Beattie Screens?

[wiseowl]

I'm looking to buy a gridded screen for my sq and I am considering a Beattie. It looks like I'd have to get this mail order so will not be able to try it first. Has anyone here any experience of these,and what are your impressions of it? Does it live up to the manufatcurers claims?

Cheers

Martin

 

[Neil Souch]

Martin,
They do everything they say they do - big brightness increase on the viewing screen. I fitted the grid version into my Bronica ETRSi and it was well worth the cost. In fact that is the only problem - the cost!

Neil.

 

[John L]

Does anyone have experience with the competing "Brightscreen" product?

 

[jp80874]

Let there be Light, about two stops worth please.

I’m not clear what camera you are putting this on and where you are
That may be important, not sure.
I am very happy with a Bosscreen from Bromwell BT on my 4x5 Linhof Technikardan
I am adding a Beattie to my 8x10 late Sinar P with metering back based on trying a friend’s Linhof 8x10.

If you go to the Beattie website they will tell you where there are dealers in the USA. In Ohio I ordered mine from Mid West Photo Exchange. They said deliveries can be erratic, but mine came in three weeks. They called Friday to get credit card info and said they would send it to me then.

Hope that helps.

John

 

[Sean]

I recenty put a Beattie in my mamiya 645 super and really like the brightness increase. The do show up on ebay from time to time. You may want to save a favorite ebay search "beattie" and it will email you updates. I got mine used in new condition for a fraction of the new cost..

 

[Todd J. Bertolini]

I tried one in a Hasselblad 500C/M-the increase in brightness was immediately noticable,but I found it lacked "contrast" and found that for my use it made it actually harder to focus. Look around,with the amount of people dumping their medium format gear to buy digital(gasp!!) gear you can probably find one used at a substantial savings.

 

[CameraMan]

I started using the Beattie screen out of curiousity. There were just too many positive
write-ups about it when it first hit the market. So I found an excuse to buy one just so I could find out how good it performed.

To go to the extreme, I bought one for my 4x5 camera. View camera users will know how dark and difficult it is to work with glass screens. After I got the screen installed, all I could say was "oh my God". The difference was like night and day!

Since then, I had the screen installed in my RB67 and all my Rolleiflexes and Rolleicords.

PS: I have not tried other 3rd party focusing screens yet. But there are heaps of praises bestowed upon the Maxwell screen from the users.