My Video Camera Collection

I have been collecting video cameras for several years, pretty much limited to the standard-def era and going back to the earliest days of consumer video. My oldest video camera is from 1969, although it's not working as of this writing. I have a couple from the 70s, a ton from the 80s, a few from the 90s, and a couple from the 2000s.

My collection is split into a few categories, which are:

Consumer cameras: Video cameras sold to the general public that cannot record video on their own. If you don't know about this concept, watch my youtube video, "The Forgotten History of Home Video." In a nutshell, cameras and recorders used to be separate devices.

Consumer camcorders: Video cameras sold to the general public with built in recorders.

Professional video cameras / camcorders: Video cameras sold to businesses (both for internal use e.g. making training videos, or to broadcasters), some with built in recorders, some without.

Videotape recorders: Standalone video recorders meant for use with separate cameras.

Here are some important things you should know about my collection:

Common to all of these is the distinction of videotube vs solid state. This information is basically necessary knowledge for knowing me in any capacity.

Videotubes are a type of cathode ray tube - virtually a television working in reverse - that were used to capture images in virtually all video cameras prior to the mid 80s.

Solid state cameras use CCD or CMOS (aka APS) technology to capture an image. The latter are typically much more consistent and reliable, have better light sensitivity, and by virtue of being newer are typically coupled to more powerful computer control or processing circuitry.
In the 70s and 80s, video cameras were made by four or five companies, then rebranded by a couple dozen others. I'm not sure RCA ever made a single camera themselves for instance, I think they're all Hitachi rebrands. Other companies that seem to mostly rebrand are Everex, Zenith and Kodak. I will try to list any known rebrands.
I do not always have known manufacturing dates for these. Some are actually datestamped on the chassis, others are not, and the best I can get is often "what is the earliest mention in a magazine on google books," so take this with a grain of salt. I will try to put a question mark after the ones I'm really uncertain about.
Pictures are culled from whatever I could find online, and will be replaced with proper high quality photos when I have time to photograph my collection.
Photos of my actual specimens will be denoted by a green border, the rest are random internet pictures.

If this was interesting to you, or if you did something interesting with it, email me: articles@gekk.info

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