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The First Ikegami Studio Camera

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Eyes Of A Generation.com

Mystery Solved #1 The First Ikegami Studio Camera

Without a doubt, this is the first professional studio camera from Ikegami. The camera with the big box zoom lens is the Ikegami TK 301A. I had searched and searched for a photo, but all I could find was a tiny thumbnail size. When I blew it up, I realized I had a photo of it in my archives from the NHK Museum in Japan. FYI, the two cameras behind it are early Toshibas. This camera debuted in 1971 and made the name of Ikegami synonymous with cameras. The TK 301A was used extensively in the Sapporo Winter Olympic Games in Japan.

Ikegami was busy developing it’s ENG line with the HL 33 debuting in 1973 and the HL 79A in 1979. Their experience with these lead them to the studio sized HK 312 in 1981. With the introduction of the 312, came the change from the TK designation to HK (Handy Kamera) and of course the HL stands for Handy Lookie.

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3 responses to “The First Ikegami Studio Camera”

  1. Stephen Taylor

    I’ve been told that Ikegami built a studio camera for a company named Visual in the early 1970’s. Which were sold here in the USA.

  2. John Treadgold

    great info thanks

  3. Steven Davis

    Thanks for posting this! As you mentioned, all of the other photos of the TK-301A that came up during a search were thumbnail size! I wonder how smooth the operation of that large zoom lens was with the pushrod zoom? But I had heard that this type pushrod/ turn-to-focus control may have been preferred by NHK at the time.

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