Please recommend a best camera for capturing live zoom feed from back of a 30 ft room and only shoing the person speaking at the mic in realtime...

Caveman

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Nov 18, 1999
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Per title, I need to capture a weekly broadcast of someone giving a speech at the front of a room 20-30 ft from the camera source and field of view for zooming into just seeing their torso and 1-2 ft to either side. A webcam doesn't cut it and I want to be sure there is no lag so the voice matches the mouth. Thinking I need something like the following with a mic input to output to the PC hosting ZOOM:


Any other ideas with a more adjustable zoom?
 

Caveman

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Nov 18, 1999
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Sorry for the late reply... I'm sure a lot has changed in the past year. The camera needs to sit in the back of the room because there is a person standing at a lecturn giving a speech and it's distracting to have a camera in one's face. Also, the camera may need adjusted and it's easiest to do from the back of the room. Finally, there are less cords to trip on. Bottom line is that I'm just looking for a reasonably priced camera that can sit 40 to 20 ft from the point its captureing and have a zoom that can make the speaker at the lectern the main focus of the shot.
 

sdifox

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Sep 30, 2005
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Sorry for the late reply... I'm sure a lot has changed in the past year. The camera needs to sit in the back of the room because there is a person standing at a lecturn giving a speech and it's distracting to have a camera in one's face. Also, the camera may need adjusted and it's easiest to do from the back of the room. Finally, there are less cords to trip on. Bottom line is that I'm just looking for a reasonably priced camera that can sit 40 to 20 ft from the point its captureing and have a zoom that can make the speaker at the lectern the main focus of the shot.


Much cheaper to mount camera on ceiling close to front than a camera capable of shooting from back of classroom. You can take down and put up camera easily with a quick release.
 

Caveman

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Nov 18, 1999
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Yes, I'm seeing that. It is somewhat surprising. To get what I need looks like $1k min. This looked like a decent option, but the reviews were all over the place so I may try/buy and return if junk:


Thoughts?

As far as field of view, I think I need something optimized for 30 degrees but not sure... I guessing need to trig it out... Ideally it would be a camera that could sit anywhere from 15 to 50 feet from the lectern and just capture the lectern and the persons torso and head in a nice portrait.
 

sdifox

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You want something with optical zoom. and the one linked is guaranteed to suck.
 
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sdifox

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maybe this? you'll need to add a directional mic. Stay away from the cheap Chinese junk.



4k cost more


you don't own a digital slr you can use?
 
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YuliApp

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I use Panasonic HX WA30 for cases where "everything else fails", there might be a newer version of this as mine is already quite dated.
 

sdifox

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Also if you have a lecturn, maybe a GoPro on a selfie stick secured to lecturn or a trippd?
 

Red Squirrel

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At my church we just use a regular camcorder with a long throw zoom lens, I don't recall the actual model or brand of lens but I imagine it's something you can find on Amazon if you search for long throw lens or something along those lines. The camera is a Sony Vixia 4k. Whatever camera you get you want to make sure the lens you get is compatible.

Keep in mind you don't need super good quality for Zoom since it gets compressed anyway, so you could potentially get away with digital zoom and using the stock lens. Digital zoom is basically just like cropping and blowing up the image though so if you are actually recording then it may not be the best choice.
 

sdifox

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Red Squirrel

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For Zoom you don't need the camera itself to record, but you want to make sure there is a way to have clean output. This is a bit tricky as they don't really advertise that. Sticking with a camcorder is probably a safe bet though. At church we have USB to HDMI adapters and the camcorder shows up as a web cam. The sound comes from a Scarlett and there's an output from the sound board into it. We also have Zoom's audio going to the sound board so someone can speak and be heard within the church. I have no idea why that does not cause a massive feedback loop... but it doesn't. I was skeptical when they suggested to hook it up that way but it ended up working.

The camera audio itself is not used.