1986 Ikegami HL-95B 3-Tube ENG Camera with Ampex CVR-5 (Betacam SP)

Testing an old Ikegami HL-95B 3-tube ENG camera from 1986, paired with a dockable Ampex CVR-5 (rebranded Sony BVV-5) Betacam SP dockable recorder. The lens I'm using is a Fujinon A8.5x5.5FRM11, a very wide angle lens (5.5-47mm). As for the battery I'm using a Sony NP-1 battery to power it for the outdoor tests.

Played back on a Sony BVW-35 via composite and captured using a BlackMagic Intensity Pro at raw 8-bit YUV, then deinterlaced, upscaled to 1080p, and encoded to x264 using StaxRip and VapourSynth.

When I first got this camera, it would not focus at all when zoomed out no matter what I did, even after I tried multiple lenses. Eventually I found out the issue is that the rear element of the lens was too close to the camera's optical block (i.e the sensor) which meant the back focus was completely wack.

The solution was to install M4 style washers on each of the 4 screws on the lens mount in order to space out the lens from the optical block and fix the back focus issue. I used 5 washers, and each one was 0.8mm thick, which meant a total distance of 4mm from the optical block. This fixed the problem with back focus. I also installed longer screws for the washers.

As in the video you can see that there is lens flare - this is because there is a gap between the lens and camera now that is now allowing unwanted light to come into the camera. It's also causing interference with the pre-amplifiers for the tubes which causes artifacts in the picture.

0:00 - Indoor Tests
2:11 - Outdoor Tests

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