has a quarter-turn omega bracket, allowing for fast and easy setup, and can be rigged to any structure. The included omega bracket has a hole for attaching a clamp, which is both convenient and quick. There’s also a safety cable point.
Size and weight also contribute to the speed of the Focus Flex. Large fixtures usually lag behind smaller ones in terms of their pan and tilt speed, but the Focus Flex avoids such problems. Thanks to the 16-bit pan and tilt, it performs micro-step movements with ease, resulting in ludicrously fast movements right down to extremely slow and smooth transitions.
Speaking of pan and tilt, the Focus Flex can tilt 265 degrees and pan up to 630 degrees (selectable as 630 or 540 degrees in the menu but set at 540 as standard) – quite a range of movement that means you can hang it or place it on a floor or podium and yet still reach all the important areas. It’s also possible to invert the pan and tilt as well as set a speed mode.
On the front of the fixture is a menu system that’s easy to use and will be familiar to existing ADJ lighting users. The LCD screen means menu options are shown in full text, making it easy to navigate and operate. All control is done via directional, enter and mode buttons. And a USB port, labelled as a service port, allows for firmware upgrades.
Just hold down the mode button for a few seconds and the menu system appears – this is handy when you need to change settings or re-address the fixture quickly. The LCD screen and menu system also has a battery mode, so you can set up the Focus Flex without needing power. The menu provides plenty of functionality, but the main sections most DJs will use are manual mode, internal program mode and DMX setup mode. Yes, manual mode – even though it’s basic, it’s handy for testing and for setting up a static look without needing any DMX control.
On the fixture’s rear you’ll find a locking power connector with a link through for connecting multiple Focus Flex fixtures (or other devices) in daisy chain. You’ll also find an antenna for built-in WiFly EXR wireless DMX. The antenna can be moved to optimise signal, but you’ll need a separate WiFly EXR transmitter to control the fixture wirelessly.
There are 5-pin DMX in and out ports for non-wireless DMX control. It would’ve been nice to see 3-pin DMX ports too, as ADJ’s fixtures are aimed at multiple markets and not all mobile DJs use 5-pin DMX cables. Although, pin converter cables are relatively cheap and easy to obtain, so while it’s something to consider when buying these lights, it’s probably not a dealbreaker (no doubt many of you will have the converters already). Another nice addition would’ve been an added network port, so we could fully utilise the pixel effects without using up a big chunk in a DMX universe.
Sadly, due to limited time and only having one fixture available for test, I didn’t have chance to play with the light for too long before it had to go back to ADJ. But in testing I found it to fit perfectly into what I was looking for. I loved the performance of the Focus Flex – its output really surprised me from such a compact fixture – and I was also impressed by the dimming, speed, zoom range, in-built programs, macros…. just generally the control you have over the entire fixture!
Overall, the Focus Flex seems to be the perfect upgrade to our existing wash fixtures and its versatility makes it a definite upgrade for us in the future. If you’re looking for a compact yet punchy moving head wash that can double as a beam and offers stunning eye-candy effects with complete control, then the ADJ Focus Flex should be on your short list.
The full review can be found in Pro Mobile Issue 116, Pages 86-88.
