1970 AKAI VC-100 B&W portable vidicon camera

This camera was made in the early 70s, to be used with the Akai VT-100 portable EIAJ VTR. It has a 2/3 inch tube, and a built in microphone and zoom lens. There is no iris control, just a switch which changes the aperture from 1.8 to 5.8, and the rest of the compensation in brightness is done by the ASC (automatic sensitivity control.) Very well built, all side panels are metal.

The camera has very little electronics inside it, and is extremely compacted, for the early 70s. There are a few things that made this possible: Number one, it has an optical viewfinder that sees through the lens. Number two, it requires external blanking! This makes it very annoying if you don't have the power supply, like me. I guess they did it to save space in the camera. Although it has a standard EIAJ connector, you can't plug it in to a standard EIAJ power supply, for this reason.

It has a nice fake wood handle like the JVC GC-4800 did. The handle has a record button, and since it's removable, the record signal from the button gets sent to the camera through an 1/8 inch jack on the bottom.

This camera had a bad tube, as air had got into it. I removed the bad tube, but I don't have a replacement tube yet. I will also need a sync generator if I can't find the original power supply.