Bolex H16

This is a light wieght and relatively quiet MOS camera great to put in a back pack for remote outdoor B-roll shooting. It requires no batteries and there is little that will go wrong in field with this camera. However, an external light meter will be need to calculate exposure.

Because it uses standard C-mount lenses there is no shortage of cheap good quality lenses for it. The Bolex Rex model uses modified c-mount lenses that have a longer back focal distance, to the two cameras can not use the same lenses. Also, since there are many TV C-mount lenses availbe for very little money but these lenses are not the proper achromatic lenses need for film. However, TV lenses can be used when shooting black and white film and a primary color filter is used (red, green, blue).

Even though this camera does not have a registration pin the film movement is still fairly steady. This fact and the cameras ability to take single frame exposures make ideal as an entry level animation camera.

Though more easily used with the Rex the Bolex standard can be fitted with an anamorphic lens. It seems that a lens designed for this is the Vistascope lens, which has the somewhat rare horizontal magnification of only 1.5X instead of the Cinema standard of 2X like Cinemascope and Panavision. So, film shot with the vistavision lens should be projected using the same or similar 1.5X horizontal magnification.

Pictured here the Bolex H16 is mounted in an Mitchell 16 sound proofing blimp.This is an exceptional blimp made for the Mitchell 16mm camera but is easily adaptable to other 16mm cameras. This blimp features a follow focus system that works in conjunction with the parrallax adjust on the auxillary view finder. The auxillary view finder shown hear is from a Mitchell BNC 35mm camera and is a vast improvement over the Bolex's view finders.

This particular blimp has an electronic remote follow focus control system which makes this a very unique Bolex studio camera. The only part missing to make a true studio camera rig would be a crystal sync motor like the sort from Tobin Cinema Systems.