static cam for church/anyone using them

J

jimstamos

Active member
we want to mount a stationary camera off our balcony that will give a good quality steady shot of our church services. any suggestions. im not talking about just mounting a standard camcorder up there. surely there are specialized cams for this. also want to be able to have the ability to run cable from it audio/video to another room into a projecter for the overflow of people.
hd isnt critical. just a good sd cam thats good in low/medium light.
any that have cams in their church welcome input.
 
What's your budget? There are plenty of camera options, depending on what you want to spend. You can go with a basic closed-circuit setup, which is less expensive (though may not have the best resolution, even in SD). Or you can get a basic 3-CCD camera from Sony or Panasonic (about $3k for the head, plus extra for the lens). Or you could look at one of Sony's SD remote pan/tilt cameras (about $1000).

If you go with a compact studio head, you'll need a CCU (camera control unit) and video monitor to maintain white balance and exposure. For the robotic camera (remote pan/tilt), you'll need a control surface and monitor as well. B&H has a kit for a Sony remote cam, no video monitor included.

Our cathedral has a 4-camera system for live Sunday broadcast, and all the cameras are compact Sony studio heads on remote pan/tilt mounts. There's another parish I know in a different diocese that has a single remote pan/tilt camera set up for overflw monitoring. It has a monitor mounted in a transept of the nave that has poor visibility of the chancel and sanctuary, and has the ability to patch to a different room.

As for audio to follow the video, a feed from the house system will suffice. For the nursery monitor in our parish, I have mics in front of the narthex that are sent only to the auxiliary mix for the monitor (and to the CD recorder), and are always up (pre-fade aux) no matter what other mics (all post-fade) are on or off.
 
Last edited:
This is a little bit OT but I'm curious...generally speaking does a diocese assist individual parishes in acquiring equipment, or does it comes out of the parish budget?
 
Sad Max said:
This is a little bit OT but I'm curious...generally speaking does a diocese assist individual parishes in acquiring equipment, or does it comes out of the parish budget?
Click to expand...

Not sure about other denominations, but in the Episcopal Church it comes from the parish budget, unless there is a demanding need to begin such a ministry and not enough funding. Most of our dioceses have grant funds available and parishes apply for grants to start up new ministries when needed.
 
I go to a non-denominational, and we have a similar set-up to C2V using Sony SD remote pan/tilt cameras. They're not great, but they aren't bad. Since it's only for closed circuit and for web streaming, they get the job done well enough.
 
staticcam

staticcam

our diocese doesnt help squat, we give them a ridiculous amount of money every year, around 170-180k.
just need a single cam to point at the front of the church to show the main activity of the service.
just need a single unit, dont want to mess with pan/tilt,monitoring. will adjust once and leave it.
 
jimstamos said:
our diocese doesnt help squat, we give them a ridiculous amount of money every year, around 170-180k.
just need a single cam to point at the front of the church to show the main activity of the service.
just need a single unit, dont want to mess with pan/tilt,monitoring. will adjust once and leave it.
Click to expand...


Then why not just use a Panasonic HMC40 or something?
 
My church uses two Sony PTZ cameras and a Sony V1 with an operator. Feeds are switched by a Sony Anycast.

For your purposes, if you really think you will never want to adjust the position or zoom, why not use a camcorder? The specialised cameras are all quite expensive by comparison because there's not as much market for them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top