Vicky99

Hi ALwin, sorry I didn't get back to you earlier. We were quite busy for the past weeks. Thank you for telling us about your experience with the FS7, and your view about the FS5. We managed to get some extra budget allocated for buying a new camera kit and we have placed an order for the Z150 along with lighting and audio accessories. We also ordered a smaller handheld camcorder for backup. Thank you for all your help. By the way, can you provide me with your contact details and the rates you charge? We would like to add you to our list of freelancers that we sometimes hire to help us.

Once again, @ALwin and @Evanair, thank you for your help. After discussing we are inclined to go ahead with the Sony PXW Z150. We are also going to meet with the city council to see if we can find some extra funding, since we don't have a cameraman yet I hope we can redirect some budget lines. ALwin, you use the FS7 for ENG work? I looked up the camera on google and it looks like a great camera. Can you tell us your thoughts about using it for ENG, and if you have comments about the FS5?

I will discuss the cameras, accessories and live broadcasting solution with the team tomorrow. We already have a tripod, an old one that is still in good working condition. When we send out our camera crew, it is at least 3 people. Myself as the anchor, the cameraman and an assistant. And we do have a MacBook Pro, 15 inch from 2013. It is our editing machine. We also have some good headphones.

@ALwin, @Evanair, thank you to both of you. You both have brought up good points and suggestions. How about this, Sony PXW Z150 for the camera, I selected this because it offers 4K, and control rings for the lens and has built in ND filters which are important. Also because it is slightly cheaper than the Canons. Rode NTG4+ for the shotgun mic The Sony lav kit that Evanair linked, because it comes with a handheld mic already included and two wireless systems if I am looking at the description on B&H correctly. The AlphaTron lights as suggested by ALwin This totals about $5112 on B&H. This still leaves me with figuring out how to do live broadcasts. Extra microphone connections are not urgent for now.

For the moment I don't think we will be running long cables and our agency haven't done any live broadcasts. We go out, record, edit and offer our footage to various TV stations. Live broadcasting is something we would like to do and the Livestream Broadcast device that ALwin linked seems to be an interesting solution.

Thank you ALwin, Evanair. I'll look at the links you've provided and the live stream examples.

What about mics and other accessories?

The suggestions you've provided for the live streaming and broadcasting are interesting. Do you have any examples of how the quality will be like? And also can you show me some examples of the accessories for attaching more than 2 mics to a camera? I also forgot to mention, we need at least one good shotgun, maybe 1 or 2 handheld mics and how much are a good set of wireless mics? You mentioned you do ENG work, can I ask where and for whom? And can you tell me what kind of kit you use?

I forgot to mention, it would be convenient for me or any of my colleagues who will use the camera if it can be held on a shoulder.

Also I think 4K might be interesting for us to have. As long as it doesn't break our budget. However if you can recommend a good kit and it costs over $5000, we will discuss it with our donors if they are willing to give us a grant. Can you recommend us a good camera?

ALwin, thank you for your reply. It gives us some ideas of what is available, but I need to be a more specific with what we want. We do not want a camcorder or DSLR. We want a proper video camera where we can cable shotgun microphones, wireless mics and handheld mics. In the links you posted I see that the proper video cameras can attach up to two microphones, is there any way to attach more if we need to? For the lights, we already have studio lights even though we don't have a studio. We have a room that doubles as a meeting room and ad hoc studio. So what we want for now is just on camera lights. You also bring up live broadcasting and streaming, do you know of any solutions that does not require us to have a satellite van?

We have currently allocated $5000 for the budget. Out ex-cameraman was using something from JVC, I don't know the exact model.

Hi everyone. A friend said there are some very knowledgeable and helpful people here who can help me on buying a camera and accessories. I manage a small nonprofit news gathering agency and recently our cameraman quit taking all of his gear so we have been forced into using one of our colleague's personal camcorder to record videos. Because of that we have decided to buy our own filming kit and do things ourselves until we recruit a new cameraman, which we don't know when. So can those knowledgeable and helpful people recommend some cameras along with accessories like microphones and lights? We need a camera that's easy to use, can record decent hd video and last us quite a while. Cheers, Vicky