Anyone seen the incredible Fernseh studio cameras from the 60's & 70's ?
Would like to find one - or two !

http://www.fernsehmuseum.info/fese-kcp-40.html

These were the best pictures I've ever seen from ( big 30mm) plumbicons !

I think the 3 tube model had a 'Y' plumbicon + two primary color tubes that were matrixed ? True ?

In Australia Channel NINE had these great KCP-40 cameras in their studios for Australia's long running variety show "Hey Hey It's Saturday" from the about the mid 1970s right up till about 1993. They produced fantastic pictures and looked real cool!!! ABC Australia did the same with those Philips LDK-5 cameras, used them in their studios from 1974 starting with pop show "Countdown" till the early/mid 90s with live comedy shows like "The Big Gig". Both excellent cameras!!!

[QUOTE=..NINE had these great KCP-40 cameras..for.."Hey Hey It's Saturday"..[/QUOTE]

I didn't know (GTV ?) had KCP-40's. Wow, good for them--explains why the PQ was so sumptuous on "Hey Hey.."

I understand NWS-9 in Adelaide had Fernseh's resulting in fabulous PQ on Humphrey Bear Show for instance: smooth, detailed, spectrally balanced & extended with unbelievable flesh tones.

I also understand that Fernseh stuck with 30mm tubes while "innovative" Philips LDK-5 went with smaller 1" tubes. Switch off the 'contour correction' on an LDK-5 and they were awful soft. So with all that picture crispening, the Philips were harsh & worse S/N by comparison to KCP's.

The Philips LDK5 ( descended from the Norelco PC100 ) had the overwhelming advantage of Triax camera cable. For outside broadcast use the change from TV36 cable to Triax was amazing.

I don't think that the use of 25mm tubes made the LDK5 soft, tube technology had moved on by then. Any plumbicon camera looks soft with the AP turned off.

Regards Brian, www.tvcameramuseum.org

Brian, www.tvcameramuseum.org

Do you have specs for the KCP-40? Did they run one tube as a Luminance channel (as I had heard) ?
Was this their last German designed/built FarbKamera ?

Wonder if any of 'em made the trip acrost The Big Pond ?

Hi I do have data for the KCR 40 and I can confirm it is a Y R B camera matrixed to the usual Y, RGB output. The Frenseh, Bosch, BTS camera line is a long and distinguished one. It would need some research to determine which was the last German camera but, for instance, the KCP60 studio camera is later.

I will,in due course, do the Bosch pages of my website. There is a lot to do and time is the problem.

I do have a KCR40 in the museums collection, it is missing a small viewfinder and the blue top cover over the scan coil, if you happen to find those I would be very happy.... attached are a few notes, please regard them as a private draft and not to be relied on.

have a look at Michaels site http://www.xs4all.nl/~vdsmeede/fernseh/home_uk.html for a nice KCR40.

Regards Brian www.tvcameramuseum.org

.. it is a Y R B camera matrixed to the usual Y, RGB output. .............
have a look at Michaels site http://www.xs4all.nl/~vdsmeede/fernseh/home_uk.html for a nice KCR40.

Regards Brian www.tvcameramuseum.org

Thanks for links and wealth of information on your site.

Looking at the fotos of Fernseh's internal layout, one is struck by the seeming simplicity of the electronics for such a stellar performer.

A shootout between an LDK-3 & a KCP-40 would be interesting. I've only seen LDK-3 pictures in a remote truck at racetrack and it was impressive. The key is obviously those 30mm plumbicons which had great resolution specs.

When looking at the LDK-5/25 specs you see them dodging information on resolution performance but admitting to "35% tube modulation @ 400 lines".
Performance which is borne out in subjective appraisal.

I can confirm it is a Y R B camera matrixed ]

I've been thinking how ingenius this implementation was - and its advantages:

1. No color filter for 'Y' tube = better sensitivity= sharper iris setting

2. Much less critical registration required for sharp picture

3. R & B need not be wideband (better noise performance--in addition to noise advantage of point 1 !)(other 3 tube cameras must sum RGB for Y)(getting a clean - all important - Luminance signal the hard way).

Not surprising Fernseh had the best picture.

Wonder why Norelco didn't do this ? Or why RCA TK-42 didn't eliminate the G vidicon ?

Using Y R B with Plumbicons makes mroe sense than with Vidicons, because the Plumbicons are linear, making the chroma matrixing work better. However, all cameras with a separate Y tube used only for Y tend to have too much luma on saturated colors, and things have to be fiddled to get acceptable reproduction on a TV set or monitor. Mathematically, this is because the single luma channel outputs (0.3R +0.59G + 0.11B) raised to the (1/gamma) power, whereas in a RGB camera, each of the R,G,B is gamma corrected BEFORE the indicated fractions are added to make the luma. If you run through the two different calculations, you find the same results for gray colors, but very different results for pure reds and pure blues and less so for other pure colors. RCA produced papers calculating that the errors were not too great to be objectionable. It is also conceivable to matrix the Y,R,B to R,G,B and process only low frequencies the original way, while using the direct Y tube signal only for high frequecy detail.

RCA couldn't practically eliminate the G Vidicon, because the image orthicon is linear, and the Vidicons are non-linear. They had to use three Vidicons so the gray scale tracking would be acceptable.

Using Y R B with Plumbicons makes mroe sense ..

Great points, didn't think about linearity & gamma problems. They might be able to gamma correct vidicons & get reasonably accurate results. Maybe only Fernseh took this unorthodox Y/R/B route ?

At the dawn of color Tv cameras, all the manufactures were experimenting as to how it could be done. At, of course, the lowest price, biggest profit. One of the things tried was a 2 tube camera. Marconi, amongst others, made an experimental color camera in early 1954. It used a 3" IO for luminance and a second 3" IO with a 2 colour striped filter. This gave, effectively, your Y,R,B camera. Marconi did not pursue it and moved onto conventional 3 tube cameras similar to the RCA TK40. The two tube technique was also taken up by the home video market. prior to the availability of 3 color striped tubes.

Brian S

In the late 1960s Ampex made a two tube color camera, one tube for Y and the other for R,B but with a dichroic color wheel spinning in front of it. I saw these cameras used by ABC for the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France. The pictures were really good when the subject was stationary,but a skier dressed in bright red or blue passing by really fast blurred badly and the color broke up worse. Great interview cameras and good for long shots of the slopes and green trees but not for following a race. Cliff

In the late 1960s Ampex made a two tube color camera

Hi Cliff, do you recall the model number?

Brian Summers

Wonder if any of 'em made the trip acrost The Big Pond ?

I think a few of these found their way into trucks over here. I haven't heard any used in studio, but in all likelihood nearly every camera ever made was probably used somewhere in the U.S.

David

A few Fernseh/Bosch KCU-40's made their way onto a studio in Boston, MA, which was used for filming of promo ads that aired after Boston's WNAC-TV (Channel 7) changed their calls to WNEV-TV, following the loss of RKO's license and transfer to another entity. (From what I've read, WNAC/WNEV didn't actually use Fernseh/Bosch cameras at their 7 Bulfinch Place studios; the ads were shot elsewhere.)

Hi all-

The Fernseh design was interesting on many fronts. Yes, it was a Y R B camera that had to work with existing monochrome cabling in Europe, so the R/B channels were multiplexed on carriers on one coax. Later, in the KCK, triax and coax links could be used. I believe also that Fernseh was the first to have a fiber link option, but none were sold in the US.

Fernseh did not feel digital memory was relaible at the time, so the adjustment pots in the camera head were all motor driven. If power was lost, the pots didn't move.

The blue channel also featured a "mimifier" that reduced the scanning area that helped reduce lag.

On the downside, the camera produced a very pastel look. I don't recall what matrixing was available, but green was derived from the other channels. In the Quartercam cameras, Bosch went to a conventional RGB pickup design. Asked about the change, a Bosch engineer replied to me, "Well the colorimetry in the older cameras was not so good!"

The BBC must have been very critical of the Bosch colorimetry.

Bosch Fernseh cameras sold well into PBS stations and several OB companies in the US.

Regards,

J Ballard