Inexpensive camera to record/stream church services

[Jason_208]

Our church is looking into getting started recording/streaming our services and looking for a camera at this point. We're wanting something inexpensive just to use as a proof of concept before making any large investments. We currently have a 15yr old SDI camera mounted at the back of the room above a door that just streams to an overflow room but the video quality is terrible so I'm thinking about just using a camcorder(looking at canon HF R700) since it has mic input. My biggest question about this camera is if it's plugged in and has the battery attached will it stay on constantly even if the power flickers? Since it'll be mounted above a door it will be hard to get to to turn on/off. If it will stay on do you see it causing problems if it's just left on all the time? We're not finding any kinds of "always on" cameras in the price range we're looking at that have a zoom.

As far as a capture device I'm looking at an Elgato HD60 S. The BlackMagic equipment looks good but from what I've read it's all really picky about the pc hardware for some reason so I'd like to avoid that.
We've got a dedicated higher end pc to use with OBS or Wirecast so we should be good there.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Samaratin]

I hear them iphones have pretty good cameras.. and didn't facebook just start a livestream feature for certain phones? you could just have the church have an iphone and stream to church's FB page directly 😀

 

[Jason_208]

I hear them iphones have pretty good cameras.. and didn't facebook just start a livestream feature for certain phones? you could just have the church have an iphone and stream to church's FB page directly 😀

I agree an iphone would be a simple solution but for this project which I'm sure will turn into a longer than usual proof of concept until funds can be obtained we're needing a camera that can basically be mounted and not touched again. So it needs to be "always on" or can be turned on remotely or something which is why I inquired about if a consumer camcorder is plugged in and has the battery attached that if the power happened to flicker will the camera stay on and if so will the camera last being on all the time.