A few years ago I put out a request for an 80's era video camera (the ones that were coupled with VHS or Beta decks that you hung off one shoulder) as I was looking to get that period home movie look for a flashback sequence in a film I was shooting. Our own Lorinda Norton came through and sent me her venerable Magnavox camera (seen below), and it delivered exactly what I was looking for--that green, smeary, blurry look that those early cameras delivered, in all their glory.

Unfortunately we didn't end up going with it for this project, nor for the next one that came up this year (we did shoot a flashback scene with the camera but we covered ourselves by also shooting it with on Varicam, and it was that which was used for the final film). However, a friend enquired if I had such a thing for a Snoop Dogg video that he was working on that was emulating the look of the era, and he borrowed the camera and indeed the footage was used, along with a 3-tube Ikegami and 16mm. So Lorinda, the camera is making its Hollywood debut at last, and hopefully there will be more down the road in store!

The still below is from the preview of the video online at MTV (http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?vid=190207); the complete video premieres tomorrow I believe.

Oh man, that is just a hoot! Charles, you made my day. I love it!

Maybe I should hang on to my XL1s. Twenty-five years from now it may come in handy somewhere. ;)

Woah! Brush with greatness. That's awesome!

I have 4 Sony EIAJ 1/2" reel-to-reel "portapacks" out in the shed, not one complete pair of good heads across the whole lot of them unfortunately. I also have the old pink and grey black and white tube camera.

Also a Panasonic VHS of the first colour vintage. Colour was anything you liked as long as it was red and blue.

I have fond memories of my running around high school with my dads 2 piece Akai camera..... batts only lasted about 10 mins.

also... i have a good friend in sacramento who has a warehouse full of old tube cams and tape audio gear.... some cool old farfisa organs and other vintage sound gear as well.... I used to borrow his echoplex for guitar delay as well. He just can't throw anything away.

Also... if your ever in Berkley Ca. ... there's a salvage warehouse full of cool stuff.... I picked up a majestic gear head for $5. My Hasselblads mounted on it right now on a 9' arcay studio stand.

I think Mike Curtis was looking for some old 8mm's and wanted to make t-shirts with screen prints of the cams on the shirts.

Man, you just brought up a TERRIBLE memory I had suppressed. My first video camera (outside the ones I worked with at the station) - An RCA portable - camera cabled to a 'deck' that slung off the shoulder. Bought in 1979. I had it for ONE DAY, and it was sitting on a table, when the table COLLAPSED dumping it all face first onto a tile floor. Trashed the camera and the deck... 2000 hard earned bucks (In 1979 dollars, remember). Whew... thought I had forgotten that tragedy.

Tell Mike Curtis I have a wide selection of Regular 8 and Super 8 cameras I can photograph and send him. Good 'retro looking' stuff

Yeah, gotta love those old cameras :-)
I shot 1/2 of a 45 minute film using an old tube JVC a couple years ago.
http://www.fotgfilms.com/video/mm.html
(99% of the B&W footage is the old JVC)
Here is a pic with my old JVC and my new JVC
http://jaschob.com/img/jvc.jpg
Cheers,
Jon

The entire video is up at:

http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?id=1568964&vid=191701

There's a whole chunk in the middle that looks to have been shot on the old camera--lots of green fringing, blown highlights and smearing, just how we like it!

After it came back, I spoke to my friend who shot this stuff and said "I forgot to mention, but you knew with tube cameras you can't just point them at bright lights and leave them there, right?" silence..."Uhhh...really?" My fault for not having warned him in advance. Of course now that I watch the video, the whole thing was bright lights beaming at the camera...!

In anticipation of another gig, I'm making up a rig to mount an old DV camera next to it as a recorder and viewfinder (using the flipout screen on same) and an external battery as this required an AC adaptor or outboard VHS deck to work. Will post pics, it should be a bizarre setup!

Damn,

Lorinda - That Magnavox camera was MY first video rig as well!!!

Do you still have the VC-20 recorder? or the matching tuner?

Mine is sadly long gone - but somewhere the manual remains in a cardboard box.

What really frosts me is that I've lost the VHS I shot with it of a Jimmy Buffett 1970s concert appearance at a Phoenix Cactus League ballgame in the late 70s...

Damn hard to dance to Margaritaville with 20 lbs of VHS recorder on your shoulder - but we all suffer for our art.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

Bill, this was actually a hand-me-down from my dad for home use. What I remember is having a mile of cable running from the VCR through the entire house or an open window so I could get outside shots of my kid!

Good luck with your cool-sounding setup, Charles, and thanks for the link...and the fun. I told my parents about the whole thing. They wanted me to send them the link, but after watching the video, I think maybe I’ll just tell ‘em about it. :)

This week's issue of Newsweek magazine (Dec. 10th, 2007) sports a frame grab from this video in the Soundbytes column on page 31. More congrats for Lorinda and props to Chas!

Wow, this is just...wow. What a camera! Remember Superman with Christopher Reeve, when he first flew to save Lois? There were TV news cameramen with 16mm cameras, and three guys (in white and white hats) with a VERY early portable video camera.

Heath

I dusted off Lorinda's camera once again for a possible Comedy Central gig (period man-on-the-street footage). Got it all rigged up for "prime-time", with a much less retro but still basically obsolete nNovia hard drive recorder that accepts the composite video in from the camera and records to DV codec, plus a DP4 for viewing and an AB battery to power everything (had to cut into the camera's snake cable to make that happen--scandalous!)

Footage still looks as awful=awesome as always!

Zombie parts! The rig that refuses to die. An upcoming sketch on K&P?

No, upcoming new series. Just got word today that it won't be used, they are going with post-effect instead. However director of K&P did get to see the test clip and says he is going to press the writers to develop a period sketch so we can use the camera! I'll get BTS if we do.

Can we safely assume that Dionic has been re-celled? Looks pretty rough... ;)

LOVE to see what that footage looks like...

Had to look closely to pick out the camera in all that, Charles! Very clever improvising you did there. Hoping you get to use it after all that work.

Thanks for the picture and the update--my dad will get a kick out of seeing this!

Can we safely assume that Dionic has been re-celled?

Nah--might have been dropped or something! My batteries get a good workout.

As far as I have seen, no reputable 3rd parties (nor AB) recell the AB lithiums. Too dodgy, and prone to failure.

Here's that test clip I made to show the "awfulness" of the camera...that green tint is amazeballs. I was doing my best "bad" camerawork to augment the look!

Gotta love the light trails in the last shot...

What I gotta love are those cats!

Add a couple dogs, a kid, and a farm and it looks just like the images I got with it over 25 years ago...only cleaner, I'm thinking. But the camera work--yep, looks like mine. :)

My ED-Beta camcorder I bought in 1988 produces very good video and not all of those from that era have the picture artifacts being described. Here's a 640 X 480 vid-cap picture I took from tape and stored on a floppy disk with only 80 kb of encoding.
http://farm1.staticflickr.com/218/465982079_7db7f0df6e_o.jpg

Great story Charles and thanks for sharing it with us, I still have my Hi 8 camera but sadly my betamovie went in the skip a few years ago! I still see them on e-bay here in the UK and think I should maybe get another as I still have all my archive betamax tapes and a deck.

Well, over the course of the 80's home camcorders migrated from tube to chip (I have a foggy memory that while most were CCD, even then a few CMOS models appeared but they were not ready for prime time yet). And some of the tube cameras were better than others even prior to that. I have a bunch of VHS from '81 on shot with a variety of consumer cameras and few were as "off" as this one. Somewhere around 89 I bought the S- VHS Canon F1000s, a rebadge of the Panasonic AG450 (but in all black, much sexier!) which made much better pictures than the camcorders of five or six years prior.

The MTV USA website (New Music Videos, Reality TV Shows, Celebrity News, Top Stories | MTV (http://www.mtv.com)) is optimized for users within USA. While Users outside of USA are welcome to visit, many features of the site (including most videos) will not work for users outside of USA. We strongly encourage you to visit your local site instead.

I guess that means "can't watch it"...?! Try searching for Snoop Dogg, "Sensual Seduction". I'm sure it's viewable somewhere.

Lorinda: my cats thank you for the compliments. I'm away from home shooting a feature right now and I miss them--but thankfully there's always Facetime!

Whew! I knew it was a good idea to hold on to my old TK76 and UMatic recorder... and that investment in 3/4 tape stock my wife keeps making me move from one place to another in the basement...could be gold... Shouldn't have sold my Iki to the race track in NY State.
God I love tv.
B

Ugh--I still have UMatic 60's with a single :30 spot on them. One of these years I'll hire someone to digitize them for me, along with my VHS, S-VHS, HI8 and regular 8, Betacam, Digi Beta...probably missed some other format in there as well. Rows of shelves in a closet housing those aging beauties.

Shhhhhh Charles, If my wife hears you mention that I will never get on the golf course this summer! Now if there was a subsidized hire a student program...

Ok Lorinda, here we go again--this time the camera has passed the approval stage with the executive producers and we are full-steam ahead to use it on a sketch called "Obama--the College Years"! I've even ordered a second one off eBay to use as a second camera or at least backup, it will be interesting to see if it matches yours in look.

Will post stills from the set!

How fun! I'm really looking forward to the stills so I can show my dad what that old camera is up to now. :)

Ugh--I still have UMatic 60's with a single :30 spot on them. One of these years I'll hire someone to digitize them for me, along with my VHS, S-VHS, HI8 and regular 8, Betacam, Digi Beta...probably missed some other format in there as well. Rows of shelves in a closet housing those aging beauties.

U-Matic tapes do disentegrate over time. The backing gets brittle and flakes off in the machine forcing a "head cleaning" (remember those?). The trick is to bake the cassette at low temp - around 130 degree F for about a half hour then let it cool off. You have about 24 hours to put it in a machine and get it transferred before it reverts to older condition.

I have U-Matics from the 1970's that I've gotten transferred with this technique, but it's not always foolproof. My U-Matic recorder from then is autographed by Nam June Paik, so I can't let go of it regardless.

Oh, I started shooting in video in 1969 with one of those Sony Rover 1/2" reel to reel systems. It was like shooting with Orthicon tubes in terms of light sensitivity, but it was the only small format system available until 3/4" U-Matic's came around in the mid 1970's. When I was director of video productions at AFI in 1975 those were the camera systems that first year fellows used for their shorts (2nd year in 16mm) I shot the first 3/4" original show for network (NBC) on a RCA camera with a portable 3/4" Sony deck in 1978.

I never had the pleasure of using the VHS camera mentioned in this thread though.

We shot "Obama--The College Years" on Friday! Attached, our director Peter Atencio mans the camera. This is the first sketch on Key & Peele he has operated personally; he wanted a total home-video look where the camera becomes a character of the person operating it. The producers were all enthralled with the way the camera "performed"--it looked eerily period, like found footage (the sketch is set in 1980).

A few extra bits got added to the camera, like a wireless receiver for audio reference, and we reconfigured any loose cables and connectors to make it "bulletproof" for the director. We recorded to the onboard Nnovia DV recorder and also on a DVCAM deck at the monitors for insurance. There were all sorts of strange artifacts in the image but I eventually realized that they would likely have been hidden on the 240 line VHS recorder this was built to accompany, rather than the 480 line DV standard we were recording to. Yes folks, we used to capture at less than 1/4 the resolution of 1080! Ah the good old days.

We go back on the air in September, and I'll update this thread again then when the sketch airs.

Geez, this camcorder is unstoppable. Thanks, Chas!

Ack! I had forgotten that this clip was going to be in the season premiere tonight--Lorinda, the day finally came and you probably missed it!! Here 'tis...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vlxkcewBEe0

Saw these skits on the K&P season 2 opener last night... it was hilarious and the "look" really added to it!

Video clip now shows as "removed" on YT but hopefully it'll go back online eventually.

I dunno, Charles...the quality of the footage looks pretty good! Not like I remember seeing from it back in the 80s, particularly in low light. I'm guessing you did the lighting and are just too good at it!

The legendary Lorinda-cam flies again, this time on the series "Playing House" which I'm currently shooting for USA Networks. This time it was recreating home movie footage from 1991 which the characters are watching on their TV. We shot it side by side with the Alexa in case someone didn't like the look of the old camera, but judging from the reactions on set, it's gonna be the Magnavox because it looks so authentic.

Attached, one of my operators with the rig (SmallHD DP4, mini-DA, adaptor cables and Anton Bauer brick powering camera and monitor. Recording was done outboard on a KiPro, upscaled to ProRes422HQ.

I love this, Charles! Hoping I can manage to find the episode one day. Thank you for the fun pictures and update!

Just had a great time reading this whole thread starting in 2007. Thanks for sharing.

This thread is almost 8 years old?!? Where has the time gone...

I read in one of your posts that you used cameras like this for weddings back in the late 80s, Mervyn! I'm guessing there wasn't much moving around. :)

This thread is almost 8 years old?!?

Yep -- this (among many other things) I love with this forum.

-- peer

This thread is almost 8 years old?!? Where has the time gone...

I read in one of your posts that you used cameras like this for weddings back in the late 80s, Mervyn! I'm guessing there wasn't much moving around. :)

Lorinda, One or more times I had this setup A Big old wooden Miller tripod sitting on a home made dolly, amde of 1" square tubing and some nice wheels. None of this fold up stuff, this was all welded in place. Perched on top of that was either a hired JVC KY1900 or similar camera, with a domestic 150w floodlight on top. There was a Audio, Video and power cable bundle trailing from the camera back to a U-Matic desktop recorder on a table. I would push the dolly or shoulder mount the camera and wander around the wedding reception hoping no one would trip over the leads and blind them all and say smile.
A uMatic portapack made life a bit easier later on. Then we downgraded to super VHS.

Nothing like now, carting a little Sony a6000 with tiny light on top as fill.

Mervyn, as well as Lorinda's camera I have in my possession two KY1900's that I use for recreations of period broadcast stuff. It turns out that while those were the cheapo cameras of the day, the Saticon tubes have aged better than the Plumbicons (good luck finding a functional Ike HL79 now)! As far as blinding people goes, I hear you on that--they are terrible un-sensitive by today's standards and I have to pour tons of light onto the set whenever I use them.

As seen below, one of the 1900's rigged out in all directions to shoot this sketch:
Funky Nonsense | Key & Peele - YouTube

Searching for more of these cameras, this thread popped up (had forgotten about it). These little Magnavoxes are still great, 15 years(!) after this thread was started. I now have a few of them outfitted to rent out and record onto Atomos recorders. One of them is on a junket for the upcoming Transformers movie today, figured I'd post the latest configuration!