VER Adds Hitachi Cameras to Rental Arsenal

Video Equipment Rentals (VER) has purchased a large complement of Hitachi SK-HD1000 HDTV studio and field production cameras. VER currently rents the Hitachi SK-HD1000 cameras to customers producing audio/visual, staging, and broadcast projects. This large order represents the first Hitachi HDTV cameras that VER offers as part of its extensive rental arsenal.

“We’ve been very impressed with the SK-HD1000’s image quality. Its crystal clear picture has quieter blacks than the Sony HDC-1500 HDTV camera,” says Wayne Miller, vice president of VER, in Glendale, Calif. “The key word to describe the SK-HD1000 is value. Within the current economic climate, profitability is a struggle for everyone. This camera allows our client to get better value from their dollars, and for many customers, it’s enabling them to finally make the transition to HD.

“Hitachi jumped ahead of the competition and came to market with a product that allows VER to offer our clients an HD camera system that can fit into medium-sized budgets,” Miller continues. “It may not have all the bells and whistles of some other offerings, but it’s the kind of workhorse that satisfies 80-percent of productions.”

The high-end SK-HD1000 has three, 2/3-inch progressive scan 2.2 million pixel CCDs – with a high dynamic range. These allow the camera to produce an image with 1100 TVL resolution, with a SNR of 60db, at F11@2000 Lux. The camera provides both 60/50 Hz for NTSC and PAL applications.

The SK-HD1000 is a two-piece, dockable native 1080i camera with a 12-vector masking system to control of the hue and saturation of colors; two-memory Flesh-tone detail adjustment; white balance memories for 16 different shooting situations; gamma function for film-like image capture; 14-bit A/D converters and a cross-converter to output 720p. VER outfits the lenses with a wide array of lenses, including the Canon KJ Series and Fujinon ZA Series HD lenses, as well as their long-range lenses up to 101X.

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