Cameras to use with ATEM mini.

Ryedale Woodturners Club are looking to buy an ATEM mini plus at least two cameras, to project demonstrations and stream via Zoom. We need cameras with optical zoom, but otherwise a basic camera should be adequate. Can anyone suggest suitable cameras, or specifications? A Sony HDR CX405 has been suggested.

ATEM Mini's will accept any video source that is 1080p and HDMI, including computer video outputs. From a technical perspective that is a wide choice. Your next question is what quality level you require within the budget you have. The key question is actually lighting. If you are in a well lit place and not doing close-ups, you could probably get away with a $100 camera, particularly for streaming.

We use predominantly Blackmagic cameras in our kit, but I probably wouldn't recommend them for a club as they are more complex than a domestic camera and not easy for a volunteer to use with 5 seconds of training.

Darryl

I second Daryls suggestion. If you're not lit extremely well (almost daylight bright) those Sony's will look like junk. They are horrible in low light.

Without budget numbers and other parameters it's quite difficult to give a recommendation. Are these cameras going to be fixed or follow action? What kind of lighting do you have? What are the audio requirements?

Would love to help but definitely need more info.

Best,

David

I'm using the TV Studio HD not an ATEM mini, but after some research we ended up going with PTZ optics cameras. They're definitely on the cheaper end of the spectrum (but not as cheap as say AVCANS which we also considered).

No camera control from the BM switcher, but the PTZ optics JOY4 camera controller is a dream to use and pretty cheap. Both SDI and HDMI connection have worked flawlessly for me, as has PoE+ to power the cameras.

I haven't really tested the image quality but just on appearance I really like the image I'm getting for our 1080P 29.97 workflow.