If you're in any of the Facebook groups about church media and church tech, you've seen this question more than almost any other: what camera should my church buy?
My answer is the decision process we go through at our church any time we're thinking about buying a new camera. It comes down to four questions. You don't want to waste money on a camera, and these are the questions that have helped us make good camera purchases.
This one sounds obvious, but it's the question that decides everything else. Is this a single-job camera or a do-it-all camera?
Nail that down first. A camera you'll only use for live streams is a different purchase from a camera that has to shoot photos, b-roll and the live stream. Figure out what role it's going to play at your church before you look at a single spec sheet.
Once you know the camera's role (or roles), list the features that support it.
Say you need a camera that takes photos, shoots video and has a clean HDMI out. That list alone narrows your choices down to a certain group of cameras.
Another obvious one, but you need a real number before you start comparing cameras.
Once you know your budget, decide whether the whole thing should go into a single camera body or get split across multiple bodies.
Depending on what you need the cameras for, it can be worth buying a cheaper camera so you get more physical camera bodies for the same money. That trade only makes sense if you go back to question one and know what the cameras are for.
We ended up with two different cameras doing two different jobs.
Our live stream cameras are Panasonic G7s. Here's how we got there using the four questions:
Getting multiple bodies mattered enough to us that we were willing to give up some features and quality to do it. That's how we landed on the G7.
For everything outside the live stream, we use the Sony a6400. We needed one camera that could cover a lot of ground:
The a6400 does all of that at a decent price point. It's also cheap enough that we were able to get multiple bodies and use them in different situations.
If these cameras were only ever going to be used in a studio for things like podcasts and talking head videos, I might have gone with something like the Blackmagic Pocket 4K or the Blackmagic Studio 4K.
But we also needed them for photos and for b-roll on the go. A more traditional studio camera doesn't fit that role, so the a6400 made more sense for us.
Down the road, if our budget grows, we might buy different camera bodies for different purposes and split up some of the jobs the a6400 handles right now. For now, it does everything we need at the quality level we need.
I shoot video full-time as a videographer, so I own a Sony a7 IV and a Sony a7S III. When I'm shooting photos or video for the church, a lot of times I'll use those because I already have them.
But if the church could only use the gear the church owns, we'd still be able to produce great looking images with the a6400 covering photos and video and the Panasonic G7s running the live stream.
If you know someone in one of those Facebook groups asking which camera to buy, send this their way.
It depends on what the camera needs to do. Decide whether it's a single-purpose or do-it-all camera, list the features that job needs, set a budget, and then decide whether that budget goes into one body or several.
We use Panasonic G7s as dedicated live stream cameras. We chose them so we could buy multiple bodies and still get the best image quality and features our budget allowed.
Sometimes buying a cheaper camera is worth it so you get more physical camera bodies for the same price. We gave up some features and quality on our live stream cameras so we could have multiple bodies.
If the camera will only be used in a studio for podcasts and talking head videos, a camera like the Blackmagic Pocket 4K or Studio 4K could make sense. We also needed ours for photos and on-the-go b-roll, so we went with the Sony a6400.
Want the full camera and video workflow we use? Church Video Made Simple walks through it step by step.
50% Complete
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.