Handheld+Video+Cameras

 Handheld Video Camera  Handheld video cameras have a fairly short and rapidly advancing history. The first video tape recorder was invented by Ampex Cooperation in 1951. Charles Ginsburg led the team of Ampex employees to create a product that would capture live images from a television camera. The information would than be converted into electrical impulses which could be saved on magnetic tape. The first VTR (Video Tape Recorder) was sold on the open market for $50,000 in 1956. About 20 years later Sony invented the first reel to reel style video recorder called the Video Cassette Recorder which dubbed the name VCR. The first common video camera and VCR became public around the same time.  In 1972 Akai introduced a new product to the market. This new camera used half inch film and could be attached to a VCR. The VCR could then be attached to a television screen to be viewed. The next major break through in television came from the invention of the Video Cassette Camera in 1976.This switched the filming to a cassette format which was the common format to view videos at home through the early millennium. With this new format JVC made a camera that was easier to maneuver and had a shoulder strap along with the VHS Cassette. VHS stands for Video Home System and the tapes originally could record up to 3 hours of video.  Betamax was the next video format manufactured by Sony. Brought to the market around the same time that VHS the two formats went to a format war. Betamax had a better quality video but did not have any protection shield on the tape. Both Sony and JVC made camcorders for home movie making. Sony's camcorder held the standard Betamax tape and could record up to 60 minutes of footage. Betamax was slightly more expensive, but had better quality. JVC's camcorder used the Mini-VHS and could hold up to 2 hours of video, at a cheeper price, but the quality was slightly poorer than the Sony product. Sony had stricter rights as to who could mass produce Betamax videos and this led to adult videos flooding the markets on VHS tapes only. Sony stopped producing Betamax videos in 1988. The decade long video format war had ended leaving consumers with the VHS format containing up to10 hours of video and a cheeper price.  Digital technology came to home video taping in the early 90's. Hitachi made the first Mini-Digital Video Cassette which were small enough to fit in the average americans bag. With the new ease of use sales of camcorders went up so their prices went down. Since the New millennium many new forms of video recording have been introduced into the market. A style that I believe was pretty nice was the style camera that recorded images directly to a DVD. This means that video was instantly ready to be edited by a computer or watched from a DVD player. A few years after DVD video cameras entered the market, the majority of cameras contained hard drives that could hold enormous amounts of information. This means that a physical copy of the recording unnecessary. The images and sounds are recorded onto the camera’s memory and can be connected to a computer’s USB drive simply with one wire. The recorded video and sounds can be edited clearer and sharper because the first version of the recording can be modified. Many state of the art video cameras today have enough memory to hold many hours of video without ever converting to tape. Camera prices over the past 60 years have dropped to prices never ima gined. When Ampex sold the first camera in the late 1950’s it sold for over $50,000. $100 in 1950 equals about $835.41 today (http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1950s.html). This means that the first camera would cost today’s consumers about $417,705 (50,000X835.41/100). Thanks to mass production and the latest technologies cameras are extremely cheap for the public. For a short time TDBank advertised that they would give you a Flip camera for free if you signed up for a free checking account. Flip cameras can record video and sound in 720p HD with 8GBs of memory, that's about 2 hours of recording time.  Video cameras today are in many forms of other technologies. If I was to ask the average college student if they own a video camera most would say yes because video cameras are incorporated in many common products. Video cameras are placed in all the latest cell phones, MP3 players, and computers. media type="youtube" key="FYQt0xi9PRM" height="390" width="480"

Refrances http://www.cedmagic.com/history/betamax-sl-7200-1976.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2003/jan/25/comment.comment

http://www.vhstodvd.com/history-of-vhs-tape.html

http://www.ampex.com/l-corp-history.html?start=30

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blvideo.htm

http://www.tvhistory.tv/VCR%20History.htm