NEX-EA50 as live event cameras?

[Evan Bourcier]

Hey guys! Quick question. I do a lot of video production for my church, and they're now moving into a big new auditorium and doing image magnification etc so they're moving to a 2-3 camera system. They're currently talking about some canon camcorders I can't remember the model name of off the top of my head, but I'm really underwhelmed by the small chip image coming out of that. In my search for something we could use for other shoots as well I thought of the EA50, as with the servo zoom I would expect it to be something easier to teach than having people doing zoom pulls on c100s or something. The only downside I've found is that it seems the EA50 has only HDMI, and I think they're looking to run HD-SDI as the live feed.

Anyway, dunno if any of this made sense, would love your guys thoughts though.

Thanks,
Evan

[Jim Ritscher]

I have a FS700 rather than a EA50, so I can't comment on the camera. You know that you can convert HDMI to SDI for about $250-$300 per camera? Blackmagic Designs. Also, you should at least look at their Television Studio switcher ($1000). A lot of churches use it.
--Jim

[Rod Pike]

the panasonic 160/a outputs HD-SDI to a samurai or similar and it has a stonkingly long zoom for stage shots.
Rod

[Evan Bourcier]

Jim, I was thinking the issue was more constantly having to worry about the HDMI cord getting bumped out. I knew you could convert, just didnt know if you could lock somehow.

The cameras they're talking about getting are Canon xf305s, which kinda gross me out haha. I would actually love to use something like fs700s or c100s, I think they want servo zooms though, which I kind of understand if you only have 2-3 cameras.

[James Hobert]

I would imagine for a church production with people that aren't necessarily pros behind the lens (you mentioned needing to teach them focus pulls so I'm making an assumption here), shallow depth of field at the long end of the EA50 (you mentioned it's a big auditorium) may be tricky for them. It'll look sweet if they can pull it off so if you think they can, then great, go for it. The FS700 is another large chip camera that will have the upcoming ability to use the servo zoom which I've read should be coming out in a firmware update in the coming weeks, and it does have SDI out.

Also, the issue with HDMI outs for a live feed is stability of the connection and if one HDMI signal drops then, it momentarily interferes with other signals according to a recent article I read. That may not be as much of an issue if you are always stationary. In a "big auditorium", I think you'd be better served by a smaller chip cam with a really long zoom lens (twice the zoom of the EA50) like a Panasonic 160A or even maybe the new JVC HM600 which both have sdi outs. At the end of those lenses you'll have somewhat shallow depth of field to give you nice easy blur, but enough play room so you won't have to worry about missing a shot if you have less experienced camera operators. But if you don't like the look, then you don't like the look and a camera like the EA50 I would imagine is a very cost effective way of getting the look and flexibility that you are looking for.

[Evan Bourcier]

Hmmm... I hadnt thought of the FS700 having SDI out.. What would you think of mixing cams so say we had 2 small chip cameras and an fs700, C100 etc, that would give us the flexibility of the church owning a large chip camera for productions, but having easy cams for the streams, then we could still run the large chip with a more skilled op. Only thing I wonder is how hard it would be to get an acceptable image match.

[Noa Put]

I"m curious, why are you so set on getting a large sensor camera or even a 4k one? I don't see any benefit in using those type of camera's to film in an auditorium since they don't have a decent power zoom lens, the stocklens on the ea50 is actually pretty bad for following action, especially if you constantly are zooming in and out, the zoomspeed is quite slow and there is some play in the lens giving you jerky movement and a split second out of focus at the start of every zoom, several users, including me, have reported this.
It's not a bad lens in terms of image quality but I only use that power zoom to reframe the image but I would cut out any zoommovement anyway.

Camera's like a JVC HM600 will be much better for this, the zoom will be much smoother and faster if needed, focusing will be not as tricky and those camera's are light sensitive enough if the stage you are filming has enough light.