What happens when a contemporary church takes one of their stationary sanctuary cameras and subs in a high-quality PTZ? For the tech team at Stonecreek Church in Milton, Georgia, good things happen. “You can just set things up to get a lot more creativity in your workflow and in your shots. We had a really great time with it. Honestly, it was a little hard to send it back,” enthuses Stonecreek’s Technical Director, Johnny Ragin.
"Honestly, it was a little hard to send it back.” - Johnny Ragin, Technical Director, Stonecreek Church, Milton, GA
The Marshal Electronics CV630 PTZ Camera and VS-PTC-300 Camera Controller have received the Church Production Road Tested Certification.
Stonecreek’s worship is contemporary, pulling a lot of influence and music from Bethel, Hillsong and Elevation churches. As far as cameras, normally there are two manned cameras and three stationary cameras on tripods. But, as part of a Church Production Road Test User Experience, we wanted them to try out Marshall Electronics’ CV630 NDI PTZ Camera and VS-PTC-300 PTZ Camera Controller.
“So, my idea for this PTZ camera was to test it out in place of those stationary cameras that are on stage. Typically, that's just kind of a static shot, and the PTZ cam allowed us to have a much more dynamic and interesting range of shots,” Ragin says. “I was really impressed at how many different shots we were able to get from a single position. We set it up next to our drum kit and we were able to do some really cool zoom-in tracking shots with that as well as pan over to our bass player, and pan over to our keys player all from one position, which is something we could never have done with just a single camera that couldn't move.”
"We were actually able to match them pretty close to our other cameras, which was a really nice surprise." - Johnny Ragin, Technical Director, Stonecreek Church, Milton, GA
While Ragin used the Marshall CV630 PTZ camera on stage, he says he also could see using two or three of them as main camera shots with the 30X zoom range. “You can get a really nice medium or tight shot from a significant distance, so you can mount these basically anywhere and get usable shots out of them. Setting up presets on the camera is really straightforward. You literally just type in the number of the preset that you want to save and hit the save button.”
He says the camera was also easy to train his team to use, and it didn’t take long at all. “Introducing this camera to our team was really fun. Basically, an all-volunteer camera crew being able to just sit down with them and go, ‘Hey, all the work is done.’ Literally, you can just punch through this preset list, and they were able to get up and running and get good shots within a few minutes.”
One of the challenges Ragin says he was originally worried about was whether he would have an issue getting the PTZ to match the look, feel and color of their existing camera setup. He was a little hesitant wondering if the color science would be as good and whether there would be a noticeable difference. “When we switched to these shots with the PTZ cam and fortunately with just a little bit of color grading, they looked great. We were actually able to match them pretty close to our other cameras, which was a really nice surprise. I honestly wasn't expecting them to match as closely as they did.”
To hear and see more about Stonecreek’s experience with Marshall Electronics’ CV630 NDI PTZ camera and VS-PTC-300 PTZ Camera Controller, watch this video!!
