Can anyone help identify which '80s VHS camera was used to film this?

A

alexjoy

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Hello everyone! Can anyone help me to identify the camera which filmed these images I took a snapshot from? The only clue of course are how the date/clock are displayed on screen. Thanks in advance. Alex Marin: alexjoy4ever@yahoo.com
 

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The other clue is the logo, which is the logo for Romanian television. As Romania was communist before 1989 I am guessing that it is quite likely it is a soviet made camera. Interestingly from the date, It looks as though this was filmed during the Romanian revolution, which according to wikipedia took place between the 16th and 27th of December 1989.
 
It turns out that tvr actually opted to use a pal system after they introduced color in 1983, despite other eastern block countries using secam.
 
Hello there and thanks for your reply. I will give some extra info. Indeed is the Romanian TV logo, but this is not important for me as I am from Romania and I already knew it. Thanks a lot anyway. More, this is the archive logo, as the footage comes from the Romanian TV archives. I am a Revolution videos amateur footage collector, and I can tell you 100% that this is a Japanese camera like all the cameras used to film at the Revolution. The other 3 used were Panasonic NV-M5, NV-M7, and the WVP-1E. See the new attachmets. First one is WVP-A1E and the 2nd one is the NV-M5 one. Never heard of a soviet camera to be made during the '80s. As I have in my collection over 30 hours filmed then, which is like almost all that was filmed, due to the fact that to have a camcorder back then was like to have a car, meaning quite and ultra rare, the footage was limited. This is the single unidenified brand of camera used, and it filmed one night before, on th 21st of December a rare an unique footage from the burning barricade in Univerity Square in Bucharest. Hope this helps. Thanks again. Alex
 

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The Soviets bought a lot of Betacam KT-190's and the portable BVV-3 recorders.

Of course, they also had hand-held 16MM Kinor film cams that were similarly used, although apparently with the increased rarity in the late-80's, for news gathering.
 
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alexjoy said:
Hello there and thanks for your reply. I will give some extra info. Indeed is the Romanian TV logo, but this is not important for me as I am from Romania and I already knew it. Thanks a lot anyway. More, this is the archive logo, as the footage comes from the Romanian TV archives. I am a Revolution videos amateur footage collector, and I can tell you 100% that this is a Japanese camera like all the cameras used to film at the Revolution. The other 3 used were Panasonic NV-M5, NV-M7, and the WVP-1E. See the new attachmets. First one is WVP-A1E and the 2nd one is the NV-M5 one. Never heard of a soviet camera to be made during the '80s.
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The soviet cam thing was a guess. I afterwards learnt that the eastern block used secam and that Romania used pal. So yeah, no soviet camera, lol. I guess that even though the west and the russians had nukes, the japanese were kicking our asses with electronics at that point. I have no idea if a camera can be identified by its date stamp, but it will be interesting to see if it can be done. May I ask why you are interested in knowing the particular model?
 
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It would be even better if he collated the results from the multiple forums he posted the same video to.
I posted this rely on one of the others. The cameras you mention were not the most popular ones. The full size Panasonics could be a good guess, but they had quite a few in that period - the 5 being the most popular, but the 3 was also quite popular. The JVC and Ferguson VHS-c (I have 41 in my head as part of the model) were quite popular too. In 1980 the Panasonics were still two piece - so perhaps even a few of these ended up in Romania a few years later. There's no way of guessing by the images.
This is a bit silly. Somebody has commented on the placement of the text in the display as proof it is X. Frankly this is rubbish. We are looking at a period when video cameras were becoming popular, and there were dozens of brands, and each replaced their cameras extremely quickly - Sony and Panasonic typically had two models a year, and a range of four or five all the time. The positioning of the display text simply indicates a domestic user who didn't even know how to switch it off. JVC, with their OEM partners like Ferguson and Baird had that kind of display, but so did Sanyo. Sony from memory was not clustered like that, but Panasonic has some models in the cheaper end of their range that did that. You are looking at a likely pool of maybe 40 camcorders from the popular brands, plus even more if the equipment was imported from anywhere in the world. My geography is a bit iffy, but I assume the footage was shot in Romania? When I was there in the 80s, the country was so poor that they had no home grown video market at all - even TV was a luxury. Importation of electronics was banned, so it must have been somebody there as a visitor, so you have to add in foreign branding too. There's simply no way to identify video in this way.

Back then, I handled practically every bit of video kit from cheap domestic to expensive commercial kit, and the displays were all extremely similar - so similar I suspect many shared the technology. Sony, JVC and Matsushita back then all had other named manufacturers rebadging products, or incorporating identical chassis and boards.
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Mattoid said:
The soviet cam thing was a guess. I afterwards learnt that the eastern block used secam and that Romania used pal. So yeah, no soviet camera, lol. I guess that even though the west and the russians had nukes, the japanese were kicking our asses with electronics at that point. I have no idea if a camera can be identified by its date stamp, but it will be interesting to see if it can be done. May I ask why you are interested in knowing the particular model?
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Sure, even though my answer sounds a little crazy, due to the fact that it's so hard to find the person who filmed the footage I try so hard to get some info on, and to have it in my collection in the end, I want to know all the possible details. Secondly, I am an '80s camcorders passionate and I never encountered this way to display clock/date info until now. Thanks again!
 
Thanks for your answer Paul. I still beileve that it can be identified as I did with the Panasonic WVP-A1E earlier this week, taking in consideration the clock/date display on screen. I've identified that camera, and you won't believe how. I will share with you this brief story, and then I wanna ask what were you doing back in the '80s in my country? OK, back to the story: first I got a footage taken from another camera in which the cameraman using the Panasonic WVP-A1E is caught on tape. Then analyzing the camera he held in his hand I did compare it with a set of cameras from an 1986 Peter Justesen duty free mail ordering catalog I had in my other collection, and had a visual match. Then I saw on youtube a footage taken with such cvamera and bingo, I had the correct answer. Getting back to how much was on the black market a VCR and a camcorder in Romania back in the '80s, the first was sold at the same price as a brand new Romanian car, and the 2nd one at a price of a 3 rooms apartment in Bucharest. How crazy could've been that?? All the best and hope I'll get the answer soon!
 
Maybe its a case of my overactive hollywood movie imagination but i'm imagining some 25 year revenge action going down soon Liam Neeson style. lol.
 
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