[austvarchive]

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.