Crossroads Church expected solid PTZ performance—but the Canon CR-N400 delivered a few surprises.
“Crossroads Church has often joked that it's the biggest church you've never heard of,” laughs Jake Stevens, who works in the Ohio church’s production department. “We have sites across Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, and Lexington. Our mission and our ministry is to reach the people who have given up on church but not given up on God. Our goal is to create immersive experiences for everyone in the room.”
“The auto tracking was a huge benefit for our team.” - Jake Stevens, Crossroads Church
As a large multi-site, the church has high production values, so we asked Stevens and his team to test out Canon’s new CR-N400 4K PTZ camera as part of a Church Production Road Test User Experience. The camera features SDI and HDMI capability as well as NDI and video over IP. It has auto tracking, color matching, 40x Zoom, and all the other “bells and whistles” and gave a great first impression.
“When I first opened it up, it was exactly what I've come to expect from Canon. It was well made. It felt really solid. The connections were easy to access, easy to see. It was easy to set up. The manual was easy to navigate and understand. It connected seamlessly with all of our existing gear,” Stevens says.
The CR-N400 can also create a vertical output for social media and veritcal IMAG workflows.
As part of this evaluation, the church was also sent the Canon RC IP-1000 controller that partners with the CR-N400. He says, “The controller was beautifully laid out. It was easy to navigate. The screen was large and easy to use. The connection between the camera and the controller was seamless.”
Although Crossroads has other PTZ cameras, this was their first experience with auto-tracking abilities. Stevens says it’s a great feature. “The auto-tracking was a huge benefit for our team. I only heard good things from the team up there about using it. Whenever there was a pastor on stage just by themselves, it did a really good job of tracking and staying with them. And when they walked off stage, it transitioned back to its default position like it's designed really well.”
Stevens says his team was really surprised by the features in this camera, with the Zoom and color matching ability on top of the auto tracking, and with the controller’s attention to detail.
“There's a lot of power inside of a camera that size and that price that you don't see in a lot of other markets,” he concludes. “There are other cameras that cost more or cost less, but not a lot that do all that this does at this price point, which is really good for a church where you're caring about every dollar that you spend in your budget.”
To hear more about how the team used Canon’s CR-N400 4K PTZ camera, watch this video!
