why are television cameras so large?
I’ve never understood why some video cameras are sooo huuge. Such as live television shows or reality tv cameras. I own a smaller HD camera that will produce the exact same quality. Any ideas?
There are a bunch of reasons.
Some of it’s simply tradition — the fit, the extra hardware, the lenses, etc. for in-studio cameras were all well established in the industry long before a portable camera became practical. Since improvements are evolutionary for long periods of time (high definition being the exception), you probably never saw everything change all at once. So while some of the parts of a modern studio camera might have allowed reductions in size, others did not. You still need room for all the many manual controls camera operators are used to, their large viewscreens, the same lens mounts, etc.
And of course, what you see in a studio or being used in the field (ENG cameras) are not really what you have in your home camera. A pro-class ENG camera costs around $25,000 or so, it has interchangeable lenses, three CCD sensors around 4x the area (each) of the best single sensors you find in consumer cameras, etc. They’re expected to hook up to standard battery packs, wireless video senders, professional mics, etc. In past, many of these shoulder mount cameras also had much larger tapes, too.. BetaCam or DigiBeta, full sized DV, rather than VHS-C, 8mm, or mini-DV. And of course, all of this engineered to absolutely not fail under harsh field conditions.
And no, your tiny HD camera will not produce “exactly the same quality”. While true, it may produce better SD video than a pro SD camera of some years ago.. even that’s going to be a qualified “better”… try it a light levels under 15lux. That ENG camera I mentioned, with three 2/3″ CCDs, has 6x-12x the light gathering capability of a typical consumer single 1/6″-1/3″ CCD camera, not to mention they probably have an f1.2 or so lens, versus the f1.8 (if you have a good consumer model) of your camcorder. So your camcorder goes to hell long before a pro camera in low light… I know my $2600 “pro/prosumer” Sony HDV camcorder does, relative to an ENG camera. So does the otherwise very sweet $6K Canon XL-H1a.
Low light is perhaps the last hard advantage of these large cameras (obviously, lots of extra knobs and buttons and connectors can make life easier, but doesn’t necessarily create a different capability than the smaller cameras’ use of menus and mini-connectors… low light capability in studio and ENG cameras makes them a different animal). And it’s probably going to change, soon. If you look at the new Canon EOS 5D Mk II digital still cameras, you’ll notice a new feature… video. While not a full featured video camera, this does shoot full 1080p HD video using a full frame 35mm sensor… quite a bit more light gathering capability than any ENG camera, even more than many of the digital beyond-HD filmmaking cameras such as the Red One (all of the really high-end 4K and 8K digital film cameras are single-sensor, just like most consumer cameras, only with APS, 35mm, or possibly even larger sensors). This technology has to migrate to digital video cameras, now that it’s essentially “out of the bag”.
JVC HD TV Camera Workshop #1