More Info Manufacturer: Fine Art Professional Product: Fine 400-700 Website: Fineartpro.co.uk Score:

Every month seems to bring a new moving lighting manufacturer to the UK; it now seems there is a dizzying array of makes and models, making comparison almost impossible. Fine Art Professional are brand new to the UK and hence I started my review with no prior judgement.

I have had both the 400 and 700 spot for around 2 months now, and I must say overall I am very impressed, I have used them on a vast variety of events, and each time both heads preformed as well, if not better than their more expensive counterparts (Robe and Martin notably). I like many have a slightly biased view on Chinese Moving heads, as like many have heard the horror stories when things go wrong. I have also seen with my own eyes, the poor build quality of many of the heads.

Fine Art have set out to change this reputation, and I must admit they are doing a damned good job at it.

FINE 400 Profile

As noted above, the build quality of these units is superb, the 400 feels like it could stand up to the rigours of the road, and has been faultless throughout the 2 months that I have had it for. I have used the 400 at around 10 or so events and they have all been quite long distances away from the office, as a result the unit has been subjected to a fair amount of being bumped around in the back of a truck. After a quick inspection this morning, nothing seems to have shaken its self loose, nor have any worrying rattles developed. To me this is one of the most important aspects, even falling above a feature set. I have has Chinese moving heads in the workshop before that have a massive feature set, but are just not cut out to a life on the road.

So first of, the 400 is well designed, the light seems to have a slightly grey/black rubberised finish, and look relatively modern and unobtrusive. Perfect for club owners and theatres, where lights need to blend in, rather than stick out like a sore thumb. Once you start the fixture up, it has a nice large LCD with a green backlight to assist in assigning the fixture with a DMX address. However the menu system lets the fixtures down somewhat, whilst being very readable, it seems that not all the translations have been carried out correctly, and I had trouble understanding a few of the settings. I have been told this should be sorted in the next batch of fixtures, and to be honest, it just means the manual has to be read.

Upon turning the fixture on the light goes through all of its power-on checks (resetting colour wheels and what not) and within around 1minute the light is ready to use. The 400 is not one of the fastest lights to go from power-on to useable, that said it isn't one of the slowest I have used either. One thing that you must remember is the tilt lock, the 400 does not have a sensor and hence will make scary noises if you turn the fixture on without taking off the tilt lock. Whilst this feature would be a welcome addition, at the same time not having it has probably shaved a few pounds off the overall price. Many fixtures around this price bracket do not even have a tilt lock, and having one can really protect the fixtures whilst in transport.

Control is via 3-Pin XLRs and 5-pin XLRs which is great, the majority of Chinese fixtures I have had the pleasure of playing with have only 3-pin and they tend to have reversed polarity. It makes a great change that the DMX wiring standard has been stuck to, and the manufacturer has given you a choice between connectivity.

Service technicians will be happy to hear that changing the lamp is a 20 second job, the mechanism has been well thought out and does not require hundreds of screwdrivers nor hex keys. On the base of the head 4 quarter turn screws keep the lamp holder in place, after unscrewing them the whole plate just pops out allowing you to change the lamp. Again to me this is an important feature, on many of the fixtures I have used; you have to take the majority of the fixture apart just to reach the lamp holder. Another feature that will appeal to service technicians is the ease of taking the case off the fixture. Again 4 screws per side hold the casing on, and a small safety bond prevents the case from entirely falling away.

The gobos can be easily accessed from within the fixture and can be changed pretty easily, this again makes a difference when updating a whole rig. That said, most people will be content with the number and variety of gobos that arrive factory fitted. There are two wheels, one of which contains the rotating and glass gobos (6 of), the other of which has 9 standard metal gobos.

Fan wise, the 400 is pretty quiet, I would say it compares to the Martin and Robe fixtures of the same size. This is great for theatre as the fan noise should not distract too much from any quiet action on stage. Having looked through the menus I couldn't seem to find a quiet fan mode, this again would make for a nice addition as it would set this fixture apart from the competition and make it an even more attractive proposition to the theatre market. In a club based market or live events market, the fan noise would make no difference, but I feel I should cover all bases to due our variety of readers.

Being discharge the 400 produces a lovely bright white colour, the colours produced are vivid and the red on the colour wheel produces a much better red than the Martin equivalent, which seems to struggle with red. Again colours have not been skimped on with 2 x colours wheels each with 9 colours on providing a large variety. Allowing lighting designers to be really quite creative even without the colour mixing of the 400s bigger brother the 700. CMY mixing would also be a great addition but, considering the price I can do without it.

Movement wise, the 400 is swift and accurate, and has both 8bit and 16bit modes to make for accurate movement. In addition to the movement being 16bit the Iris, Focus, Zoom, Gobo and Colour wheels all have 16 bit modes. This is a bit more than the norm but I found them to be a welcome addition and really did make a difference when setting up complex scenes that needed to be perfect.

As well as the features listed above the 400 also comes with an animation allowing for some really quite impressive effects to be created, I used this wheel to great effect when creating fire and water, and this fixture would give dedicated water and fire projectors a run for their money.

Prism wise I feel that the fixture needs a 5 facet prism, whilst having a 3 facet prism is useful a choice between 5 and 3 would be great. Depending on the market I feel 5 would be more suited to a club based environment. That said the current prism is very quick to engage and has a variety of spin speeds.

Dimming wise, like most moving heads they use a mechanical dimmer, it doesn't give the smoothest dimming curve in the world, but that said mechanical dimmers are never going to produce the best result. Again the stepper motors controlling the dimming are smooth and rapid allowing for rapid dimming.

This leads me on to the strobe function, I hardly ever use this feature on any of my kit, and would rather leave the job to dedicated strobes, the flash rate is relatively good selectable between 1hz and 10hz.

As with all fixtures there are a few little niggles that need to be sorted, however most of these are just with regards to menu translation and a few software niggles, I hear these are being sorted out in the next revision of the software. Unlike other heads I see no easy way of updating the software, short of changing a chip on the circuit board. Some fixtures have the ability to be updated via DMX or via a proprietary port on the front.

Overall I really am impressed with this fixture; the build quality is superb and blows the competition out of the water. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it, and have already recommended it to a few local clubs who are in the middle of a refit.

Fine 700 Profile

The Fine 700 is the bigger brother of the 400 and incorporates a few more features, channel wise this fixture has 31 controlling channels on full 16bit mode.

Dimming wise, my comments are similar to that of the 400, the dimming isn't the smoothest in the world purely due to being controlled by a mechanical dimmer, the addition of a 16bit dimming mode makes it somewhat smother and more controllable but still the effect isn't perfect. This isn't a criticism on Fine Arts behalf merely directed towards mechanical dimming on the whole.

The 700 has CMY mixing which is a great addition, all of the mixing can be done in 8 or 16bit modes and as a result proves to be very accurate when compared to just 8bit mixing. This allows for millions of colours to be generated. Along with the CMY mixing there is also a colour wheel with 9 colours allowing for rapid changes, the colours on this are a bit pale for my liking and could have been improved by using deeper colours. Although I guess this was slightly skimped on due to having CMY mixing.

As with the 400, there are two gobo wheels. They are exactly the same as the 400 and hence I won't go into any more detail. The rotation and indexing of the gobos is pretty smooth, and the wheel engages very quickly allowing for rapid changes.

Prism wise, there is still only a 3 facet prism; this whole fixture would be made much better if a 5 facet prism was built in too. I use the prism on moving heads almost all the time in theatre and club based environments, and for me this addition would turn it into the killer fixture.

Lamp wise the 700 comes with a 700W HTI source, which brings brilliant whites and vivid colours when compared to all other lamps. This coupled with the CMY mixing makes for some stunning colours and I have had comments from members of the public at my local theatre regarding how "nice" the colours looked.

Final Thoughts

Fine Art could possibly take the UK by storm; Robert Owen (Owner of Fine Art UK) seems dedicated to his newly founded company and as a result is churning out quality fixtures. The only thing that worries me is the availability of spares, the problem with Chinese manufacturers is the fact that spares take so long to get hold of. Rob seems to be buying in vast amounts of spares, so I can only assume that when and if the fixtures do break down, the parts will only be a day or so away rather than the current month or two it seems to take to get products from China.

I am currently thinking about buying a few of these fixtures, to add to my rig, they are well built and have a great feature set for the price and really do give the bigger names a run for their money.