Betacam Camera, Delamination of Filters
 

Picked up this nice first generation 3 tube Betacam camera today.

It was apparently destined for the council rubbish collection but someone saved it.

Got it home and powered it on, viewfinder came to life, then smoke poured out from inside the camera head.

Silly me had powered it on in the loungeroom, stinky smell for days!

Pulled it apart and discovered a tantalum capacitor had taken itself out. I replaced it temporarily with an equivalent eletrolytic.

Powered back on (in the laundy this time), no more smoke, but viewfinder flickered and rolled intermittently and there seemed to be a picture!

Plugged in an external monitor and was pleased to see perfect color bars were being output, but the cameras output from the tubes was almost b/w and washed out.

Eventually discovered a switch called "detail" was on, turning this off the image returned what looked almost normal with good color.

Sadly though, the filter wheel has become delaminated or mould growing inside the glass so all the camera can see is a blurred view of the world through it.

It looks like a Sony (sometimes badged Ampex) BVP-3 (Saticon tubes) or a BVP-30 (Plumbicon tubes) and in sad condition. You will spend the rest of your life making it work if caps are blowing. I have never seen the delamination but dampness will do that. Try to find a good one at the usual places. They do still work...like my 30...and are cheap. Save the BVP-1 deck. Record only. No playback. A lot of trust while on remote in the day.

delamination of filters in early Sony cameras can be a problem, if it is just the ones in the filter wheel, see if the camera will focus OK with one removed.

Make sure the bias light is working (easy to check). One of the filters is clear so it should not be a problem to evaluate. Do you have an extender board? It has a large cutout in it.