WHAT MAKES A TV NEWS CAMERA SPECIAL? A look at a Panasonic ENG News Camera

Published: 11 May 2020
on channel: Jesse
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We are looking at the video camera of a News Camera Operator (aka Photographer) and seeing what makes it stand apart from a consumer level device.

Whether you searched for: What is a news camera? What does a camera operator use? News Camera overview or News Camera review, this video should answer all your questions about what equipment a broadcast photojournalist uses when making TV News.

Here we are going to go over some details of the Panasonic AJ-PX380G, a professional level ENG camera. Also called a AJ-PX380.

ENG (electronic news gathering) video cameras were originally designed for use by news camera operators. While they have some similarities to the smaller consumer camcorder, they differ in several regards:

ENG cameras are larger and heavier (helps dampen small movements), and usually supported by a camera shoulder support or shoulder stock on the camera operator's shoulder, taking the weight off the hand, which is freed to operate the zoom lens control.
The camera mounts on tripods with Fluid heads and other supports with a quick release plate.
3 CCDs or CMOS active pixel sensors are used, one for each of the primary colors
They have interchangeable lenses.
The lens is focused manually and directly, without intermediate servo controls. However the lens zoom and focus can be operated with remote controls with a television studio configuration operated by a camera control unit (CCU).
A rotating behind-the-lens filter wheel, for selecting an 85A and neutral density filters.
Controls that need quick access are on hard physical switches, all in the same general place on the camera, irrespective of the camera manufacturer, such as Gain Select, White/Black balance, color bar select, and record start controls and not in menu selection.
All settings, white balance, focus, and iris can be manually adjusted, and automatics can be completely disabled.
Professional BNC connectors for video out and genlock in.
Can operate an electronic viewfinder (EVF) or external CRT viewfinder.
At least two XLR input connectors for audio are included.
Direct slot-in for portable wireless microphones.
Audio is adjusted manually, with easily accessed physical knobs.
A complete time code section is available, allowing time presets; multiple-camera setups can be time code-synchronized or jam synced to a master clock.
"Bars and tone" are available in-camera (the SMPTE color bars (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) Bars, a reference signal that simplifies calibration of monitors and setting levels when duplicating and transmitting the picture. )
Recording is to a professional medium like some variant of Betacam or DVCPRO or Direct to disk recording or flash memory. If as in the latter two, it's a data recording, much higher data rates (or less video compression) are used than in consumer devices.

A professional video camera (often called a television camera even though its use has spread beyond television) is a high-end device for creating electronic moving images (as opposed to a movie camera, that earlier recorded the images on film). Originally developed for use in television studios, they are now also used for music videos, direct-to-video movies, corporate and educational videos, marriage videos, among other uses. Since the 2010s, most professional video cameras are digital professional video cameras.

With the advent of digital video capture in the 2000s, the distinction between professional video cameras and movie cameras disappeared as the intermittent mechanism became the same. Nowadays, mid-range cameras exclusively used for television and other works (except movies) are termed as professional video cameras.

P2 (P2 is a short form for "Professional Plug-In") is a professional digital recording solid-state memory storage media format introduced by Panasonic in 2004, and especially tailored to electronic news-gathering (ENG) applications. It features tapeless (non-linear) recording of DV, DVCPRO, DVCPRO25, DVCPRO50, DVCPRO-HD, or AVC-Intra streams on a solid-state flash memory. The P2 card is essentially a RAID of Secure Digital (SD) memory cards with an LSI controller tightly packaged in a die-cast PC Card (formerly PCMCIA) enclosure, so data transfer rate increases as memory capacity increases. The system includes cameras, decks as drop-in replacements for videocassette recorders (VCR), and a special 5.25-inch computer drive for random-access integration with non-linear editing systems (NLE). The cards can also be used directly where a PC card (PCMCIA) slot is available, as in most older notebook computers.

A photojournalist overviews his camera gear, specifically focusing on his ENG News camera. He shares some stories of how durable the camera is, protecting him from injury. News Cameraman Fail averted.

Panasonic aj-px380 p2 hd avc-ultra camcorder is the full name of the camera.

#broadcastcamera #panasonic #newscamera


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