Show and Tell: Pro Cameras

Hi there. This is my collection of professional video cameras. I’ve always loved collecting professional equipment you know, consumer equipment is always so cut-rate, but pro gear in pretty much every field is often built the way I wish everything was built. I’ve always been fascinated with camcorders, too, and in particular the ones you see on, like, news cameramen’s shoulders - great big monsters that look like they’ve got every single setting in the world. The apparent complexity of these things and their, like, “seriousness,” compared to consumer gear always fascinated me, and I’m lucky enough that I live in an area where these started to show up on the used market. So I’ve been accumulating this collection for about four or five years at this point.

00:39 - Now the fortunate thing, if you’re interested in this stuff too: I’ll let you know these are basically worthless now. If you go to eBay to buy these things, you’ll almost pay more in shipping than you do for the device itself in some cases. So if you’ve got a hundred bucks or so to spare, you can actually get your own professional camcorder, as long as you’re cool with the fact that it’s utterly useless. These are all very old; they range from about ‘85 to 2001 or thereabouts and they all shoot SD video. I’m actually not going to show you what the picture from all these looks like up close, because it looks exactly the same as a consumer camcorder, it’s completely unremarkable.

01:11 - Eventually I’ll do a little short video where I take these all outside when it’s not so dreary like it is right now, and I’ll just do test shots with each one of them so you can see what they look like, and you’re gonna go- “Oh, that’s boring.” They all look exactly the same. Their job is just to take standard definition pictures at the highest possible quality which, became less of a challenge in the ‘90s as CCDs got really good, so like, all of these look about as good as my 1993 Sony Handycam. I don’t collect them because they do something remarkable that I can use, I collect them because they’re fascinating to me- They’ve got quirks, and they’ve got weird little features, and I just wanna do a show and tell where I just show you those features. I’m not gonna go over all the details of how all the switches and settings work because that’ll take six hours, I’m just gonna show you why each one of these is significant to me. So I’ve kinda got three different categories here, I’ve got cameras, camcorders, and dockable cameras.

02:01 - So I’ll start with the cameras, ‘cause they’re simple. Let me just make some room. [grunting and thumping] So this here is the Sony DXC-M7, and it’s pretty much the most basic camera-type camera that I own. You may recall if you watched my video on the big red JVC, which I’ll link in the description here, that the purpose of a camera like this is to take video and then send it somewhere else to be recorded, so consequently, this thing has no recorder mechanism of it’s own. Instead, on the side here, just like the JVC, it’s got this great big connector with, like, 26 pins in it, and you hook up a cable, and that cable carries the video from the camera away to a thing called a CCU- -that’s “Camera Control Unit,” it’s a remote control that sits back in the control room and lets somebody change all the settings on the camera while the operator focuses on focusing, framing and zooming. -or back to a VTR, which is a “Video Tape Recorder.

” 02:55 - If you watched my video on the history of home video, you may recall that home video cameras used to have separate videotape recorders, they weren’t built into the camera itself. Well, that never stopped in industry - in commercial video production, they actually still do that to this day. Now I should mention - the fact that this one only works with a remote recorder or console, and this one has it’s own built-in recorder, kinda divides these into two different categories. It’s sorta vague. There’s two terms for these things: ENG, which is “Electronic News Gathering”: - that’s, like, a news cameraman taking video of a burning building. And EFP, which is “Electronic Field Production” which is like, taking video of a golf tournament, or interviews with somebody out in the world rather than in a studio.

03:32 - Both of these cameras can be used in the field, but this one’s more oriented towards having, like, a production van parked nearby that’s got a bunch of switching equipment in it, whereas this one is more oriented towards a completely standalone, “man with a camera” sort of production. I just call ‘em all “ENG cameras” for short, because they all work for news, and it rolls off the tongue easier than “ENG/EFP.” Anyway, so, the sort of VTR that you would connect to this thing is much like this one here: [clank] [grunt] [thud] This is a Sony VO-8800 it records on U-matic which I won’t show you because this thing jams every time I pop the top on it. And to get this thing going, we just plug this in here. [clanking] And plug this in here.

04:10 - Now, we power up the VTR And there, we have a display. And if we press record now- -the camera comes on, and now we’re ready to go. I can put this on my shoulder, and I can go out and shoot video of whatever, and the only thing I have to worry about is this one cable that I’m trailing behind me. These cables come in lengths up to, like, a thousand feet. This obviously has video and audio out from the camera, but it’s also got video that goes back to the camera so the control room can show the camera operator a picture from, like whatever other camera is transmitting at the moment.

04:43 - It’s got intercom signals, it’s got multiple different video formats it’s got everything you could possibly need as you walk around operating the camera, all packed into one cable so you don’t have to have a whole bunch of other cables strung along behind you snagging on things. But that’s, like, pretty much what this does, right - like, you’ve seen the whole story of this type of camera. If you watch that video on the big red JVC, I explain what a bunch of the switches and, like, the lens features and stuff like that do, and all of that applies here. In fact, all that stuff applies to all of these cameras. It’s like collecting wrenches. You can get wrenches from ten different manufacturers over ten different years, but they’re all basically wrenches.

05:19 - So I kinda have this one just because it’s a very nice looking studio camera, like, very basic, very straightforward, and because I have a matching complement to it. This here is it’s older brother - it’s the DXC-M3 instead of M7, and it’s pretty much the same camera. Like if you were to compare these side by side you’d find pretty much the same switches and features and capabilities on both of them. The only real difference is since this one is a little bit older - - it’s from like ‘85 or so - it’s got videotubes for its image sensors instead of solid-state CCDs, which didn’t really become a thing in studio stuff until the really late 80s. So it’s like, the same camera, made in ‘88 and ‘85, and that’s kinda cool.

05:58 - But otherwise, not much to write home about with these, so let me show you the camcorders next. Alright, so here’s my first camcorder. This is actually the newest camera I own in this category, it’s from 2001. So this is a fully self contained camcorder, it just takes a videotape, and the most interesting thing about it really is the format that it takes. This is the Panasonic AG-DVC200, and the DV stands for DV tape, which you might be familiar with the context of MiniDV, which was really popular in like, the late ‘90s and 2000s, I think. There were tons of consumer camcorders, many of them very very small, that took miniDV.

06:29 - Here’s, like, a typical - well, not so typical, but - this is a consumer camcorder that takes this stuff. This camera, however, does not take MiniDV. See, the “mini” in “miniDV” actually means something: there is a full size DV. I did not know this for a long time. It’s quite a bit bigger. See it’s, uh, yeah. It’s exactly the same thing. What’s in here is the same as what’s in a MiniDV tape, it’s just more of it, so that this camera will get better recording time. Also, because this camera is a professional model, it doesn’t actually use straight “DV,” it uses a different format called “DVCPRO.

” 07:02 - DVCPRO is the exact same thing as DV, it takes the same tapes, but it records with, like, a slightly different digital format, so you get a little higher quality here than you would on a DV tape, but I think it runs at the same speed. Sony made another format called “DVCAM” that also takes ordinary DV tape but it records on it like 30 percent faster, so you get a lot less time, but much higher quality. But other than that this is just a camcorder, you press record and it records, it’s got a couple more controls on it because it’s not a standalone camera, so for instance, you’ve got the audio level controls here ‘cause those can’t be set somewhere else, ‘cause you’re gonna record it on the tape. And you’ve got like, some extra audio routing controls here, but, otherwise, this is not terribly different from the first camera I showed you, it just happens to have the recording mechanism. So let me show you the next one which is a little more interesting.

07:45 - So this guy here, is the JVC GY-DV500, and as the name implies, this is also a DV camera. Now the biggest difference between this and the last one is that this is not DVCPRO, and its not DV, this is just plain old consumer MiniDV. [clunking] Now I find it intrinsically very very funny that you can put this tiny tiny tape into this gigantic camera. It’s also very weird to me to imagine news organizations trusting, like, critical footage to these little tiny amateur videotapes, but I guess it’s the same tape, so what difference does it make? Another big difference is this one is a jack-of-all-trades, so in addition to the recorder, it also has a CCU connector, so you can use this with a remote recorder in order to record on different media, or you can use it as part of, like, a larger multi-camera switching setup or whatever you like. Now additionally with this and the last camera, because they both use DV, as you might expect, they’ve got Firewire back here.

08:37 - Now I find this very funny, for really no good reason, because I think of, like, a DV camera over Firewire as a way to get, like, your vacation video off so you can make a clip show in iMovie? There’s nothing really wrong with using it in a professional context, but I just can’t separate these thoughts in my head, so it’s very amusing to me. I have in fact plugged this into my Power Mac G4 before and ripped video off of it, but I keep imagining, like, a news cameraman rushing back from the scene of, like, a building collapse and plugging this into his iMac. Again, perfectly valid, but I just can’t get over how funny it is in my head. Now another obvious feature here is the viewfinder. So the viewfinders on the other cameras I’ve shown you are obviously for using them on your shoulder, but this one is designed for using it on a tripod, because again, these cameras are meant to be very versatile.

09:18 - Obviously you can put any camera on a tripod, but these are all designed to be able to do both roles equally well. That’s why, if we go back to this one for a second, you’ll see that there’s a “VTR Start” button back here? There’s a record button on the back of the lens, but if you’re on a tripod you don’t want to have to reach all the way up there, right? So they put one back here as well. Obviously you don’t want to use this little tiny viewfinder and have to be down there next to it, so you put this thing on here so you can stand back and look at it. So speaking of tripods, there are other affordances for those. So this, here, is a pro-grade tripod, or, at least like a mid-grade tripod, I don’t know.

09:47 - It’s a Manfrotto, but- It’s a big heavy beast, much heavier than you use for consumer video or a still camera. Now, if you do stills photography or amateur video you might be familiar with the concept of a quick-release tripod plate, this thing you screw into the bottom of your camera so you can quickly clip it into the tripod and out? Well, these cameras have to have the same thing, but for a different reason. It’s not just for convenience. See, if you’re mounting a camera to a tripod, you want the tripod mount to go at the center of mass, which on this camera is about here, and you’ll notice at the bottom, there’s a problem with that. All these cameras are meant to go on your shoulder for six hours, so they’ve got these great big foam pads on the bottom, they’ve got a curve to accommodate your shoulder, so obviously there’s nowhere to put a tripod screw. It also wouldn’t balance the weight very well, so there’s a solution to that built into all these cameras.

10:30 - On the bottom you’ll see that at the front there’s this wedge, and at the back, there’s this clip. That’s basically a tripod quick-release plate that’s built into the camera. Then on the tripod we’ve got this big guy here which mates with it, so if we turn this around we can just take our camera and- [LOUD CLACK] -slamma-jam, and we’re done. So you can do your nice, smooth pans and tilts here, and then you can lock it down, it’s nice and solid without having to mess around with any screws or anything. Of course, this is completely adjustable so if you’ve got, I don’t know, maybe you’ve got a focus puller over here or something, you don’t have to be behind the camera for it.

11:00 - So now, as the operator, you can just stand back here, comfortably, and see what you’re doing. And also, importantly, if you’re, say, taking video of a car crash, and the car suddenly explodes and you need to get the hell away quickly, you can just grab the lever on the side here, rip it, and run, and assuming that you’ve got an eyepiece on there instead of this ridiculous thing, you can just convert right into a shoulder camera. Now this actually is sort of a universal standard. I don’t know who invented it, but the wedge and clip, I’ve got like three other cameras from different manufacturers that use the exact same mount, going back to like 1988, and up to well into the 2000s. Let’s go on to the dockable cameras, because those are maybe the most interesting ones I own. This here is a dockable camera.

11:41 - This is a JVC KY-27B up here, and a BR-S422U back here. And by that, what I mean is, this parting line down the middle is where these two devices actually come apart. The video camera head and the recorder assembly are two completely different products. If you don’t believe me- [whirring screwdriver noises] [LOUD WRENCHING CLACK] -there you go. You can see, these actually separate into two distinct devices, and to illustrate this better- [clacking] [loud tap] This is in fact a VHS recorder.

12:15 - I’m not sure how popular VHS was for professional use but they sure made a ton of them. I’m going to drop in this crappy kung fu movie I have [clacking] [tap, whirring] And there we go. This is a completely distinct, totally standalone recorder, which just clips into the back of this guy. And that means you can clip this into other cameras, or you can clip other recorders into this camera. If I was able to get power into this camera somehow I could operate it by itself and just take the video out right here.

12:47 - Now, I’m not really sure what the motive behind this really was. It seems like sort of an ‘80s, early ‘90s thing that just kind of petered out, as far as I can tell? I think it might have just been that there were so many competing video formats that, like, all the companies felt like they couldn’t ask their customers to commit to just one format. You gotta consider, the cameras in my collection cost between, like, six and fourteen grand or thereabouts new, so you didn’t really want to have to buy a whole ‘nother camera if you could avoid it. so the idea that you could keep the head, and just swap out the recorder in order to change to a different format might have been really appealing. You could also buy a back for this that would give it a CCU connector, so you could use it more as like, a studio/EFP camera.

13:24 - But this actually gets a lot wilder than you might think. Let me set this aside for the moment and I’ll demonstrate. This here is a Sony camera of the same design, it also has the dockable design, but this one, instead of using VHS, uses Betacam SP, which was incredibly popular. This is Betacam, it looks just like Betamax, it’ll go in the same players, although it won’t work, because it records component instead of composite video. This was popular in the industry for, like, 35 years in different variants- -maybe a little less, but it was really successful.

13:55 - But then, suppose you spent a bunch of money on the Sony camcorder, and then decided you wanted to shoot VHS with it? Well, VHS was kind of JVC’s baby, and Beta was kind of Sony’s baby, so I don’t think you could actually buy a Sony VHS deck or a JVC Beta deck. So, maybe you can just dock this on there? No, not quite, let me show you why. [screwdriver rustling] [grunt and loud mechanical clack] So, this deck and that deck are quite clearly very different on the back. This one’s got this great big vertical pin strip, and this one’s got this wacky, like, D-sub connector sort of thing, so obviously you can’t plug this into that. [loud sigh] However. This is one of the most cursed objects that I own.

14:37 - This here is a Sony-made adapter which goes onto their camera, and then allows you to simply dock this player onto it. [satisfying clunk] I actually unintentionally did that live, so as you can see, the camera is now ready to go, and I literally just swung this thing on there with the power on. So this interface here really is just like the video and audio signals going through, like they aren’t married any more closely than that. But it’s just wild to me that Sony themselves made this adapter to dock another companys recorder onto their gear. And I think the reason for this is that in this industry, there’s not a whole lot of patience for proprietary stuff.

15:11 - I mean, yeah, it does happen, but you can adapt between pretty much everything? Like, modern EFP setups are just Christmas trees of dongles and adapters, but what’s remarkable is just that this makes this a nice, compact, cohesive unit. Now the funny thing about this is that this design, the dockable design, is actually precedented in the consumer market. I glazed over this in a previous video, but this guy here, the JVC SF-P3, is the same concept, except that JVC put this out in the consumer market in 1983 in order to try and catch up with Sony’s Betamovie. Sony had produced effectively the world’s first camcorder, but JVC wanted to beat them to market, so they took a VCR they were already selling, that was a portable, and a camera they were already selling, and they just built this plastic rig to put them together into one unit which you can put on your shoulder. Now, I always considered this a pathetic attempt by JVC to compete in a market they weren’t ready to produce a real product in yet, so it’s remarkable to me that this exact same thing essentially happened in the pro market to great success - there’s tons of these things on eBay, so, I guess everybody made them.

16:17 - It’s so silly, and it’s also such a good idea, if it works - I mean, it’s fantastic you don’t have to throw away your good image sensor in order to get a different medium. You can take this one camera, and just by swapping out the back, which is presumably a lot less expensive than buying the whole camera, you can go from VHS, to Beta, to a studio back, to who knows what. It is supremely cool. [clack] So that sort of takes me into my final fascination with these things which is - the standards. As a person who is obsessed with consumer electronics, I am infuriated by the lack of standards in things, and while not everything on these cameras is completely standard, it’s kind of remarkable what is. For instance, I don’t know if it was noticeable, but every camera I plugged in here, I plugged in with the same power cord.

17:00 - This guy here, four-pin XLR, is a universal power standard in the broadcast industry to this day. It’s just twelve volts, at like five amps, and a particular pinout, and you can plug it into absolutely everything. All my cameras except the ones that are CCU-only support this, but you’d be amazed what else this plugs into. For instance- this television has it. Boop! This VCR has it, this VCR has it, I’ve seen battery chargers that have it, I’ve seen USB power supplies that have it, audio recorders, tons of things.

17:30 - And if it doesn’t take this, then it’ll take some other format that’s very easy to convert to from this - which you’ll have, like, a thousand adapters for laying around if you’re in this industry. Batteries are another thing - I don’t have batteries for any of my cameras, because all of the batteries are incredibly expensive, and the reason they’re expensive is that they’ve never changed battery standards - we’ve been using the same battery standards on professional cameras for eons. These are pretty much the two battery standards I see: This one is Anton-Bauer Gold Mount, which slides on from the side This one is V-mount, from the “V,” and that slides in from the top. Again, these battery standards are on everything - I’ve seen them on videotape recorders, audio recorders, lights, everything. Again, this TV has a V-mount on the back. This is very silly, because I have a Sony Infolithium to V-mount adapter, so I could actually run this TV off of a couple of Sony Infolithium camera batteries.

18:16 - There’s a couple other battery standards, although these I think are the overwhelmingly common ones, but the neat thing is you can actually adapt to whatever your studio uses. This guy here has four screws, and then these two are where the power goes in, and you can just take those off, take this out, and put a different mount on with a different battery standard. So you can buy up a bunch of cameras from different brands, different sources, used, new, whatever, and then you just go on eBay, buy a bunch of these plates, and you can convert them all to use the same battery. So that way instead of having to rustle around to find the right battery for something, you’ve just got like 50 of the same battery, and everything works with everything else. [desperately] My kingdom for a world that works like this.

18:51 - So that’s it, really, these are just pretty much cameras, like the ones that we have at home, they’re just a lot heavier - they’re all made of metal, which I like, and they’ve got a bunch of switches to flip, but otherwise they just take pictures. There’s no real reason for me to collect these, I can’t use them for any practical purpose. I’ve thought about making Youtube videos with them before, but they would just look like Youtube videos from 2006. People suggested I take them to car shows for the retro aesthetic, which is an interesting idea, -at least when the pandemic ends- -but the problem is, people’d think I’m press, it’d be really awkward. Nah, there’s nothing I can do with them, they’re just curiosities that I keep around for fun so I can show them off to people, like I just did here.

19:26 - The only reason I have them is just because- [Marge Simpson]: I just think they’re neat! It’s Thanksgiving today, but I’m sure you’re watching it later, so I hope you had a nice one. I hope you’re surviving the pandemic alright. And good luck to everyone in the rest of the year. If you enjoyed watching this I’d appreciate if you subscribed - I’ve also got Ko-fi and Patreon links in my description if you want to support me. Donations help me afford to go on eBay and buy wacky stuff like these, or like this - for which I have about five accessories coming in the mail for a video I’ll be doing soon.

19:50 - But they also just help me stay focused, that sort of feedback really makes me feel appreciated, and makes it easier for me to stay motivated to keep making stuff. If you have any questions about all of this I’d be happy to answer them in the comments, I love telling people about how all this stuff works. If you have any suggestions for a video I could make about any of this that you think would be interesting, let me know as well. But anyway, thanks for watching, have a good one! .