Tv cameras with tubes - last used, last produced
 

When when the last proffesional videocameras with tubes where produced?
When when the last proffesional videocameras with tubes where used in the country where you live?

Do you mean no transistors, or transistorized with Plumbicon pickup tubes?

Tranzsitorized with plumbicon or saticon tubes.
But you made me curios about the others too.

It's quite a hard question to answer. a contender might be the Bosch KCH1000 camera introduced in 1986. The middle/late 1980s was a crossover time for tubes v CCD and at that point tubes offered a better resolution than CCD could do, hence the tubed "HD" KCH1000 camera.

See http://www.tvcameramuseum.org/bosch/.../kch1000p1.htm

This makes sense and jibes with my memory. Solid state sensors were improving, but had not reached HD resolution quite yet. Tube cameras had to be used for HD. The Saticons were special HD ones with a finer than usual beam. This meant they were also more prone to lag and comet-tailing. Sony sold the tubes to Bosch, but would not sell their low-noise preamps, which were soldered to the faceplate. Bosch had to desolder them and return them to Sony, and solder on their own preamps (a touchy process to avoid damaging the photoconductive layer).

The ones used in the US HDTV tests were branded BTS. The two special models they designed for the Zenith / AT&T progressive scan system cost $800,000 each. [not a typo - eight hundred thousand].

Sheesh, you have had to be a station very on top to afford a camera that costed like that. More then 1,000,000 U.S. Dollars in today's money. And you didn't need just one camera, you needed to. With the price of 2 cameras you could get the S.D. equypment of one studio.

I have a gazillion camera pickup tubes if anybody needs/wants any:

http://videokarma.org/showthread.php?t=269817

You must realize that this price was paying the full development cost, because the makers knew that the market was only for a few while the HDTV system specifications were being developed. Once the system was standardized and broadcasts could start, the prices could drop to about 10-15% of the experimental model. Still not for the casual user, but something the broadcasters could afford.

And, perhaps more relevant and made in greater quantities (purchased at least by Sender Freies Berlin and a production company called VTTV; I think Hessischer Rundfunk and Süddeutscher Rundfunk also took some to replace their ageing KCU 40), their real world companions KCM 125 and KCM 318. It could be that some of them have already been delivered under the BTS brand, too.

It could also be worth to take a closer look at the Japanese manufacturers. I'm aware of an OBV with a set of Sony BVP-360 and its handheld companion that went into operation in 1986.

And when last used: At Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk at least one OBV with Bosch KCU 40 cameras remained in service until 1994 (or 1993/1995). About the same time horizon applies to the use of Soviet KT-132 by German production companies. Norddeutscher Rundfunk still used Philips LDK-6 on a significant political event in 1998.