Video Camera Tube

In older video cameras, before the mid to late 1980s, a video camera tube or pickup tube was used instead of a charge-coupled device (CCD) for converting an optical image into an electrical signal. Several types were in use from the 1930s to the 1980s. The most commercially successful of these tubes were various types of cathode ray tubes or "CRTs".

Any vacuum tube which operates using a focused beam of electrons ("cathode rays") is known as a cathode ray tube. However, in the popular lexicon "CRT" usually refers to the "picture tube" in a television or computer monitor. The proper term for this type of display tube is kinescope, only one of many types of cathode ray tubes. Others include the tubes used in oscilloscopes, radar displays, and the camera pickup tubes described in this article. (The word "kinescope" has also become the popular name for a film recording made by focusing a motion picture camera onto the face of a kinescope cathode ray tube, a common practice before the advent of video tape recording.)

Video camera tubes typically had a certain maximum brightness tolerance. If that limit were exceeded, such as by pointing the camera at the sun, sun-reflecting shiny surfaces, like chrome car bumpers, or extremely bright point light sources, the tube detecting surface would instantly "burn out" and be rendered insensitive on part or all of the screen. A slight burn might fade away over a matter of weeks, but for a severe burn the only remedy was replacing the video tube.