WOODBURY, N.Y.—To help give its students experience with industry-standard equipment, Santa Ana College’s TV and Video Communications department has purchased six SK-UHD4000 UD cameras from Hitachi Kokusai Electric America.
While it touts its TV and video production studio as one of the largest in the community college system, as recently as 2015 SAC still relied on SD cameras for studio production. SAC’s goal with purchasing the SK-UHD4000s was to future-proof its programs.
“By going with cameras that could do both HD and 4K, we could be ready to basically flip a switch and move to a 4K production model when we upgrade the rest of the studio environment to 4K,” said Michael Taylor, SAC’s department chair. “We plan to do that when the overall television industry has greater adoption of 4K, since we’re preparing our students for careers in that field.”
Taylor said they were attracted to Hitachi’s cameras capability to be used in both 1080p and 4K, as well as the ability to integrate with Ross Dashboard. While not currently using the camera’s 4K imaging, Taylor praises the image quality the cameras produce in HD mode.
With the cameras, Taylor says they are able to prepare their students for careers post-graduation, but there is also a benefit for the school itself, as the high-quality equipment emphasizes that SAC is a competitive program that is able to properly train students while creating professional-level productions.
