Cameras used to film TOS (BTS)

[Just a Bill]

I've been trying to figure out exactly which camera(s) were used on TOS. A thread from over 16 years ago ("Type of film camera used on TOS?"), included some speculations that, when mixed with other tidbits I've been able to find, I would summarize as follows:

• Desilu probably used the cameras they had already been using for other shows such as I Love Lucy. These appear to have been most likely Mitchell 35mm BNCs.
• Desilu may have had a deal with Panasonic for Panavisions sometime in the early 60s.
• The cameras seen on screen in Bread and Circuses were not the show's filming cameras.

I think I saw what looked like Panavision(s) in some BTS shots for the motion pictures, but every TOS shot I can find seems to use something more in line with Mitchells. I'm hoping somebody can identify exactly which model(s) are seen here, as it has not been very straightforward for me to align these shots with camera images I've been able to google, partly because the search results are not always consistent. It might be that some commenters/chroniclers know generally what a Mitchell is but aren't sure exactly which camera is which model; I certainly am not knowledgeable.

It's probably obvious that the first four shots show Plato's Stepchildren and the fifth is from The Cage. The next two after that are in Trelane's home, and the last two (stacked vertically) come from Billy Blackburn's home videos of production on The Paradise Syndrome and/or Arena. (You can click to enlarge some of them somewhat, but not by a lot.)

These crops have been trimmed from sources gathered around the web, and should be non-commercial/educational "fair use." In every case I snapshotted or cropped so as to show only the fraction of the source image or video needed to show the camera and maybe provide a hint of context. I think the majority of these can be found in their full form on www.startrekpropauthority.com in the rare TOS photos & videos sections of the site.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

The second photo section in The Making of Star Trek has an excellent look at the camera being used in the Briefing Room scene from "The Man Trap."

 

[feek61]

I read years ago they used Mitchells and that is what they appear to be in the photos
.

 

[Metryq]

I've always been a video guy, but I once owned a lot of books on film gear due to an interest in visual effects. (I've had to thin my library over the years whenever I moved.) Identifying a particular camera might be difficult, especially if it is "blimped" for soundstage work.

Long after electronic post-production became the norm—editing on videotape or a computer NLE—film remained the best option for quality and budget. Today I think you'd be hard pressed to find a production shot on film. I might be wrong. I don't have numbers on this, but electronic cameras have now reached the point where they are more sensitive and have higher resolutions than film. (Astronomers were the first to use CCD or CMOS imagers, as they are more sensitive than film.)

Star Trek TNG was made right through this transition. Shot on film, then edited electronically, along with electronically composited VFX. I believe the series was entirely re-edited and "posted" for Blu-ray, since the original "masters" were Standard Def 4:3 frames.

 

[Just a Bill]

A few months ago I read somewhere that we'll basically never get a decent high-res transfer of DS9 because it was shot entirely on video and there's just no more resolution to tease out of it. Is that corrent?

 

[CoveTom]

A few months ago I read somewhere that we'll basically never get a decent high-res transfer of DS9 because it was shot entirely on video and there's just no more resolution to tease out of it. Is that corrent?

No, it's not. DS9 was done the same way TNG was -- it was shot on film and then edited on videotape. As a result, the original camera negatives, which are still housed at Paramount, have the image quality for a true high definition transfer, but the final edited versions of the episodes do not.

In addition, DS9 was made during the transition from practical, motion control visual effects to CGI. The model-based effects were shot on film, but the CGI effects were rendered at SD resolution and there is no HD version. So for all the live action elements and for those visual effects that were done practically with models, high resolution negatives still exist. But not for the CGI effects shots.

So to do a true HD release of DS9 they would have to (1) reconstruct every single episode from the original film elements and (2) either recreate the CGI effects from scratch or rely on upscaling the existing effects.

So is it *possible* for Paramount to do a true HD release of DS9? Yes, absolutely. Are they likely to? Probably not. DS9 and Voyager are seen as having much smaller potential markets than TNG, and it would take a great deal of money that they feel they would be unlikely to recoup to make it happen.

 

[Just a Bill]

Ah, that all makes perfect sense. Thank you.