let's take apart this old TV camera!

just 4 screws...

woah, that's a lot of boards

so many adjustment trimmers! these were a royal pain to align!

HV DANGER

the light from the lens goes through a beam splitting prism and three color filters. each filtered image goes into a vidicon tube. notice all the adjustment screws? yeah what a pain to align.

there's a delay line on this board

it can generate color bars!

the other side opens up too. more trimmers.

the camera is designed to rest only on the right shoulder. lol.

but wait! take out two screws and you can flip the shoulder rest around!

I got a lens for this camera!

the motorized part comes off. I need to look at the aperture motor which seems to have gotten stuck

lots of wiring inside.

looks like this button's rubber cap melted

and this slide switch cap is in the process of melting. I'll try to 3D print a replacement.

the gears don't mesh! well that's a problem.

this camera desperately needs an alignment. time to figure out how to do that.

wow it's really far off

better. I'm doing red first, blue next

it's not perfect but it's much better than before.

i'm consulting an expert now. he once told me how he had to spend hours adjusting similar cameras, so now i get to experience that too, only without any time pressure.

working on fixing the lens electronics. the zoom buttons don't seem to do anything

ok here's an electrical puzzle. this center-sprung zoom button has 4 terminals and must have potentiometers inside, but how are they connected? I made a table of resistances for all combinations of pins with the control in different positions. can you figure it out?

I can't open the potentiometer without damaging it since it's glued shut. this is really bothering me now lol

all right, time to crack this nut

here we go! so there's just one wiper. this isn't a dual pot.

close-up of the resistive pattern

now this makes sense. terminal 3 is just a fixed center tap.

check out the brushes! usually it's all stamped out of the same springy copper. this must have been expensive.