There are several power switches on the camera, they all need to be set correctly.
On the right hand side of the camera, below the battery hatch, is a three-position slider switch to select which connector the power comes from. The 10-pin and 14-pin options refer to the connectors right next to the switch, the external option refers to powering the camera through the adaptor attached to the rear of the camera.
On the back-end attached to the rear of the camera is a slider switch which selects which of its sockets supply power to the camera.
On the left hand side of the camera, below the auto-iris adjustment knob, is a standby/operate switch, it needs to be switched on.
And, of course, there's probably a power switch on the supply that you're connecting the camera to (whether that be a CCU, or just a simple power supply).
I suggest that, in future, you only use the power switch on the power supply to switch the camera on and off, leaving the rest of the camera switches in the normal operating positions. In a studio setting, most electronic & electrical controls should be managed by the technical crew in the control room, this includes switching equipment on and off.
The auto-iris control may be turned all the way down, or the iris may be manually closed, or the lens cap may be on. Try opening the iris, manually, using the iris ring on the lens. You'll need to press in the silver button to unlock the iris ring, on some lenses, to take the lens off the close or auto positions.
The auto-iris is not particularly good on this camera, you can try adjusting it carefully, but you're better off doing manual exposure with the iris ring on the lens. The electronic iris controls on the camera head, and the CCU, only adjust the auto-iris level control, they are not a manual exposure control. Also, they work on top of each other, simultaneously. If you must use auto-iris, then leave the control on the camera in the centre click-stop position, and adjust the control on the CCU.
If the picture is very dark, you may have the high-speed special-effect-shutter switched on (SES). If the picture is very grainy, the gain is probably turned up (AGC).
I cannot emphasise, enough, that in any situation where you are able to control the lighting, doing so is the best way to get good pictures. No camera is able to make a good picture out of bad lighting. And good lighting is one of the major things that makes a shot look good. This isn't just about putting as much light into a scene as possible, but using even lighting across a scene, and lighting from suitable angles. Where possible, improve the lighting rather than play with the gain or shutter controls.
See the operation guide page for more information.
If the viewfinder has a blank screen, the return video switch is probably switched on (the “ret” switch on the lens). It allows you to see a video signal coming back up the camera cable, such as VTR playback, or a signal from a video mixer. When selected, it cuts off the camera picture going to the viewfinder.
If the viewfinder picture looks very grainy and noisy, the peaking switch is probably switched on. It artificially enhances the detail in the viewfinder, to make it easier to adjust the lens focus. It can be switched on and off as needed, and does not affect the picture sent by the camera.
There are three possibilities:
The auto-preset mode is on, it presets many of the side panel controls. Press the auto-preset button below the green light on the left-front-side of the camera. The light goes out when auto-preset mode is off. This will need switching off every time you power up the camera, unless the camera's connected to a CCU (auto-preset will be forced permanently off when a CCU is connected).
The camera is connected to a CCU. The CCU will always have remote control of most of the camera controls. See the CCU page for more information.
There's a technical fault with the camera.
On the camera head, in the section between the camera head and where the WV-AD37 back-end plugs into, below the 32-pin connector is a +/− “run” switch. It's obvious purpose is to do with the polarity of the record-pause start/stop signal. However, it also affects the CCU operation, and needs switching up to the + position for the CCU to work. Otherwise, most of the camera head and CCU controls are disabled.
If you find the camera's colour phasing is wrong after doing a genlock line-up using colour bars, it's because the colour bars are generated separately from the camera, in the WV-AD37 back-end. At some stage, you should align the camera to its back-end (using the colour phase preset inside the left-hand-side drop-down panel), and always use the same back-end on the same camera. Until you do this, ignore the colour bar output, and adjust the phasing with a live picture. Aim the camera at something with vibrant colours, to make it easier. See the colour bars page, for more information.
All of the phasing adjustments will drift with time, it's a design flaw with these cameras (and many others, too). You will see some changes to colour and horizontal phasing with temperature changes to the equipment, and of the environment around them. It's best to let the equipment warm up, fully, before doing alignments.
If the chroma is strobing, the camera needs a workshop alignment. There is a specific adjustment to stop chroma flickering, and it can be adjusted down to a barely noticeable level. This might only be an issue with PAL cameras, probably related to the inversion of the R-Y carrier every alternate video line. I don't know whether NTSC, which doesn't invert the carrier, has any flickering issues for some other reason. For what it's worth, I don't see anything like this flickering issue, nor an adjustment for it, on other PAL cameras.
Apart from being a white balance issue, where the camera's auto-white balance is rather crude, and some manual tweaking is usually needed, afterwards, this may be an indication that the camera needs a workshop alignment. But these cameras are not as precise as broadcast cameras, and some variance from each other seems to be normal. It will be particularly noticeable between different model cameras, as they all have different sensors. That includes comparing a F15 camera against a F15HS camera, and probably even comparing same model cameras, but of different vintages.
If you find that the camera switches on with a picture with weird colour tints, that's down to a couple of things:
You may be missing the auto-tracking white balance sensor above the lens, and a camera without a CCU always switches on in auto-tracking white balance mode (ATW). You need this sensor installed to be able to use ATW.
You need to do a white balance. And you'll need to do this each time you switch the camera on.
If you find that the white balance cannot be adjusted, enough, to be able to correct the picture, that could be down to these issues:
You're trying to manually white balance the camera, but the camera doesn't have enough range in the controls. This is normal, unfortunately. With the design of this camera, you're expected to auto-white-balance the camera, then use the manual controls as fine tuning.
The lighting conditions are too extreme for the camera to handle. You'll need to change the lighting, or use colour correction filters on the camera (which will preclude using ATW).
See the white balance page for more information.
Could be maladjusted back-focus (if wide-angle shots are out of focus), or a mucky lens (including internal lens elements, not just the front element). See the lens page for more details.
Alternatively, if it's just the viewfinder, it may be that the viewfinder needs a workshop alignment to re-focus the CRT, or repair any failing power supplies. Or, even that the CRT is worn out. This will happen, prematurely, when camera operators turn the brightness and contrast up too much.
Either you have a flat battery in the side of the camera (when you see a blinking "backup" on the display), or certain modes of the camera are active, or it's a warning about something you need to sort out. If the display is too annoying, there are some ways to deal with it on the blinking on-screen-display page, see it for more details.
On the other hand, some viewfinders will not show the OSD, since they're carried on a separate wire than the video signal, and rely on the viewfinder, or the viewfinder interface, to merge them together, and not all of them do.
To get sound out of the camera (from one of the multi-pin connectors), you need a microphone plugged into the head, and the correct output signal level selected (microphone or line level) by the switch inside the battery hatch on the right-hand-side of the camera. There are three microphone connectors on the head, and there appears to be some sort of auto-level-control, according to the description in the service manual.
The “int” (internal) microphone socket carries DC power on it to power up the microphone, and should only be used with suitable microphones. It's a stereo microphone connector, using a tip, ring, and sleeve connector, for left, right, and ground, with the DC power supply on top of the audio connections. Tip and ring can be connected together, for a mono microphone that feeds both channels with the same signal.
The two “ext” (external) microphones are for separate left and right microphones. They are tip, ring, and sleeve connectors, with audio on the tip, DC on the ring, and the sleeve is ground. And should only be used with suitable microphones. Microphones that don't use external power should either not connect to the ring, or short the ring to ground. The supply is resistor-fed, so can survive being shorted out, but any loose cabling will probably create annoying crackling noises.
There is no microphone inside the camera, one needs to be attached to it. So the internal microphone socket is a bit misleadingly labelled, but having three sockets does allow you to plug in external microphones, without having to unplug the one attached to the camera, which would leave a microphone cable flailing about. When an external microphone is connected, it cuts off the signal from the internal microphone.
Only the 10-pin VTR socket on the head can send stereo audio to a VTR, the other VTR or SEG multipin connectors only carry the left audio channel through them.
The intercom audio, with the WV-AD37 back-end, depends on being connected to the CCU. It uses a carbon-microphone headset, and its microphone needs power to work (supplied from the CCU). You'll need an appropriate headset to use the intercom, such as an old-fashioned telephone operators headset, an aircraft headset, or some radio communications headsets. See the intercom page, for more details.
NB: The microphone DC power supply, and internal/external socket switching needs checking. The service manual circuit diagrams differ from what I recall testing, long ago.