The NBC Portable Cameras…
The NBC Mini Cameras…
Earlier in the week, I posted a video that showed rare footage of ABC’s and CBS’s first self designed, black and white portable cameras.
Here are a couple of NBC’s self designed cameras. The photo in front of the Democratic Convention sign is from 1964 and shows a small camera head with the operator wearing the viewfinder and backpack. That same arrangement carried over into another configuration with a larger, triangular shaped camera.
I don’t know which of these came first as there are no dates on the use of the triangular version, but I think they may have been in use at the same time. Does anyone know?
By the way, the cameraman in two of these shots is Don Mulvaney and the picture with the Iowa placard in the background show Don with RCA’s first portable in 1952. Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee
I believe the triangular shape had to do with 3 pick up tubes for color.
Somewhere in the ’50s I made one with a small (for then) Dage camera. No viewfinder, but we had the optical prisim finder on a Pan Cinor zoom lens.
Just a guess, but the triangular version could had been from 1968, and thus a color camera. Somewhere, there is another publicity photo, showing newsman Frank McGee standing next to one, or perhaps even wearing it.
The difference: the triangular shaped one is a color camera. 1968 political conventions, probably.