LabGuy's World:
Vintage B/W Video Cameras
1967: ATV
Research Vidicon (Do It Yourself) Kit Camera!
.
Since the early 1960's,
ATV
Research has been meeting the needs of experimenters. They started
out by making vidicon deflection yoke kits! Early TV camera experimenters
were often hampered by the lack of components. The idea of hand winding
your own deflection coils can be daunting, even for the experienced hack!
Along comes ATV Research to the rescue! Ultimately, they began to sell
entire camera kits (this is one) as well as video camera accessories like
lenses and tripods, etc..
In the center photo,
it is quite easy to see the vidicon tube encased in the deflection and
focus coil assembly. The one piece circuit board was quite an advancement
for kit products of that era too! Across the back of the camera, third
photo, are the BEAM, FOCUS and TARGET controls. In this case, "FOCUS" refers
to electron beam focus within the vidicon tube itself. Not to be confused
with the optical focus of the lens. Electron beam focus is controlled in
two ways. The first is by a strong fixed magnetic field running parallel
through the vidicon, produced by the focus coil assembly. That's the big
fat black cylinder around the outer most portion of the assembly. The second
electron beam focus is achieved through voltage gradients between internal
elements of the vidicon tube.
Light, focused by the
lens onto the target (front face) of the vidicon tube, is converted to
varying voltage by sweeping a finely focused beam of electrons back and
forth across its surface. The sweep action is achieved by two more sets
of electromagnetic coils, also located in the black round cylinder that
surrounds the tube. The varying voltage contains the brightness information
for each point in the image. In a TV monitor, the process is reversed.
A beam is swept across the posphor in the picture tube and the varying
voltage becomes various shades of grey at just the rigbht points. Simple,
eh?
The lens is 25 mm, f
1.8 made by Sony. These cameras usually had a surplus lens that was used
on 16 mm movie cameras of the 1950's! I do have two of those lenses. I
forgot to install it for the fashion photos. (Maybe later!) I haven't had
time to test this guy either ~ stay tuned!
Whoever built this one,
did a fine job. I have another camera, just like this one in the museum,
but it looks like it was pulled from the trash bin. Poor storage over the
years and moisture infiltration have left it in the category of "curiosity"!
NEEDED: Service (Construction?)
manuals for this camera.
Click here to:
To
see the 196?: Concord MTC-12 - Vidicon Surveillance Camera
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Last
Updated: May 22, 2001