What was the camera like in the 1980s?

80' s broadcast camera (i.e. TV station) (Hitachi Z3 1A camera);

At that time, Hitachi Z3 1A should be a very good machine, and the price was astronomical.

From the structural point of view, a large number of discrete components such as resistors, capacitors and transistors are used, and only small-scale integrated circuits are used. The circuit board needs several layers, and the volume of components is too large for a box, so it must be divided into two parts, one part is placed in the camera (camera unit) and the other part is placed in the video unit.

The circuit in the head is responsible for controlling the movement of the camera, such as lens movement, and converting the light into electrical signals, which are transmitted to the video recording unit for further processing through cables and then recorded on the tape. The mechanism for driving the magnetic tape is also located in the video recording unit.

It is worth mentioning that the use of three such electron gun photosensitive devices (at that time, the CCD manufacturing technology was immature, the resolution (pixel) was low, and it was only used in low-level machines), and there was also a heating device like an electron tube filament to work, so the power consumption was huge and it was impossible to use batteries for power supply. The video recording unit is also responsible for supplying power to the huge power consumption of the electron gun. The above factors determined that the camera of that era was huge and consumed huge power.