These are Ikegami’s First Studio Color Cameras! Above is the Ikegami TK 301, the granddaddy of the color studio line from Ikegami that was built and delivered to Japan’s NHK Network in Tokyo in 1971. Only a few of these were made and they all went to Japan’s NHK Television for real world field testing and when some bugs were found (imagine that!?), Ikegami did a running engineering update which included internal and external changes.

Within a year, they gave the camera a smaller tally light as you see below and changed up some of the bulky front casting around the lens block; inside, they updated internal boards and gave the camera a new name…the Ikegami TK 301AS. The S stand for small tally variant and was used only in Japan. Everywhere else, it was the TK 301A and there was a lot of demand in Australia and the far east for a new color television camera.

Thanks to Jerome Halphen from Paris, France who made a trip to the NHK Museum and took over 120 photos. I’ve posted most of them on the site and in the bottom photo, in case you were wondering, the cameras behind the Ikegami are both Toshibas.

This first venture studio camera debuted in 1971 and made the name Ikegami synonymous with cameras. The TK 301A was used extensively in the Sapporo Winter Olympic Games in Japan.

Ikegami was busy developing it’s ENG line with the HL 33 debuting in 1973 and the HL 79A in 1979. Their experience with these lead them to the studio sized HK 312 in 1981. With the introduction of the 312, came the change from the TK designation to HK (Handy Kamera) and of course the HL stands for Handy Lookie.

For a look at the TK 301A in studio in Australia, here’s the video.

Source