Definitely, each new technological development is a response to the needs of the contemporary world that extend at the same speed of information. In the case of cameras used in news coverage, the latest innovations, product of the development of ENG (Energic News Gathering) systems, finally adapt to the urgency of an increasingly agile television reporter and achieve effective images with an ease never experienced before.
The impact of the latest cameras designed especially for newscasts is best understood from the perspective of information in previous decades.
A look back
Elmer Granja, president of A2 Ingenieros, explains how in Latin America during the 60s, cameras designed for study were so difficult to transport that they reduced reporting to reading newspapers and subsequently recording their images. In the 70s it was passed to the transportable cameras with which live and live programs were made, since post-production was just being born. Only at the end of this decade did it begin to be recorded.
"During the eighties," says Elmer Granja, "the panorama of news coverage was technically supported by camera, cable, recorder and lights, which were charged separately ... " At a demonstration, just as the cameraman had started rolling while the light technician prayed for the gray roll to be perfect and the soundman recorded the ambient sounds between the maremagnum of cables and weights that needed to be endured to record the fact. A moment of tension easily led to the spectacle of cameraman, lighting technician, sound engineer and assistants running each on their own side while the crucial news was irretrievably lost.
The Technology began to look for solutions that led to the ENG system, which introduce the concept of easily portable cameras that significantly reduce the personnel required to cover news in addition to opening the possibility of adapting parts to the body of the camera in such a way that a huge variety of attachments can be integrated. The first Camcorder – a word that brings together the terms camera and recorder – integrate a small recorder to the back of the camera, achieving an unusual simultaneity in the recording and recording of the events and facilitating its subsequent edition.
The Colombian engineer Francisco Javier Alvarado of DFL Estudios, explains: "Given the limitations of the system of a portable cassette – which was not only cumbersome but consumed a lot of energy – and faced with the same need for information, they begin to experiment with different formats: the Betacam, that handles the same size of the Betamax but records with much better quality – being the top of the video production in analog system – and the super VHS that surpasses the domestic system but handling with the same ease".
In any case, the concept that sustains enG cameras is the need to create equipment compatible with all recording systems, which the buyer assembles according to his needs. However, in the specific field of news production, the latest evolution of ENG adds new possibilities.
Cameraman soldiers in the Gulf War
An example of the versatility of the new ENGs was the experience in the Persian Gulf War. Since the images used in the news did not require impeccable quality, the American television network CNN, supplied camcorders to the soldiers so that they themselves, from the center of events, reviewed them. The low cost of ENGs – compared to traditional BETACAM or VHS – and acceptable images, allowed them to expose them to possible damage. In addition, the efficiency in terms of time, battery and resistance was proven. ENGs use large batteries of 4 or 8 hours, cassettes of 2 hours in Hi 8 and come attached with zoom, telex and self-balancing, allowing even the most inexperienced to become the best cameraman.
Fully integrated equipment
The latest Camcorder – launched on the world market last year – are the expression of the total integration of reporting equipment with maximum versatility: light, audio, camera and recorder, in a single fully portable non-detachable body.
The advantages? The possibility of a single person covering a news story with equipment whose cost is much lower than that of the first camcorders and with reduced energy consumption, in addition to the recording benefits provided by the fact that it is no longer necessary, as in previous systems, balance black and white for presentable images. These cameras automatically grade your gain without ever reaching the high gain granule effect.
In fact, these Camcorders, products of the latest Japanese technology for news, avoid light jumps in the video thanks to a circuit that controls temperature-color changes, achieving a light continuity even in the changes from interiors to exteriors.
But in addition, the evolution of the ENG, points towards the total immediacy in the television medium introducing the concept of the SNG (Satellite News Gathering) that incorporates a novel satellite transmission system to the cameras used for the production of news. Thanks to this, the facts that are recorded are sent, via microwave simultaneously to the satellite from where they are emitted achieving immense news coverage.
In short, both developments incorporate into television the dizzying technological advance of a world where everything can be summed up in one word: information.
