The Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Thread

I don't know if somebody got their wires crossed, but according to an old newsgroup post Leeds got Thomson 1707s in 2002, while they were at Woodhouse Lane. If that is the case, I assume they got a new set at St Peter's Gardens rather than taking them with them as the new studios were piloting for a while before the move?

Hull moved first IIRC so they wouldn't have got the Woodhouse Lane cast-offs.

Entirely possible that the 2002 cameras are still in use. When Oxford opened in 2005, they got two cameras from Southampton that were a similar vintage. Southampton were left with four (they originally had six plus a spare I think, four for Studio A and two for Studio B). From 2004, the Oxford opt was presented from the reception area on a camera moved up from Southampton (but used Southampton Gallery B.)

While piloting the Oxford studio and gallery, they used the other camera from Southampton Studio B. When the studio was ready for TX, both cameras were finally together in the same place. The Oxford opt was done on two Thomson cameras for years until a third Thomson chain was added in 2012. By then, Southampton had moved to using Sony studio cameras, so more Thompson spares were available. To this day, the original camera chains are still labelled ‘5’ and ‘6’ in a couple of places.

News replaced their Philips LDKs in a number of their studios (like N6 ) with Sony E30s (SD) as the previous Philips (now GVG) LDK100s (the original cameras put in to N6 and also used by EastEnders) had mechanical shutters that didn't cope with the Barco projector cube walls. ISTR that some of them went to Nations and Regions when News moved from TVC to NBH (as did some of the other relatively new gear like the Sony vision mixers). This kit wasn't HD, wasn't brand new, but still had life in it, and was a lot newer than a lot of the kit elsewhere. Similar things happened with some of the Oxford Road kit when the move to Salford happened.

Some regions have also replaced their first gen Thomson TTV1707s (a truly dreadful camera) with Sony HSC300s or similar (HD cameras running in SD) as buying SD cameras in this day and age would be ridiculous.

The HSC300 was also the NBH standard camera (in the original Triax-only variant) but AIUI HDC3100s (or the triax HDC3170) may now be being bought (I have a feeling the HD-upgraded Arabic and Persian studios got them).

I would expect the regions will have a procurement - and there may well be an argument for a mix of brick cameras and full-function models (as many other European broadcasters have used in news studios with remote PTZ cameras)

(Incidentally - EastEnders and News often buy the same camera models for some reason. I think partially because Elstree is very triad-dependent still, and partially because they have to be cost-effective, without needing all the facilities that an entertainment camera might need)

Not anymore. EastEnders has replaced their HSC-300s with the (cinema-camera style) Sony PXW-FX9 and fibre Sony HDC-3500.

Ah - I'd heard EE had gone with the Triax variant of the HDC-3500 to replace the HSC-300s - as there was nervousness about switching to SMPTE from Triax ? I guess sense prevailed to allow for UHD migration.

I wonder how well the FX-9 matches the 3500s given one is a large single-sensor and the other is a smaller 2/3" 3-chip?

I'm not 100% certain - I was told by one person when they resumed filming that they had got fibre versions and someone else told me in the first half of the year that they were going to go for triax versions, but the HDC-3500 is only available in fibre and the triax version is the HDC-3170...

I do a fair number of jobs where we were matching FS7 (with B4 lenses) to HDC4300 and we didn't really have many issues. Would be more of an issue if you were matching cine-lenses and B4s. From what I heard a while ago, EE were planning to shoot some episodes entirely on FX9 and some entirely on 3500. I am not sure if there is a clear distinction right now or if it's based upon which studio or lot they are on. Location shoots will certainly be FX9 (replacing the old Panasonic (?) cameras they used to have - I've never done EE location, only studio).

When EE went "HD" they had HSC300s in the studio and on-site exterior locations that were triaxed, and bought Sony PDW700 (or was it 800?) XD Cam 2/3" camcorders for location shoots - as they were very similar in camera terms so matched very well in pretty much every respect.

As for 3500 vs 3170s - AIUI the camera heads are identical with just different cable-adaptor 'sides' on them ? (Certainly that is the case for the 3500 and 5500 which just differ in the SMPTE fibre sub-systems they use)

A Sony rep told me that that’s theoretically the case but they run very different firmware versions. I think they were still trying to work out if they were going to offer the change in firmware as something you can do by sending it into a service centre or not. They might have cleared that up now!

Duncan was just in as a guest at the end of Calendar tonight to announce that they will be going double headed again from tomorrow.

He’ll be sitting on the left of the desk 2m away from Christine

I suspect we'll see most regions gradually go back to being double headed over the next few weeks, except Wales and London who don't anyway... and Granada Reports for obvious reasons.

Calendar back double headed tonight


For the first time in six months they were back to two separate versions for Emley Moor and Belmont again

We’re back! See you for @itvcalendar at 6! @christinetalbot @JonMitchellITV pic.twitter.com/7sdm816MsU

— Duncan Wood (@duncanwoodtv) September 22, 2020

Just watching this evening, and there’s a lot of empty sofa on view. This shot which gets used a lot for single-headed presentation is a particular offender...



I’d agree that a little bit of re-jigging of the studio wouldn’t go amiss. Maybe shortening the sofa might make it look better.