Here is the one of two very rare lenses donated to the Pavek Museum…this one is a 27 element Zoomar long lens used at CBS Television City (the other lens is in the next post down on this page). Although Steve does not have the full history on these 2 great rarities, this one has the CBS markings. Congratulations Steve!
Insider’s History of The Hollywood Palace Thanks to ABC Hollywood veteran Don McCroskey, here’s a look behind the curtain of a place many of us remember as The Hollywood Palace. ABC started doing shows from what was then called the El Capitan theater in the fall of 1957 using equipment installed by NBC in 1950 […]
May 7, 1949…The First 45 RPM Record Hits The Billboard Charts The song was “You’re Adorable” by Perry Como. The next week, the year’s biggest 45 hit appeared on the Billboard charts…”Riders In The Sky” by Vaughn Monroe. The 45 rpm record was RCA’s pushback against Columbia’s 33 1/3 rpm long-playing disc, introduced the previous […]
EXCLUSIVE ULTRA RARITY! NBC 3rd Floor 1933 Configuration For once and for all, this will put to rest any doubts on the history of the conversion of NBC Studio 3H to 3K. Until yesterday, when I received this drawing of the original 1933 radio studio configuration, there had never been a reliable floor plan available […]
March 2, 1951…Desilu Empire Begins With The “I Love Lucy” Pilot On March 2, 1951, the pilot episode for “I Love Lucy” was shot at the CBS Columbia Square Studios on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood. It was shot with three RCA TK30 Image Orthicon cameras and recorded via kinescope. When Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball […]
This is wonderful. I’m currently writing a PhD on the use of zoom lenses in American film and television between the 1940s and the 1970s, and the (largely untold) history of the Zoomar lens is a major part of this. If anyone has any personal memories of using this lens, or has any documents relating to the Zoomar companies, I’d be very grateful if they would consider contacting me – my email address is nh260@exeter.ac.uk.
One thing I have struggled to find out is for how long this particular model Zoomar – this would appear to be one of the original Television Field Zoomars introduced in the late 1940s – continued to be used in television. Anyone have any ideas?
First zoom lens I ever ran as a summer relief tech was a Zoomar push rod lens (50:100mm) on a TK-41 at WLW-C in Columbus while I was in college. Unlike today’s cameras, to achieve focus throughout the entire zoom range, you had to zoom out and back focus using the camera focus, then zoom all the way in and front focus with the push rod on the lens.
A big disadvantage of early TV Zooms was that they lost t-stops as you zoomed in.