3D effect on old videofilmings

[Adlershof]

Originally Posted by Telecolor 3007

I've noticed in some old filmings that the image had a kind of 3D effect.

You could call it analogue sharpening. Plumbicon cameras had circuits for that (you may find the more-less control for them labelled "contour"), IO tubes had such an effect naturally (the one that produced the infamous dark halos around bright lights).

Beyond that it is a really nice selection of videos you brought up here.

The first one is the real start of West German colour TV, also half a century later still considered big fun for having the colour burst thrown in way too early. Cameras were Philips LDK-3 [in North America known as PC-60/PC-70] because Fernseh GmbH had nothing to offer yet in 1967, after their attempts to build a IO colour camera failed (it seems that the main issue was registration, which TV stations declared as unmanageable for the prototypes they tested).

Some people claim that it was simply impossible to build a usable colour camera with IO tubes. Your second video is an example for the results that could be obtained with this impossible approach. (Weight, set-up, sensitivity etc. are another question; the claim was that it would never work at all.)

And your third video shows HD captured with Saticon tubes. Just look out for the streaking on the headlights at 2:30.


VHS: In fact it is a surprise that people had put up with this quality at all.

Depht of field: Image size of 35 mm 1.37:1 is 16x22 mm, not much bigger than on 30 mm tubes. It was frequently obvious to the attentive viewer that focussing on long focal lengths was pretty delicate.

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by Adlershof

IO tubes had such an effect naturally (the one that produced the infamous dark halos around bright lights).

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VHS: In fact it is a surprise that people had put up with this quality at all.

The IO halo had to be suppressed in color cameras by operating below the "knee" because bright colored objects would have produced complementary-color haloes. Special IO tubes were produced for color that had a higher knee point. In monochrome, operation above the knee was used deliberately, as stated, to enhance edges while providing an approximate sort of gamma correction.

Regarding VHS quality, the old saying is "Content is king."