Looking for an inexpensive camera

[cell1338]

hey folks,

we are getting a new building, and are looking to get a camera for little things like showing the stage at baptism on the screen, so nothing really big.
So we don´t need a big professional camera ..just an easy to use cam, which we can directly plugin to a computer (does it work?).
Sorry, but i´m a newbie in this topic, so never mind.
Thanks for helping
cheers
cell


p.s sorry for my english

[cell1338]

no one?

[bladeaudio]

I think people will need some more information before they can give you an appropriate answer. Some things that may be useful....

Distance to stage from camera position.

You are connecting it to a computer - through what interface? Firewire?

Is the computer going to display the camera on the screens? Through worship software? You do realize this will introduce a, most likely, unacceptable amount of delay. The person speaking and your audio will be out of sync with the video on the screen if setup in this configuration. (Just recording/streaming through a computer = great!)

Do you plan to use this camera for any other uses? (Recording events, filming announcements, etc) Trust me, as soon as you have a camera people will start to ask for it to be used for many things.

[cell1338]

Hey,
thanks for your answer...

there are a lot of questions in my mind too.
I guess we are using the camera just without sound...through a worship software.. just to show the stage on the screen, for example at baptism.
Which interface would you advise? Usb? firewire?
In the near future we don´t want to use it for recordings.
I think the camera would be 10-15meter away of the stage... is it too far?

I hope the more details could help
cheers

[bladeaudio]

Firewire would be the recommended method, but.....

Just be aware that you are going to experience a considerable amount of delay by running the video through your worship software/computer. I'd suggest you borrow a camera and connect it to your computer in this manner and see how much delay is present and if that is acceptable for your application before committing to going this route.

The preferred method for doing this would be to use a switcher/scaler to switch your projector's input from the computer to the video camera.

Something like this: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...alog_HDMI.html

This type of device would let you connect a camera either to the HDMI input, or to any of the analog SD inputs as well, s-video, or composite.

Sorry, so far none of this has answered your original question about which camera! ha! Do you know roughly what your budget is? If you have a rough idea of what your budget is someone can probably recommend the best camera in that price range for what you are trying to do.

If you can afford it, I'd recommend purchasing a used Canon XL1s, or even an XL2 used from ebay.

[cell1338]

Thanks for your help!

mh..that all sounds complicated .. how long will the delay be?

I guess the canon is a step to good. We maybe need that camera feature just 3-4 times a year.
So maybe a cheaper thing like 400-500$ ?

[[Admin] osborn4]

We've used firewire like that for our baptisms and it hasn't been too bad.

But if you tried to do singing, or a full length sermon, that it becomes more of a problem.

[jsharris83]

We used a camera with the firewire connection. we upgraded the card in the PC to a firewire 800 and then a firewire cable with the 4 pin camera connector on one end and the 800 connector on the other. we had almost no delay at all with that configuration.