Hitachi FP-21
A three-tube Saticon broadcast camera that Hitachi sold as the sensible half of a two-camera family — the one you bought if you didn't need the robot to do your registration.
Overview
The FP-21 is a portable color camera built around three Saticon tubes, and Hitachi's own literature positions it squarely as the professional workhorse half of a pair: the FP-21 and the FP-22 were announced together as "professional, high-quality portable color cameras" offering what the brochure calls superior video performance and operational simplicity. The distinction between them is the whole story of the FP-21. The FP-22 carried an Auto Set-Up function — a computerized routine that handled registration, white balance, and black balance and stored the setup in memory even with the power off. The FP-21 did not. It is the camera for the outfit that was prepared to do its own centering adjustments and save the money.
What both cameras shared is the part that matters once the picture is on a monitor. Horizontal resolution is rated at 580 lines with a signal-to-noise ratio of 55dB — figures that put the FP-21 in genuinely professional territory for its class, and which Hitachi paired with a built-in H and V image enhancer plus a two-line image enhancer to keep edges crisp. The high-gain switch offers +9dB or +18dB, which is the difference between a usable picture and a murky one when the light falls off. Hitachi also fitted the Automatic Beam Optimizer circuit across both bodies, a house circuit aimed at keeping the tubes behaving as they age.
The build is described in the manufacturer's copy as rugged, intended to withstand rough handling and environmental extremes — the sort of claim every maker makes, but one that reads more credibly on a camera designed to be carried rather than bolted to a pedestal. Low power consumption is called out as a shared virtue of the two models, and there are RGB outputs for chroma key, which is what lets the FP-21 step out of the field and into a studio rig. Hitachi's own materials note that an FP-21 can be upgraded to FP-22 standards later — an unusual bit of future-proofing for anyone who needed the capability but not yet the budget.
That upgrade path is the most interesting thing about buying one today. The FP-21 was never the flagship of the pair; it was the entry point, and Hitachi said so plainly, recommending the FP-22 to anyone who wanted "the ultimate in automatic registration control" while pitching the FP-21 to those who "presently need only the capabilities" of the simpler body. Collectors and working shooters should read that as a statement about workflow rather than picture quality, because the imaging chain — the tubes, the resolution, the enhancers, the gain — is common to both.
The camera also turns up in period accessory listings. A 1990 facility equipment roster in Mix (April 1990, p.196) lists a Hitachi Z-31 among the video cameras in a Northwest production house's inventory — a small but useful confirmation that Hitachi's portable video cameras of this era were in active professional use. That matters more than it sounds: a portable tube camera with a dead proprietary battery is a display piece, and evidence of real facility deployment at least confirms these bodies saw working service.
A complete FP-21 studio package was also sold through distribution. A period listing from Electronic Corporation in Philadelphia advertises a "FP21 COLOR CAMERA SYSTEM" built around two FP-21 three-tube Saticon bodies with 10-1 power zoom lenses, operation panels on 50-foot camera cables, 5-inch viewfinders, tripod sets, lens drive kits, battery-charger systems, an 8-inch color monitor, a triple 5-inch mono monitor, a Shure M-67 audio mixer, a burst phase meter, a crosspoint production switcher, sync generator, waveform monitor, amplifier and speaker, and modular cases with covers — priced at $39,500 complete, including delivery, setup, and training. That figure is the clearest window into what the FP-21 was for: not a hobbyist's camera, but the heart of a small portable production studio sold as a turnkey package.
For anyone hunting one now, the practical picture is a three-tube Saticon camera with real broadcast specs and a documented upgrade path, dependent on a battery ecosystem that third parties once served. The tube-based imaging is the usual double-edged inheritance of this era — the FP-21's 580-line rating and 55dB signal-to-noise are honest professional numbers, but they describe a camera whose performance lives and dies with the condition of three pickup tubes that are decades old. Hitachi's own framing of the FP-21 as the camera you bought when you didn't need automation is also the framing that makes it interesting today: it is the lean version of a professional design, sold at a comparatively low price by the standards of its class, and upgradable if the original buyer ever changed their mind.
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