[Tig] More memories please

[DCFWTX at aol.com]

Rob and Ed,

We have a PC 70, TK 42, TK 44, TK 47, PE 350, PCP-90, and TK 60 in our lobby. 
When you look inside of the PC 70 head, you cannot be unimpressed with the 
engineering you see with the optic layout, circuit boards, etc. The TK 42, on 
the other hand, is a totally different story. With regard to the GE PE 15's, 
KRLD TV had them in their Dallas studios while I was growing up. I don't recall 
them ever looking as good as WBAP's TK 41's. They are long gone, replaced by an 
army of PE 350's, which are also long gone. I worked the PE 350 truck once 
for a tennis match in Dallas later about 1975. We muscled TV-81 cable all over 
place for the cameras (it was an indoor match, with lighting by Imero 
Fiorentino, I believe). They made a respectable picture in a controlled environment. 
That GE 350 truck did almost all of the Dallas Cowboy games from Texas Stadium 
before 1980 or so. The hole in the domed roof was a very difficult 
daylight/shadow condition for the 350's to handle when following a player. The video 
shader had to be very quick on multiple cameras to avoid having either a totally 
dark and noisy picture when going into the shadows, or a totally blown out, 
plumbicom comet trailed image until the iris could be throttled down.

David Crosthwait
DC Video
177 West Magnolia Blvd.
Burbank, CA. 91502
818-563-1073
818-563-1177 (fax)
DCFWTX at AOL.COM     
DAVID at DCVIDEO.COM
WWW.DCVIDEO.COM





In a message dated 12/16/2007 12:08:58 PM Pacific Standard Time, Tom at tgt.org 
writes:

> Thanks to Greg Fisher for supporting the TIG.
> ====
> 
> Hi Ed,
> 
> I first became familiar with the PE-15 at college when I helped build the
> Educational TV station there.  
> Most everything that we used was donated, including the cameras.  The only
> things we actually bought were a used GE TT-6
> Tetrode UHF transmitter that was broadbanded for color, a colorized VR1200
> (our only Intersync machine), and a Scala slot UHF antenna.  Our master
> control switcher
> was particularly interesting in that it was a GE binary relay switcher.
> Each buss (there were four) had two sets of relays that fed in to a vertical
> interval 2x1 swtich for that bus.  When you took a source, it would first
> close the relay for the selected source on the selected bus and then
> performed the4 vertical interval switch to that buss.  When you next took a
> different source on that buss, it would reverse the process.  It actually
> worked surprisingly well.
> 
> The four PE-15s that we received were something of a basket case and I spent
> weeks making them in to decent cameras. They came sans IOs, color separation
> filters, knee ND filters, and in various states of disrepair.  Since the
> factory color filters were long ago no longer available, I spent time with
> different combinations of gel separation filters coming up with the right
> combinations to produce the desired results.  I also elected to use a
> different method of gamma and knee than was recommended by GE in "The
> Manual."   GE suggested that ND filters be selected to produce the same IO
> knee in each channel, which was standard technique for IO color cameras.
> However, they also suggested that the tubes be run just below the knee point
> and that the gamma circuit in the CCU be used for camera correction. I
> decided early on that, while this produced better sensitivity, it also
> produced a very noisy image.   So, I selected ND filters to produce a
> slightly higher knee in green than in red and blue. This allowed me to use
> the innate knee of the IO for most of my gamma correction in Red and Blue
> and to trim it with just a bit of electronic gamma in those two channels.
> This produced a quieter image and a more stable camera. 
> 
> I had more than one occasion to see images from various TK-41s at the time
> and I believe that our PE-15's held up very well in comparison. They
> produced an image with pleasing colorimetry (similar to that of a PC-70).
> Good signal to noise and resolution (they had transistor preamps which was a
> little unusual for the time), and surprisingly good registration.  They also
> proved to be fairly reliable over the years I was there.  
> 
> We also had three Marconi MkIII black and white cameras with 4 1/2" IOs and
> they produced some of the nicest looking black and white pictures I have
> ever seen.  It was also interesting that they were able to do almost
> everything in that camera with the same tube - the 6DJ8.
> 
> Tom
> 
> 
> 
> Hi Tom,
> 
> Enjoyed your memories of the G.E. Image Orthicon color camera.
> 
> I am putting together a page on my color television history site
> about the GE camera which came out about 1958.
> 
> Where was your experience with the camera?  Can you name any
> other stations that had the GE camera?  How good was its
> colorimetry as compared to a TK-41?
> 
> I plan to reproduce several color pages from a brochure on the
> camera.  Liked the idea that the camera taking optical horizontal
> axis was higher and closer vertically to the axis of the
> viewfinder (too many TK-41 shots required the cameraman to be on
> a step stool).  But have never heard how good was its color.
> 
> Ed
> 
> 
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