Why This Is An Interesting Photo For Camera Buffs…

Over the past few weeks, I’ve posted some photos taken by television veteran Peter Katz. This is Peter behind an RCA TK30 at The Hudson Theater in New York which was home to ‘Tonight’ and ‘The Kate Smith Show’.

There are three things that stick out to me here…the viewfinder hood, the door vents and the RCA meatball and Television badges.

For some reason, RCA never made, or offered a third party movable viewfinder hood for the TK30s. RCA’s were immovable and rigid.
The TK10s had an adjustable hood, but they would not fit on a TK30. CBS made their own and I think this is a custom hood made in the NBC shop.

This is only the second time I have seen this kind of rectangular door vents. As not to detract from this photo, I’ll post the other photo of these vents in the comment section. RCA made a kit with round screen vents…they were installed on each door with 10 rounds at the top and 10 rounds at the bottom. This is an NBC NY modification.

This brings us to the RCA badge placement. These have been moved to accommodate an oversized NBC Chime logo. Usually the RCA meatball and Television badge is about where the chime mallet is. This camera had lot of custom work done on it. To me, that shows a great deal of care and attention to not only the functionality of the camera, but in it’s appearance too.

By the way, we often see the access doors open on network cameras, but not so much at the local station level. That is because the network cameras have a lot more hours on them…the are almost always in use all day long and deep into the night. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

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