PTZs aren’t known for great image quality. They’re handy, pretty simple to use, and you can operate multiple cameras with just one person—that’s the trade-off. You get a lot of usable value, but not much of an image.
Until Canon.
Of course, it’s Canon. And of course they’d take a PTZ camera and give it a big, fat sensor, 4k resolution, 4:2:2 10bit imagery, and a bunch of Canon color science.
"I really don't think that anyone's going to regret buying these cameras. They're just overall stellar pieces of equipment.” - Geoff Hartley, First Baptist Rogers
They sent their CR-N500 and CR-N700 PTZs to First Baptist Rogers in Rogers, Arkansas and we sat down with Geoff Hartley, the video production specialist there, to hear how it went.
Geoff was wowed. “The CR-N500, this camera, it's not PTZ cameras like you've known them before,” he says. “Canon's really stepped up their game on the image quality. I mean, it's got a gigantic one-inch sensor, which is bigger than the sensors on broadcast-quality cameras. And so it does fantastic in lower light, which is great because that adds so much flexibility. You can put it almost anywhere in the room and guarantee you're going to get a high-quality image.”
Big sensor? Yes, please. But why not some unbelievable color science too? No more of that pasty, blown-out PTZ look we’ve all come to know and dread. Geoff tells us, “These cameras are fantastic, the skin tones, it's real. It looks like real-life color, and that's something that you can't fake. And so that was probably my favorite part of these cameras is just how stellar the color science and the image quality was.”
"And so it does fantastic in lower light, which is great because that adds so much flexibility." - Geoff Hartley, First Baptist Rogers
Being extra like Canon always is, they sent along their RC-IP100 controller as well, which is capable of commanding two-hundred of these PTZs, all from one small unit. “After using a lot of different controllers for PTZ cameras, I can tell you that this one is different,” Geoff says. “It's got a full zoom rocker, which is amazing. You're not trying to control it with just the knob or anything like that. It's got touchscreen capabilities. It's smooth and it's robust. It's just a good piece of equipment and you don't feel like you're just controlling it with a little piece of plastic. One thing I really liked was the trace functionality. You could basically record a move and then recall that move and then have it play it back just as you recorded it. It's really, really useful to be able to just recall different moves, especially when you're doing multiple services. Oh, during this song, this move, going a big pan of the stage or whatever is going to be really useful. And so it's just a really great tool in that controller.”
And why not make it easy to set up, too? No networking guy needed. “I'm far from a genius on IP-based stuff and I was able to do it pretty much no problem,” Geoff says. “As long as you have an ethernet cable and signal cable, you can make these things work no matter the size of your church. I really don't think that anyone's going to regret buying these cameras. They're just overall stellar pieces of equipment.”
Be sure to take a minute and catch all the specs on the CR-N500, CR-N700, and the RC-IP100 at those respective links, but especially in today’s video with First Baptist Rogers and our own Marcel Patillo.
