1968 RCA PK-330 industrial vidicon studio camera

The PK-330 was part of RCA's small line of industrial grade tv cameras made in the mid-late 60s. This camera was popular in Burbank, California in the late 60s. Although, now, this camera is very rare. As you can see, these cameras don't have their lenses, but I'm in the process of locating them.

The marketing point of the RCA PK-330, was that you could buy the camera with it's tripod, and not need to purchase an expensive heavy-duty pan/tilt head to mount it on, as the weight of the camera is about 55 pounds. How this was done, is that they made a "built-in" pan/tilt feature in the camera head.

The built-in pan is accomplished by a simple swiveling, round plate on the bottom, which mounts to the tripod for the camera.

The built-in tilt feature is accomplished by mounting the vidicon yoke in a tilting frame, which is controlled by tilting the handle up and down, on the side of the camera. This is a very unique camera, because of this outlandish design!

Also, for easy service, the whole top panel flips up towards the viewfinder! You don't even need to remove any screws. This camera uses a 1 inch vidicon, which is said to produce over 800 lines of resolution. The RCA PK-330L was this exact camera, the difference being, it used a lead-oxide(target) tube, so it's technically a Plumbicon. The lens has a servo zoom with adjustable speed, and lens focus is mechanical. Iris is controlled with a dial on the left of the viewfinder. The focus knob is on the other side. The camera is connected to it's power supply/processing unit, with a large cable, using a 24-pin connector. Typical controls like target, focus, beam, etc. are on the back. Jacks for intercom are on the bottom, as well as the zoom speed dial.