Engineering question: Tube Camera Survivability

[sdsw4]

Originally Posted by Tube TV

From my experience it seems to be a crapshoot which camera tube survives. Old Sony monochrome cameras from the early 70's have been the most reliable in my collection. AVC-3200, AVC-2350, AVC-3400 ect.

A Panasonic WV-033P (circa 1968) was the most troublesome to get running. It turned out to have a dead germanium transistor, a high ESR electrolytic and a dead Vidicon tube. It's been running good now.

I think there are a lot of other component failures in cameras that are being mistaken for tube failures these days. You have to consider that the average color vidicon camera is now over 40 years old running on it's original capacitors. I've powered up many that I highly doubt have seen power since the 1990's and the color was bright and sharp. More often they fail after a while and require readjustment to bring the colors back.

I would very much like to see footage from that WV-033P if possible please.