CCTV camera for remote display?

TJ Cornish

Graduate
Jan 13, 2011
1,263
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0
St. Paul, MN
Our church has a crying room that we want to get high-quality video to. Right now we're using a low-end camcorder that looks to have about 200 lines of resolution into a projector. I'm interested in a CCTV-type camera since this is just pointed at the stage, and we don't want to have an operator, as well as we don't want to have to depend on the recorder running for the camera to stay on.

There appear to be several hi-def HD-SDI-out cameras that are 720P or better. Anyone have any favorites? Here's an example of what I think I want:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=879934&is=REG&Q=&A=details

I plan to go from HD-SDI back to HDMI or DVI, depending on what our projector takes - I don't know off the top of my head.

Is there a better way to do this? The application is fairly long-throw - 70' to front of stage, close to 100' to the back. Stage is 30' wide, IIRC. Usual budget issues apply - looking for a mid-priced solution that's not garbage, but as cheap as possible. The camera above, lens, and HD-SDI to HDMI converter seem to be about $1000. I could probably spend up to $1500 total if there's a better camera than what I've found so far.

Thanks for any ideas.
TJ
 
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Re: CCTV camera for remote display?

Thanks for the post Bill. I'm looking for HD with a digital out that doesn't require a computer to reinterpret. Looks like this Sony is analog and SD.

TJ
 
Re: CCTV camera for remote display?

Sony EVI D70 is a robotic camera with amazing zoom capabilities. We've installed it in a lot of churches with excellent results. Feel free to contact me - [email protected]

Bill,

Let's try and keep the plain commerce to the marketplace or PMs, please. If your only purpose for posting here is to try and sell things to our members, the least you could do is advertise.
 
Re: CCTV camera for remote display?

You might want to verify what shot you can get with the lens. The Tamron lens B&H lists says that it has a narrowest horizontal field of view of 25 degrees, which at 70' I calculate to be about a 31' wide x 17.5' high image and at 100' to be 44.33' wide x 25' high. So if you want a shot that is the full stage width or wider at the front of the stage then that may work, but if you wanted anything tighter than that you may have to look at a different lens. When you look at production or studio cameras the lens can most as much or more than the camera itself so while it may work, I wouldn't expect too much from a $64 lens.
 
Re: CCTV camera for remote display?

You might want to verify what shot you can get with the lens. The Tamron lens B&H lists says that it has a narrowest horizontal field of view of 25 degrees, which at 70' I calculate to be about a 31' wide x 17.5' high image and at 100' to be 44.33' wide x 25' high. So if you want a shot that is the full stage width or wider at the front of the stage then that may work, but if you wanted anything tighter than that you may have to look at a different lens. When you look at production or studio cameras the lens can most as much or more than the camera itself so while it may work, I wouldn't expect too much from a $64 lens.
I ordered the 5-50mm "1.3 megapixel" lens for $100 that is listed in the "Show More" list. It claims to have a viewing angle of 5 degrees to 50 degrees.

I'm not necessarily expecting full broadcast HD quality in a $600 camera plus a $100 lens, but I am expecting it to be quite a bit better than the cheap 10+ year-old MiniDV camcorder's video monitor out that we're currently using. Hopefully low light performance will be OK.