What Camera Should I Use For My Live Stream?

As churches are producing and streaming digital content we’ve had many questions about what cameras we recommend. There are a lot of variables at play such as what platform you might be using (Zoom, Youtube/Facebook etc.), what expertise you have amongst your volunteers, as well as budget.

We’ve come together with a few of our professional friends to contribute some thoughts and recommendations for cameras that hopefully suit your live-streaming needs.

For the purposes of this post, we are assuming that you are using a computer and have the ability to feed an HDMI (or SDI as appropriate) input into the computer in a format that works for your platform of choice. We are also mostly ignoring audio, as we are assuming you will feed the audio either into the camera outlined here, or directly into the computer (with the ability to sync the audio up with the video feed).

We’ve also put together some handy package guidelines with rough prices that we would recommend which will hopefully give you a ballpark idea of what solution at what price point is suitable for you and your needs. If you have any questions about your setup, please do get in touch with the friendly team at OBT.

The Open Box Team

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Live Streaming Products That Can Help

By now most of you have heard of ‘live streaming’. Whether it is for church, school or university, it has become the new normal thing these days to participate in a live streamed event. Whilst laptops and phones are good starting points there are quick and in-expensive ways to improve your live streaming quality.

Open Box Technology has sourced some of the best products we think would help and improve the quality of your digital content. These items are in-stock and available to purchase now. Feel free to send us an email should you wish to purchase anything listed below.

Don’t forget we are here to help with any AV/Tech problems your organisation should any problems arise!

The Open Box Team

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If you want people to do something, make it easy.

Richard Thaler is recognised as one of the fathers of Behavioural Economics, which seeks to discover and influence real-world human behaviour. His work as both a professor and consultant gave rise to his basic advice of ‘if you want people to do something, make it easy’. His (and others) work in this area has resulted in a number of teams that work in the area, most notably the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) of the UK government.

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Joyful Service as a Professional Techie

Being a ‘professional techie’ in a church (e.g. a full time Audio Engineer serving on the sound roster) is a hard burden to bear. High expectations abound, but without the understanding or budget to back it up. In such conditions, it can also be hard to not be on the roster for duties every week. As a result, it is not surprising that many of us professional techies suffer from burnout and bitterness in our church ministry, and sometimes make big efforts to steer clear of any ‘work related’ ministry.

Even in the best of situations, as someone who does technical work day in and day out, it can be hard to slot into technical ministry in a church. Being on the team like everyone else is a great way to serve, but is that the best use of our God given skills? Is it the best way to steward our gifts?

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