So when will we get a new camera built to last like this one?

[SimonW]

http://www.oldradio.com/archives/hardware/TV/rca-tk76(4).jpg

[Frank McBride]

I'm guessing it needed registration after that fall!

It wasn't from an airplane, but once upon a time in Jacksonville I was driving a Bronco II with a faulty liftgate out of the station when I heard a bang behind me. In my mirror I got the view of my Sony Betacam (what we called the one on one docked unit) sitting in the middle of Adams Street in it's wooden case, having just fallen out of the cargo area.

Imagine at that point a Dr. Emmett Brown reaction as I jumped out, grabbed it and took it out of sight of the station for examination. It had fallen probably two feet onto a paved road and skidded I'm not sure how far. There was not a thing wrong with it.

Yes, I reported what happened, and yes the liftgate was reparied right away. That camera worked great for the rest of our time together...until the soccer ball incident.

FMc

[photogguy]

Until the soccer ball incident?!

Don't leave us hanging! You can't just leave us with a cliff-hanger like that!

:)

[f11vid]

I was told (did not witness this myself) by a chief engineer,that the demonstration that RCA used at one NAB show involved training a fire hose on a TK 76 while it was running,with a waterproofed bnc cable to a monitor showing its picture (which was perfect).I had a 76c in Dallas. I LOOOOVVVVEEEEDDD that camera.

[Sportsguy]

Hey, I had an Anton/Bauer brick hit the highway at 80mph... A road cleanup crew found it and returned it to us. After a charging, it was just fine- a little worse for wear, but I still use it after 3 years.

[cameradog]

A director at one of my former stations knew I had quite a bit of experience with film cameras, so he asked me if I would look over a camera he bought from a garage sale and tell me what I thought about it. It was a CP 16, a non-reflex body with an Angenieux zoom that had a dog leg viewfinder. The woman who sold it said it had belonged to her husband (deceased), who had worked in television for years. She had found it on the floor of the garage. It still had the station's bumper sticker on it.

She was asking $4. This guy bargained it down to $2.

So I opened it up and immediately saw a problem. The baffling inside was rotting where it had been exposed to water. It looked as though the camera had sat in 2"-3" of water during some kind of flood. The lens also had a severe fungus problem and was useless. The fungus had gotten to the inside elements and left crazed patterns in the coatings. When I mentioned the water damage to this director, he said that she had, in fact, had a flood in her garage, and that many of the things she was selling had similar damage. Remarkably, the shutter, gate, pressure plate and interior movement all looked very clean.

So we had this waterlogged CP 16. But did it work? I managed to get my hands on a CP 16 battery and test it, and the motor turned over just fine. We even ran some dummy film through it, and the movement worked fine as well. We didn't try to expose any film with it, but I have a suspicion that it would have still given us a reasonably steady picture. I still wouldn't have used it without having had it overhauled first.

So the director said if I would put it on eBay for him, we'd split the proceeds. I put it up for an opening bid of $150. It went for $400, even though we carefully detailed the damage and made it perfectly clear we recommended an overhaul.

Not a bad return on a $2 camera.

[Bismarck]

I have one of these somewhere, and it withstood some serious abuse from me and my friends and brothers when I was a kid:

http://www.thisoldtoy.com/new-images/images-ok/3000-4000s/fp3305-pxl2000-camcorder.JPG

[D.St.]

I had an Ikegami HL-43 with a AJ-D90 back. I ended up in a car accident where my car flipped 3 times. The camera was thrown out on the highway.

I walked away from the wreck, and when I went to the tow truck office to get the camera, it fired right up. I used that camera for about another year until the station bought me a new one.

The sad thing is that camera still worked fine when I got the new one, and it got stripped for parts.

[Frank McBride]

Until the soccer ball incident?!

Don't leave us hanging! You can't just leave us with a cliff-hanger like that!

:)

The short version of the soccer ball incident: US World Cup Soccer team was in town for an exhibition game. I was getting video of shootaround before the game. I went for a ground shot next to the goal just outside the bar. After rolling a few seconds of video the camera was ripped from my hands as a powerful kick from the side hit the lens directly. The lens housing was ripped open so wide I got to see what the workings of the doubler looked like (fascinating!).

I tried to shoot for awhile by manually holding the lens together, but it was impossible to keep focus. That was the last time I shot in Jacksonville.

The truth is I was already serving my 2 weeks notice for my next job, and the rest of my time was spent editing for a 30 minute documentary...which would almost cost me my life! Okay, this time I'm BSing.

Bottom line: Camera was still fine. Lens was a goner.

FMc

[focusthis]

Wow, bent the viewfinder 90 degrees, and sheared the LCD and audio control clean off! Is the battery okay?:D

[Stoney]

I had a Lectro wireless, probably an old VHF model (I don't recall), hit the pavement and skid across an interstection. Someone, it might have been me... put it on top of the Jeep when I was loading in a bunch of gear. It sat up there all day until I hit the brakes hard at an intersection. I heard it rumble from the back of the roof, skid off the top, past the windshield, clear the hood and skid for about 20 feet on the pavement. Still worked when I picked it up, though! Man, I felt stupid.... but at least I found the wireless receiver that had been missing all day.

[Stoney]

There was also one time when I was shooting an accident in the winter cold. It was a slick, icy hillside road and cars had skidded all over the place. I just got my betacam back form engineering, it was cleaned or serviced. They decided to slap these new little shock meters on all the gear that came through the shop.

I'm walking across the slick street and instantly go down. My feet kicked out from under me before I could register how slick the roadway really was. What stops my fall? The betacam, of course. Shock sensor was bright red. Luckily, I planted it bottom first, nice and square on the ground. Nothing broke, still worked great. I took it into the shop just to pi$$ off the engineers! They laughed.

Another shooter, a few years later, was walking up some court steps and tripped. He hit the camera lens first and broke it at the betacam's lens mount. The casing was all cracked and the camera was a complete goner. Very unlucky stumble.

During the Aryan Nation Parade in Couer D'Alene in the late 90's I saw a shooter go down with gear. I think he was freelancing for KOMO, not sure. Anyhow, he was using their gear (which I think was a POS betacam with a BVV1 deck). He was walking backwards and hit a curb. Camera hit backend first. That ended his day.

The next year another wreck at the second annual Aryan Nation parade. A shooter was running to keep up at the start of the parade and didn't notice a chain roping off a driveway. He hit it with his shins. The camera was on his extended tripod and, of course, hit lens first. BAM! I felt bad for the guy, I think he was there from Seattle as well.

[F4 Fan]

I once had a 79E that we used almost exclusively for production. Even though it had gotten a little long in the tooth, it was still the pride and joy of the station. No one save me and one other photographer were allowed to even touch the camera.

One day I was out solo shooting a story for news. This was in the days of ¾ inch. What with the camera, the big old wooden O’Connor tripod, the deck and extra batteries I was pretty loaded down. I can’t even remember what the story was, but I sure was glad to get back to the van and load my gear. The parking space next to mine was open and I set the camera down beside me and was starting to put my gear away when a little sports car zipped past me to my right. How he managed to miss me I’ll never know, but he didn’t miss the camera. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion as I watched the 45 thousand dollar camera disappear under the front wheel of the little car. The car’s driver seemed somewhat nonchalant about running over a camera that easily was worth several times what his little putt-putt was worth. He was in big hurry; I foresaw the end of my television career.

I ran to the front of his car and there lay my Ikegami intact; he had caught the big leather strap with his tire, dragged it a few yards, and save for the scratches on the lens hood and the broken strap the camera was fine; needed registration but we used it for several more years.

Although that camera never seemed quite right after that close encounter in a parking lot long ago.

[Run&Gun]

I took an almost head-on hit at a football game years ago. The viewfinder slide/mount got broken and the bottom thumb-screw on my wireless plate was sheared off, but with a little electrical tape to hold the viewfinder on and a paperclip in the bottom wireless mount hole, I was able to shoot the whole game. The viewfinder leaned to one side slightly, but other than that, she was fine.

[patssle]

Luckily, I planted it bottom first, nice and square on the ground. Nothing broke, still worked great

This happened to me as well this January walking back to my apartment. It hardly ever freezes here in south-east Texas. I was walking on grass at night. It turned into a metal grate covered in ice....ouch.

Camera took most of my weight, but hardly a scratch on it as it landed full bottom.

[The Daywood]

The short version of the soccer ball incident: US World Cup Soccer team was in town for an exhibition game. I was getting video of shootaround before the game. I went for a ground shot next to the goal just outside the bar. After rolling a few seconds of video the camera was ripped from my hands as a powerful kick from the side hit the lens directly. The lens housing was ripped open so wide I got to see what the workings of the doubler looked like (fascinating!). FMc

Having been around a ton of MLS and national soccer, I'm guessing they were aiming for you...

They were aiming for the jib from mid-field and laughing every time they hit it...

[Sportsguy]

Having been around a ton of MLS and national soccer, I'm guessing they were aiming for you...

They were aiming for the jib from mid-field and laughing every time they hit it...

As if we needed more reasons to hate soccer...

[cameradog]

Since we're now telling stories about breaking cameras...

I once suffered a broken AJD700 in a ballooning accident. I was shooting from the balloon, and as we approached a field for landing the pilot suggested I stow my camera between a couple of fuel tanks to protect it. That might have worked, except that we got stuck in a tree at the edge of the field in he was trying to land us. When he got us loose, we dropped hard into the field. The basket rolled onto its side and we were dragged like that for a while. The camera didn't budge from its spot, because I ended up on top of it, with the radio guy that was with us on top of me, with the pilot on top of him.

I felt something give way underneath my knee. It was the viewfinder, which snapped off.

The worst part is that this was my first story on a long Saturday, and I was the only photog on duty. So I had to shoot with the viewfinder taped to the camera for part of the day until the AP back at the station (the only person on duty there) could track down another photog to lend me his camera. Not even the chief was answering phone calls or pages for some reason. And horror of horrors was that that little station was too cheap to buy gaffer tape, so I had to do my field repair with nasty, sticky duct tape.

[aussie]

http://www.oldradio.com/archives/hardware/TV/rca-tk76(4).jpg

What RCA didn't tell us was the airplane was on the tarmac at the time of the alleged incident.