The TV camera: Past, present and future
Mar 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Spring Suptic
One key to predicting the future of a technology is being able to analyze its past. Over the past 50 years, Broadcast Engineering has followed technology trends. This article takes a look at the history of the television camera and predicts where the technology is headed.
The early days
Early cameras from the 1940s and 1950s may be dinosaurs now, but they're still relevant in that they've captured the curiosity of collectors like Chuck Pharis. He currently own 130 cameras, primarily made between the 1930s and 1960s.
This RCA Iconoscope camera was made around 1939. The camera paved the way for future technology advances. Photo courtesy Chuck Pharis.
Pharis was bitten by the camera bug at the age of seven when he watched the PGA Golf Tournament on ABC's “Wide World of Sports.” As an adult, he became a cameraman for that same program. He began collecting and restoring cameras after finding an old camera in a dumpster outside of a TV station. He took the camera home and rebuilt it into working condition.
Pharis' collection includes an RCA TK-30, which was the first camera he ever used. Not surprisingly, it's one of his favorites. The focus of his collection is on RCA and DuMont cameras from the late 1940s.
“They're black and white, and some of them are crudely made,” he says. “To be able to go back and take a piece of '40s television equipment — and some of this stuff has been sitting for 30 or 40 years in peoples' basements — and take it apart, rebuild it, and actually make an image on it is just fascinating to me.”
One challenge to his endeavor of bringing these cameras back to life is that the proper parts are difficult to come by.
The elusive camera that has yet to make it into Pharis' collection is the Iconoscope.
“It was the first decent, working camera tube,” he says. “It didn't look very good, but it made an image.”
RCA’s TK-30 and TK-31 were introduced in 1946 and used during the 1950s. Photo courtesy Chuck Pharis.
It took a lot of light to make an image that wasn't that good. However, once the basic circuit was made, people used it as a foundation to make better cameras. In the early days, Pharis says that there were a lot of experimental cameras homemade by TV stations. They were often strange looking and difficult to move around.
“And those got junked really fast,” he says.
In the late 1940s, the image orthicon was invented, and that was when TV as we know it today really got its start. It was on two GE image orthicon cameras that industry consultant John Luff started his career working at a college TV station. Color was just breaking onto the scene. And that's when camera technology really took off.
Color and mobility
“The move from black and white to color, from a technical standpoint, was a quantum leap,” Luff says. “It became one of the reasons TV studios grew such large engineering staffs.”
RCA’s TK-40 is considered the first color TV camera. Photo courtesy Chuck Pharis.
And while it's still a technical job, back then, Luff says, operating a camera was something of an art with position, temperature, alignment and location. A good video operator was highly prized. Then, with solid-state cameras, it became quite a different job, according to Luff. Cameras became more stable, and registration was set at the factory.
The monumental move from black and white to color came with an equally monumental camera. The RCA TK-40, which was soon followed by the TK-41, was enormous. It had three image orthicon cameras sandwiched into one case.
These cameras weighed several hundred pounds, and it took four people to carry them up to the top of a stadium.
“RCA tried to make these cameras a little lighter and easier to move,” Pharis says. “So, they came out with the TK-42. It was a miserable camera to operate because they put the zoom and focus controls right on the back of the camera instead of on the handles. And you couldn't tilt the camera down. You couldn't pan it properly. RCA improved it with the TK-43, which is the same camera body, but with the zoom and focus handles back on the camera.”
The first 60 units of RCA’s TK-42 camera were delivered in 1965. The camera featured a 4 1/2in image orthicon tube and three 1in Videocon tubes. Photo courtesy Bobby Ellerbee.
These first steps toward making cameras more portable were still far cries from the camcorders we use today.
“A camcorder was a physical impossibility 30 years ago,” Luff says.
A camera rig required two or three people to operate. One problem was that lighter weight camera cables were needed. The Hawkeye was developed as a portable camera with a portable recorder. The TK-76 offered the first practical CCD camera.
That mobility is important. Pharis remembers working on a 1970s disco show with a PCP-70 strapped to him. He could only carry it for one hour at a time. Two-shoulder camera rigs are not very portable portable. And now, all cameras are portable, as most manufacturers no longer make large studio cameras. Instead, portable cameras are placed into a sled to be used as a studio camera.
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