80's tube ENG cams fun [Archive]

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Dave A

To all of my fellow ancient broadcasters, check out my Sony BVP-30 with the first Betacam BVV-1 back and the original Fuji 12x lens. Plumbs in the cam and a record only deck. Record and pray. I bought it used in or so for $18k. What was I thinking but I had a production business to make work and I needed the best...of the day. And it has been around the house since then as a doorstop as technology left it in the dust. Now it needs some history love.

It is the last gasp of Sony ENG tube cams for the field and the first Betacam field deck. And it still works like a champ. I dusted it off and after mistakenly loading a SP tape that will not work and it is alive with a plain Beta tape. It is as pretty in color, registration and recording as 30 years ago. The color reproduction is vibrant beyond chip color. Plumbs rule. Now I have to get something digitized for stills to show. The cam mic is on the bench for remounting. Stay tuned. I just started.

It weighs a ton and I am missing the tripod latch base but that is for later. If you look at the cam closely you will see a RCA Victor brass logo on the side. I did that in the day removing the Sony badge and subbing a 50's RCA tv brass script just to confuse the locals. They looked and scratched their heads.

I would like to hear from others that may still have working Plumbicon cams still making a picture. Ikegami HL-series cams are welcome. Or am I alone as usual.

old_tv_nut

I'm not at all familiar with details of the many camera models, but you really floored me with the revelation that there was no playback on this. Wherever did they get that idea?

Electronic M

It was the same with consumer betamax camcorders. They wanted to use a MUCH smaller head drum than standard...They did, but it used some oddball method of recording that was too difficult/expensive to play back off that mini drum, but played fine on a stand alone deck...Part of what hurt beta in the format wars.

old_tv_nut

It was the same with consumer betamax camcorders. They wanted to use a MUCH smaller head drum than standard...They did, but it used some oddball method of recording that was too difficult/expensive to play back off that mini drum, but played fine on a stand alone deck...Part of what hurt beta in the format wars.

Thanks - I vaguely recall that now that you mention it.

jr_tech

Any details? I am really scratching my head trying to figure out how they did that. :scratch2:
Full alpha wrap??

jr

dauberich

Hi.

I'm also a big fan of the BVP-30!

Together with the BVV-1 (.. not PVV-1, that was a later only professional recorder P..!), not Broadcast (B..!) and the chest-pad it was a perfectly balanced camcorder, that gave you even at medium shots a good steadiness. Steady shots also need weight and of course cams in these days were heavy..

The no-playback-thing:
Yes, many Recorders in these days were only capable of recording and couldn't play back anything. But coming from 16mm film in ENG that wasn't really a flaw. Checking your "real" picture (o.k., it was b/w in these days) already was a step ahead compared to the e.g. SR2 (Arri) viewfinder that only showed you your shot, but not the exposure or how the film will handle the light.
There even were Recorders like the BVU-50 Sony U-Matic recorder, that could not roll back the tape. There was only one knop on the front: "REC".
If the tapes you took with you were rolled to,the end, you were lost..
But in these days the Cassettes were little bit like the film rolls: Insert it, "exposure" it, see it again at he editing suite.

The BVV-1 already was a little step ahead, there: You could roll back the tape. (the knop on top, that was no switch but more a kind of a clutch pressing the motor to the spools off the cassette.
Here is my BVP-30/BVV-1: https://www.engcameracollection.com/kopie-von-sony-bvp-30p-2-2-2
hope you like it.

By the way: the Camera was also available as a saticon-version, with almost the same look https://www.engcameracollection.com/blank-xvhlu

kf4rca

I was fortunate that my station didn't jump on the Beta format till the BVV5/BVP5 (BVW505) combo came out. Then they bought 5 sets.
They later bought BVW300's and then later bought the SX cams when digital came out.

dauberich

Hi kf4rca.
'Hope your BVW-300 were the later ones that were more sensitive (lens on chip).
I remember the color of the first BVW-300P (Pal) they had a light tendency to green in gamma. Grey-chart was clean and linear, but in Skintones and in "real live" in generell this tint was obvious.
The later 300 (300AP or 300A) not only were more sensitive, they also were free of that problem.
Same it was with the BVP-7P resp. 7AP.
Or has that been an PAL-only problem and the NTSC-300 was clean? (if any NTSC signal can be "clean" anyway ;-)

old_tv_nut

Hi kf4rca.
'Hope your BVW-300 were the later ones that were more sensitive (lens on chip).
I remember the color of the first BVW-300P (Pal) they had a light tendency to green in gamma. Grey-chart was clean and linear, but in Skintones and in "real live" in generell this tint was obvious.
The later 300 (300AP or 300A) not only were more sensitive, they also were free of that problem.
Same it was with the BVP-7P resp. 7AP.
Or has that been an PAL-only problem and the NTSC-300 was clean? (if any NTSC signal can be "clean" anyway ;-)

I wonder if the PAL and NTSC versions used different color matrix values?

Chip Chester

Dave, sounds like you could use a playback machine... like a non-SP rack mount machine. I may be able to set you up, especially if you'll be in town in a few weeks.

Two quick camera notes. Our shop had a newbie tech straight out of the Navy, who pronounced Ikegami as I-keg-me.

Last HL-79 I saw was on top of a rack in a post house, functioning as a color bar generator.

Chip

Dave A

Thanks for all the international contributions to this thread. I keep learning. And I did mistake my BVV-1 for a PVV-1. Corrected on my first thread.

That still keeps it as a record only with a bit of help as you record. It does have warning indicator lamps on the side of the deck for RF/servo/humid/slack/tape end/battery. You would get a red lamp in the VF if something went wrong. RF was the best warning which said you had a head clog. And you could rewind the tape to wherever but why? If it went slack then; power down/remove battery/install battery/power up.

I used mine yesterday out in the snowy backyard on a NOS tape. I did the auto registration and all was good. White balance was a bit to the red side. If anyone has a manual in any version I could use it to tune up the auto white. I remember that you had to hold the switch in the auto white position but forget which of the multiple white controls to tune up.

I also hooked it to a NOS Sony DNV-5 SX type recorder as it has the same 50 pin connector connection. No joy as I expected. It powered but no video probably looking for component or better. I wonder what the top Beta docking deck could be used on the BVP-30.

The DVV-5 is available for trade for something interesting in the same tube era.

And somewhere around here is a Sony VA-5 composite adaptor that would fit on the front of the BVV deck to allow composite video to be sent to the deck as a stand-alone Beta record deck with a separate power supply still with no replay.

There may have been a camera adaptor to allow the BVP-30 to connect to a CCU via a 50 pin connector.

Dauberich...I remember the Saticon version being the BVP-300. Correct me if my memory is failing.

Chip...I do have a PVW- near-mint SP deck and all is well here for playback. Stop by anytime and bring me an Ikegami HL-77...my first cam at WCEE. I remember the cards came out the back end and having to install shims to keep them in place.

dauberich

Oh, I think there many great Saticon Cameras from Sony, some closer to broadcast others tended more to the professional segment:

The strangest I think was the BVP-150 as I don't understand what i was meant for. Maybe it was the BVP-30 as a non dockable version:
That's what she looks like: https://www.engcameracollection.com/kopie-von-sony-bvp-30p-2-2

And this is the DCX , that was Saticon only but looked like a BVP-300 or a BVP-330: https://www.engcameracollection.com/sony-dxc-p

And of course the BVP-3, that was a BVP-30 with Saticons instead of Plumbicons: https://www.engcameracollection.com/blank-xvhlu

Both the and the BVP-3 have great colour for a saticon camera.
Less lagging and better skintones than JVCs or Panasonics.

The BVP-300 I think was the predecessor of the 330. No autocentering and maybe some other not yet features. The body looks very much like the s one. But I'm sure it was plumbicon..

old_tv_nut

Somewhat off the 80's ENG topic, but may be some indication of the question about color differences:

When we did the format comparison tests for setting the HDTV standard in the early 90s, the HD cameras all used Sony Saticon tubes. However, Sony would not make any versions with scan rates other than interlaced; the others were done with a BTS camera with interchangeable scan rates up to interlaced and a specially modified BTS camera to do 787.5 progressive (Zenith's proposal). Sony sold the Saticons to BTS, but would not sell their proprietary low-noise pre-amps, so BTS had to unsolder the preamp from the tube face, return it to Sony, and solder on their own preamp.

Regarding color, the Sony camera was unique, and had a matrix that did not match the HD standard at all - it had a unique Sony look. IIRC, the yellows were super-bright compared to the real world, and actually ended up outside the HDTV gamut, although they really were not that way on the chart.

LeRoy Demarsh of Kodak and others including me did measurements on the Macbeth color chart for all the cameras and calculated the best (least mean square error) color matrix for each. It turned out that the BTS cameras were already close to proper. In fact, they may have been precisely correct theoretically, but it was hard to tell, as the Saticons had a positive but temporary image burn in, that is, the brighter patches got even brighter over the first 5 minutes or so of staring at the pattern, so a red patch got even redder, a blue patch got bluer, etc. This meant that our scope measurements depended somewhat on which order we measured the patches in. The Sony had to be modified to give standard color reproduction, so that the subjective comparisons of resolution (done by non-expert viewers) would not be confused by differences in color.

So, this makes me think the observations above about color oddities may have something to do with a unique "Sony look."

Dave A

Dauberich...how did these power hogs ever operate on the skinny NP-x in that onboard battery tray for very long? Mine came with the AB battery mount.

The 30 is my only ENG pioneer unlike your great collection. Sony had so many variants in the day. No room here for more but a few early RCA stripe-tube color home video cams. The CC-001 and CC-002 from or so are my favs. One great working 002. That is another thread.

When the vast whiteness of snow leaves I will find something colorful to capture a few snapshots of video of the 30 and the 002.

Dave A

Wayne, in the day we in the field at local stations always noted the "look". Sony was "warm" and Ikegami was "cold". In our case we bought HL-77's (price being the factor for a small corn-fed station) fed to JVC 3/4" decks (price again). I do still have some of that footage I have salvaged on a HD. That was the end of our knowledge of the gamut specs. We never looked at the others as we did not consider them "broadcast".

And we were chasing the ABC affiliate up the road that beat us on the air with field color from the Akai 150 1/4" color system. Now that is the cheap way to be first.

Telecolor

If you mentioned H.D. tube cameras, I'm curios how the image provided by one is.
In Europe we had "Bosch" KCH . Plumbicon and saticon. Never seen images taken with one.
B.t.w., some tube cameras had very vivid colours, which I like. On youtube I've seen only C.C.D. camera (an "Sony") with vivid colours.
Can you find Betacam (not Betacam S.P.) cassettes today?
And can you plase post some images filmed witn your "Sony" BVP-30. :) Dind't saw on youtube any filming wiht one such camera.

old_tv_nut

If you mentioned H.D. tube cameras, I'm curios how the image provided by one is.
In Europe we had "Bosch" KCH . Plumbicon and saticon. Never seen images taken with one...[/B]

BTS was the joint venture of Bosch and Philips.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_Television_Systems_Inc.

The color performance of HD and SD Saticon cameras is not theoretically different. It depends on the design of the color splitting prisms, which could be the same, the response of the Saticon photoconductor, which was the same, and the color matrix, which could be the same. The resolution of the Saticons was an issue, however, and special HD Saticons with smaller beam size and smaller cathodes were made for HD. This made the predicted life of the HD tubes shorter, and they were only guaranteed for several hundred hours. We did a preemptive tube replacement on our camera at about 800 hours, but there was really no sign of degradation at that time. Compared to later solid-state chip cameras, the tube cameras were noisier, as the faceplate is capacitive, producing a 6dB per octave roll-off. This is compensated by feedback increasing gain by 6 dB per octave, also producing a triangular noise spectrum, so the wider bandwidth of HD increased the noise greatly. Fortunately, the eye is less sensitive to high frequency noise, so the effect was not as bad as indicated by the total noise power.
Nevertheless, the video preamplifiers were limited in frequency response to about 22 Mhz instead of the 32 MHz required to get full horizontal resolution.

Chip cameras, on the other hand, generally have a flat noise spectrum (and less noise over-all), produced by the charge-counting noise of the pixels plus the semiconductor dark noise.

The small spot size also meant limited beam current, so the HD cameras were more subject to highlight overload and "comet-tailing" than SD cameras. The HD Saticon cameras used bias lighting to reduce lag, just as the SD cameras did, and showed the same effects of lag being different for highlights, midtones, and shadows (worst in shadows).

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Telecolor

800 hours... man, that about 3 month of camera use. But if they needed more pixels, why they didn't made the tubes bigger, so they could have the same number of "pixels", but larger ones so the tubes could last longer, much longer.
But S.D. camera tubesc last longer, no?
And what is that "comet-tailing effect"?

old_tv_nut

Comet tailing is the long persistence of very bright highlights due to insufficient beam current to discharge the photosensor in one TV field.
Here's an example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4qamJ1cDfo
Edit: common places to see this were on brass band instruments and women's jewelry or sequined dresses.

Saticons, Plumbicons, and similar tubes have the problem. Special design changes were made over the years to reduce it: diode electron guns, which produce cathode rays with a lower variance of electron velocity (a lower "temperature"); plus special circuits that sense the highlight and momentarily increase the beam current (but reduce the resolution momentarily also).

And yes, SD camera tubes lasted longer.

I think the reasons for not making larger tubes were several, all having to do with increased cost: entirely new and bigger lenses (TV cameras already needed special lenses with long back focus to pass the image through the long path in the prism block); new larger prism blocks; possibly, difficulty in making larger faceplates/targets with good uniformity (requiring new manufacturing equipment as well). Also, a larger faceplate would have more capacitance, making it harder to get the high frequency response needed.

I will note that due to the smaller image size than 35mm film, the depth of field was increased compared to film. It was hard to sell HD as a movie making technology, because cinematographers felt they had plenty of depth with 35mm by using a smaller lens opening, and wanted the capability to reduce depth of field and blur the background more in many shots.

Dave A

Thanks to all for contributing to this tube camera thread. Great info coming in. Plumbs and Saticons were the day. I have my fav as you know. Keep up the great info on these great cameras...for all of us that remember them. I found my VA-5 adaptor today. Hooray, if I pull my deck from the camera I have a record only deck that can input analog in the field from some other source. Now I can copy my DVD's to Beta!

old_tv_nut

Another thing about Plumbicons, Saticons, and such:

As the beam scanned the target, in almost all areas (except those pesky comet-tailing highlights), it had more than enough total current to discharge the target. This means that the charge would be neutralized by just the leading edge of the beam (a variable portion due to the varying charge level). So, the effective beam shape wasn't nice and symmetrical, but actually was a crescent shape. The beam was also partially discharging the next lower scan line, so the crescent was like an arc with the center toward the lower right and the pointy ends more up toward the right and down toward the bottom. This effect was called "beam sharpening," and resulted in the resolution for lines and edges slanted from lower left to upper right being better than for lines slanted the other way. A really fancy camera CCU would have a two-dimensional detail enhancer (using analog delay lines, or later, digital processing) that would allow independent adjustment of the detail sharpness for left-slanting and right-slanting lines.

old_tv_nut

CEI color camera brochures and prices from .
Cameras designed for field use plus expansion for studio use.

Anyone familiar with this brand?

http://www.bretl.com/tvarticles/documents/CEI310brochure.pdf

http://www.bretl.com/tvarticles/documents/CEI310infosheet.pdf

http://www.bretl.com/tvarticles/documents/CEI330adsheet.pdf

http://www.bretl.com/tvarticles/documents/CEI300SeriesCameraPriceList.pdf

Telecolor

Wonder if you can do a live on facebook with one.

J Ballard

Wayne has done an excellent job outlining the problems of tube cameras for HD.

The first time I saw an HD ( line) camera was at the SMPTE Winter Conference in SFO in , made by Ikegami and using Saticon tubes. The resolution was quite good, but the noise was obvious. Later, while at NBC, we purchased a 30mm lead oxide (PBO) camera, also from Ikegami, and this camera did not suffer the image retention of the Saticon camera, and seemed to have much improved noise performance.

I believe that the lead oxide tube operated at higher signal current, but it likely had a much improved FET head amplifier. In addition, some manufacturers played games with the gamma corrector near black by placing a reverse correction that clipped the noise. It was not correct, technically, but subjectively, it was much quieter.

Wayne mentioned the special FET from Sony (?) that was sought by RCA for its cameras, but they would not sell it to a non-Japanese manufacturer.

In the late s, there was a desire in the US and Europe for a HD production standard other than interlaced, such as the Zenith 787.5 line system. Hats off to them. I recall RCA Laboratories telling NBC the next TV standard has to have two attributes-component coding and progressive scan.

So NBC, AT&T, and Zenith bought Bosch KCH- flexible standard cameras with Saticons. By changing dip switches and many ROMS, you could operate the camera in interlace or progressive. The complete camera, including image enhancer, was almost $500K. I wrote the PO, and no one flinched.

AT this time, Bosch and Philips merged their broadcast divisions, and camera development moved from Darmstadt to Breda. There was a lot of bad blood between the two engineering staffs, so assistance from the new company was a problem.

Noise from the Saticon camera was always an issue, especially when the signal was sent to an MPEG encoder. We generally ran the camera at the lowest sensitivity possible-minus 6 dB. But the pictures were high in resolution.

Later in the evolution of tube cameras, the diode gun tube was introduced to improve resolution. That it did, but only static resolution. The beam size was so small that it was inadequate for the complete discharge of a 525 scan line picture. The net result was an after image on moving, high contrast scenes known as "stern waving." I recall seeing the actor Danny DeVito in white shirt and tux performing in front of a diode gun equipped camera-the image resembled an unterminated delay line or coax, but it was moving with the scene.
The best advice about pickup tubes came from Bob Neuhauser of RCA-the electron optics of a tube must match the scanning standard. He was so right.
This was all so long ago, but it seems like yesterday.

JB

old_tv_nut

So NBC, AT&T, and Zenith bought Bosch KCH- flexible standard cameras with Saticons. By changing dip switches and many ROMS, you could operate the camera in interlace or progressive. The complete camera, including image enhancer, was almost $500K. I wrote the PO, and no one flinched.

JB

A few more notes on the KCH-. It was very flexible, but not quite enough for the progressive scan. The viewfinder could not run at 47kHz horizontal and had to be redesigned. Also, the digital control circuits ran at 27 MHz. These took special high speed (for the time) CMOS ICs, so we had to buy them only from Philips to have stock for any repairs.

Zenith and their partner, AT&T each bought a camera, and with the modifications we were charged $800k apiece. These cameras also followed the same practice as Sony and others at the time, of reducing the video bandwidth to 22 MHz or so to reduce the noise, but we needed 32 MHz to get sufficient H resolution with progressive scan. We immediately discovered the 27 MHz digital clock and control signals were running all over the chassis, and spent a lot of effort adding shielding and grounds to get it out of the video.

We also had to design and build our own aperture corrector/edge enhancer to work with the progressively scanned signal.

Fun!

Telecolor

Half a milion U.S. Dollars for a televison camera? :yikes: :screwy:

Electronic M

Half a milion U.S. Dollars for a televison camera? :yikes: :screwy:

Bleeding edge prototypes ain't cheap if you adjusted for inflation the money RCA spent on any part of the NTSC color standard back in the early 50's those HD cameras would not look that expensive...

J Ballard

Once we got the HD cameras operating in the desired standard (i/59.94 or 787.5/59.94), we had to connect the camera to other equipment-sync gens, distribution, test signal gens, VTRS). In the late s, reference signals could be H&V drive, tri-level, or bi-level-there was no one standard.

Recording/editing meant using the Sony HDD- digital R-R VTR, but it would only work on /60. NBC and others tried ordering a VTR that would operate on other standards, but Sony said no, presumably not wanting to upset NHK. So we ordered the VTRs anyway, and said we would modify them; that would void the warranty, they said. I believe they were $300K each and the tape stock was $/reel. NBC ordered two, and Zenith and others ordered some, and modified them in house, despite loud protests from Sony.

To be fair, Bosch had an analog HD VTR, but based on earlier experience with the HDVS Sony system, analog machines were noisy and had poor K factor.
Bosch later married two D-1 VTRs together and were able to record pixels per line, similar to HD Cam much later.

The HDD-s suffered from head clogging, despite the installation of a razor blade "cleaner" in the tape path. If you were unaware of this feature, you could injure your fingers. There are some surviving machines at the Museum of Broadcast technology in Woonsocket, RI. Staff from the Museum will be at NAB this year, so stop by.

You cannot imagine the political headwinds against progressive scan, and I have enduring respect for Zenith and others such as Kerns Powers of RCA Laboratories who had patents on 720P. Another was Tony Uttendayle (SP?) of ABC and yet another Jukka Hammalinen of Panasonic The Japanese publicly were against anything other than /60, and even tried to convince the Europeans to drop 50 HZ. One thing the Japanese did not understand in the emerging HD debate was the powerful influence of the computer industry in the US, and they naturally wanted pro-scan and square pixels; they got the latter.
Eventually, Panasonic broke the log jam with their D-5 HD VTR which had 720P mode buried in the menus. Later, they made 720P cameras that ABC used on "Monday Night Football." BTS made a 720 P CCD camera, and soon thereafter, there were switchable standard cameras from Breda using their 9MM pixel DPM sensor. The Japanese finally began making multi standard equipment.
One thing about UHD-it will sink the interlace/progressive argument for good.

Thanks Wayne for the comments on the KCH- mods.

old_tv_nut

Regarding recording progressive scan on the HDD-, Zenith didn't modify their HDD-, but used the "Format Converter" devised by Charlie Rhodes (formerly Tektronix, and head of the Advanced Television Testing Center at the time). This device segmented each frame into rectangular pieces and fit the pieces into the Sony image format for recording, and then reassembled the progressive frame on playback.

This device was used for all the test material in all proposed formats at the ATTC so they could use unmodified Sony tape equipment.

The Sony tape heads were very sensitive to contamination and wear, and we were constantly monitoring the signal quality, having to replace the heads several times over the years of testing. Later, in the 's, when we were in new facilities, smoke from some burned food in the kitchen appliance division got into the ventilation system. It was just a nuisance smell for our employees, but it clogged the Sony heads, which had to be replaced.

Before the HD tape machines arrived, Zenith's work on HD used a frame store that could hold 10 seconds of HD material. The semiconductor memories at the time required a 6-foot tall rack to hold enough chips for 10 seconds of video, and cost several hundred thousand dollars in itself.

Dave A

My thanks to all of you for a great thread that started with a simple note to plumb owners of the Sony cameras of the early Beta era. What has happened is a great history of all of the HD efforts and the cams of the era. Keep it going and don't worry about my original. Your knowledge goes well beyond my question and is welcome.

J Ballard

Thank Wayne, again, for the clarification.

I recall being at a meeting with the late Carl Eilers, who said the VTR modification would "amount to a xtal change." That might have been an oversimplification, so I stand corrected.

Before the Tek designed format converter arrived at the ATTC, we were likely recording at i (2x 525i) at NBC/RCA with the Bosch camera and Sony VTR. I know we didn't lug a format converter around on remotes!

Some people in the HD committees wanted to perform all tests in lines-you can guess who. I'll give Charlie Rhodes credit for standing his ground on non-converted source material.

The Sony VTR/tape combination was very tricky. I recall a visit by the Sony field engineer who cleaned our machine, and the bit errors were low. Satisfied, he left for the trip back to NJ. Gradually, throughout the day, the bers began climbing on the VTR, until it was unusable.

I called the field engineer's home number, and told his wife that we needed him back in the Midwest. "Oh, he just walked in.." Needless to say, he didn't want to return.

Wayne-remember that day?

old_tv_nut

I started another thread on early HD test material so as not to clog up this one:
http://www.videokarma.org/showthread.php?t=

Regarding the format converter and Sony VTR, Zenith had no choice but to lug it around everywhere. We did demos at three political conventions, taped a Chicago Bulls basketball game, and taped a 4th of July parade in Evanston, IL.

And yes, we did run the camera gain at -6dB whenever possible, to reduce noise; but this also made the comet-tailing worse.

At the political convention in the Astrodome in Houston, they couldn't find a place for the recorder and format converter, and we had to run feet of RGB baseband coax out of the convention to our truck. We had distribution amps at foot intervals IIRC, and our tech, Steve Heinz, had to get the top level of security clearance so he could walk the cable access in case anything went wrong.

The conventions also taught us some things, like MPEG-2 codecs do not do well with confetti drops! Too much unpredictable random motion over most of the image. We also learned that the KCH camera ventilation fans loved to eat the flimsy paper confetti circles - we had to open the cameras and clean the stuff out before things overheated.

On one of the conventions, we had to shoot from the back of the hall. We had a rush delivery of a long lens from Angenieux, and when we turned on, couldn't get the 3x telextender to work. Frantic calls revealed that it was disabled when the lens was used on HD cameras, because Angenieux thought it was not of sufficient quality for high definition.

At another convention, we were given a spot on the camera platform. Our signal was converted to HD so it could be used in the regular production if they wanted, but we had a tough time matching the gamma and black stretch of the NTSC cameras. Our associated gear was below the raised platform, with a chest-height wall all around. We had a constant problem of convention delegates putting their half-used soft drinks on the railing, posing a threat of dousing our gear, despite signs all around the outside asking people not to do it. Once when someone pointedly set his drink right above the gear, I "accidentally" knocked it off on his shoes.

Adlershof

I was fortunate that my station didn't jump on the Beta format till the BVV5/BVP5 (BVW505) combo came out.
And with it the big, ugly red smear. Colours were inferior to Plumbicons as well. The BVP-7 was quite an improvement over the 5.


Both the and the BVP-3 have great colour for a saticon camera.
I think this is actual BVP-3 video, with the revealing Saticon streaking in the night footage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGDtih0Sgis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4vhlMlxTxA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5avZobt5XU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFKeH0RmJI0


The BVP-300 I think was the predecessor of the 330. No autocentering and maybe some other not yet features.
While the 330 could be used with the same CCU than the BVP-360 I think.

Can't find it back, but it had been asked here as well: With an adaptor, docked instead of the Betacam recorder, the BVP-3(0) could also be used as production camera.


If you mentioned H.D. tube cameras, I'm curios how the image provided by one is.
In Europe we had "Bosch" KCH . Plumbicon and saticon. Never seen images taken with one.
If you believe http://euscreen.eu/item.html?id=EUS_219DFF8EEDA5CC0BE83, where these cameras can be seen at 1:40, several hours of programming had been produced with them every day during IFA . I only saw Bosch KCK, Philips LDK 6 and RCA TK 47 there...

Once a talkshow appeared that had indeed been recorded with this gear, as the continuity announcement proudly mentioned. The 16:9 image, letterboxed into the PAL signal (not even PALplus at this time), could be described as looking like KCM 125 pictures. No surprise, considering that even the housing of this last hurray from Darmstadt had been used for the very early HD cameras that have hardly ever been seen in Europe itself.

B.t.w., some tube cameras had very vivid colours, which I like.
Well, the BBC did not like the Marconi Mark VII for this reason...
The skin tones shown by these cameras could indeed be questionable, although this one (which also experiments with shots that simply could not be done with IOs) got them quite right I think:
https://my.mail.ru/mail/alvem/video/43/.html

Or the vivid colours of the Fernseh KCU 40, a camera also disliked in the UK (ot at least at some local station there), for reasons that are beyond me:
https://my.mail.ru/mail/tina-/video/10/.html

This video is also a nice example for comet tails.

Like yet another one, from the same venue but this time dirty stuff where the KCU 40 / KCR had to cope with adverse lighting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32x5moK8P2I

Note also the horizontal bars that pop up time and again, such as at 27:30. That's another characteristic effect, in German called Mikrofonie. When it gets really loud it can cause the tubes in the camera to vibrate, and these bars appear in the picture.

And in case you also note the occasional blue and red spikes, although the digital compression widely swallowed them in these videos: This is known as "SECAM fire", in this case appearing on tape drop-outs.

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