Beaulieu

[pobasted]

Hi,

I am looking into buying a 16mm camera. I’ve almost decided on the Beaulieu R16 due to the reasonable price and variable and single frame rate. What’s holding me back is the lens mount. In film school I shot on an Arri S with a bayonet mount and I remember my teacher saying that the bayonet mount lenses are better than the c mount lenses. Also I’m somewhat familiar with bayonet lenses and already know what I want to get. So my questions are: Is it true that c mount lenses are not as good as bayonets? Is there any kind of adapter so you could put a bayonet lens on a c mount? Is there any way to convert the Beaulieu to a bayonet mount, and if so how much would that cost me? Are there any other drawbacks to the Beaulieu I don't know about? Thanks for any help you can give.

 

[donatello]

perhaps the instructor meant the bayonet mount is a better mount then C mount ?
a 12-120 ang zoom is the same lens in C mount or Bay mount
i shot a feature on a eclair NPR .. we rented a arri bay to C mount adaptor ( lens were arri bay mount ..adaptor was C mount to screw into camera) ...
there are many old C mount lens ( from 70's) that were OK for their time but would be considered so-so today ... i remember using switars back in late 70's and thought they were pretty good - however i recently used them on a project shot on a bolex and i was not happy with them ...

the NPR ( has 2 mounts ) had it's own type bay mount but the arri adaptor the rental house had was made of brass and it just didn't work that well so we went with using C mount on NPR most of the time ( also used same adaptor on bolex) ... when we rented the 10-100 T2 zeiss
we had to have a lens support when using the NPR C mount ....
for run-gun we would go with the brass adaptor because it did not need lens support ...

i don't know if a adaptor was made for beaulieu ?
guessing YES back in 70's ..today NO .. you might be able to find a used one ?
check some of the old rental houses that used to rentg the camera - like alan gordon enterprises in LA ...

 

[pobasted]

perhaps the instructor meant the bayonet mount is a better mount then C mount ?
...

I beleive she meant that there are better lenes available for the bayonet mount, not that the bayonet makes the same lens better.

If I got a bayonet camera the first thing I would want to get is the Zeiss 10-100 and the kinoptic 5.7mm. But I'm not sure that these or equivalents are available for a c mount. Thanks for the info.

 

[SomewhereinLA]

I have both camera,the Arri S and the Beaulieu R16, actually had, since I just sold my arri S, but kept the R16... Anyway, Both camera are great but very different. The Arri S was designed as a true motion picture camera. it is very flexible and work with many different type of lenses and accesories. The R16 is a much more contained camera, used a lot for the news and documentaries. The most popular pkg came with the 12-120 angenieu Zoom, not a popular camera for film making, with the notorious exeption of french director Claude Lelouche. Of course if you are into cinema "verite" then it's a great camera, it is much more ergonomic than the arri s. It will easilly fit in a bag pack as well.

Also on a side not, The Beaulieu 8mm is considered to be the best 8mm cameras ever made. They were used extensively in the movie "Natural born killer".