Best Budget Camera Gear for Churches

If you can’t see the video, watch it here.

If you want to make great videos for your church on a small budget, this is the gear you should use.

In this video, I cover the best budget video equipment for churches (cameras, lights, and microphones).

This is the stuff that I use and recommend for creating church videos like welcome videos, announcements, social media posts, sermon bumpers, illustrations, testimonies, baptisms, etc.

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TRANSCRIPT

Do you want to make amazing high-quality videos for your church but you just don’t have the budget?

My name is Brandon Hilgemann with proprecher.com, and today we’re gonna be talking about the best budget video setup for churches. Check it out.

Well, the first thing you’re gonna need is a camera, and I’m gonna show you a couple of options.

Cameras

The first thing that I think that every church should look at is probably in their own pocket right now. And that is your cell phone.

Now phones are not quite as good as the expensive DSLR cameras, but those things can run you anywhere from $500 to like $3,000.

That’s a whole lot of cash right there.

And let’s be honest, a lot of churches don’t have that just sitting around to be used on video equipment.

So I think most churches should be looking in their pockets first. And this is my iPhone.

This is an iPhone X, and the video quality on this phone, believe it or not, does rival a lot of the more expensive cameras.

You can do 4k high-definition video, which let’s be honest most churches don’t have 4k screens even yet. So for a lot of them, 1080p will work.

But you could do it off to 4k video on this.

Phones have come a long way from where they used to be. So the first thing you should start with, if you haven’t made videos before, is this guy.

Get your phone out.

When I first got started in video, all I used was my phone and I learned the ins and out of it. And believe it or not, to the untrained eye you don’t see that much of a difference.

The best budget camera you have is probably the one you already have. It’ll cost you zero dollars or the price that you’re gonna pay to upgrade anyways eventually.

Now what I’m recording on now is going to give you a little bit better quality video.

That blurry background you’ll see, especially if I get up close and it focuses on my face—you see how that background just blurred out right there?

That blurry background you see is from my Canon M50. And the reason it can get that blurry background is because it’s a mirrorless camera, it’s a little bit higher quality, and the lenses are nicer.

So you’re gonna get that better what’s called depth of field, that blurry background. But most people aren’t going to notice the difference.

So this example is me recording off the iPhone, and you can see that there’s gonna be a difference between this shot and the shot on my more expensive Canon M50.

The M50 is gonna have maybe a little bit better color. It’s gonna have more of that blurry background, like I talked about, especially when I get up close.

The iPhone will still give you some of that, but it’s not gonna be quite as nice. But honestly, most people aren’t going to be able to tell the difference. And if you’re on a budget, you can still get a high-quality video off of this phone that’s not too much worse than the other cameras, especially when you factor the cost.

I mean is this image really $700 worse than the other image? Is it worth spending $700 more when you are just getting started, and you’re just figuring things out?

It might be for you, but if not and you’re on a tight budget, save your budget on the video camera if you can because there’s a lot of other factors that make for great video.

Microphones

A big part of your video is gonna be your lighting situation, and another part of your video is gonna be your sound. And that I think is where you might want to spend a little bit more money to make sure you’re getting good audio.

So with your iPhone you’re gonna want to make sure you have good audio, because the audio that’s coming straight off the phone is not gonna be as high-quality as the audio you can get with another microphone.

On phone cameras, their microphones have come a long way, but they’re not quite where they need to be to get a really good professional crisp sounding audio.

So if you’re gonna use your iPhone, what I would suggest is getting some sort of external mic.

Now, there are some different types of microphones you can get like a lavalier microphone—like the Rode SmartLav+.

Or you can get what I recommend. It’s just a little more expensive but this is the Shure MV88.

And this is a microphone that really is built for iPhones. You can see the lightning adapter on the bottom, and that’s not gonna work on other phones.

But if you’ve got an iPhone, this is the one I use and recommend.

It’s a little bit more expensive than some of the other microphones, but it’s gonna make a world of difference in your audio.

It’s gonna make it sound so much more professional.

You just plug it into the phone, and you can just point the microphone in your direction.

That’s what it looks like.

So this is the iPhone right now, the internal microphone just recording without any additional help.

And this is the iPhone X with the Shure MV88 microphone attached to it. Can you hear the difference?

It should eliminate some of that background noise and pick up more of what’s directly in front of it. It should sound a lot cleaner, a lot crisper, and a lot more professional.

Now, if you want to upgrade to a better camera from your phone, what I would recommend is jumping up to the Canon M50.

And this camera, as I said, is the one that I’ve been using for all my videos lately.

It does a fantastic job. It’s high-quality. It’s made by Canon, so the colors are great the quality is great.

It can shoot up to 4k, but the autofocus is a little weak on 4k. Just to give you a heads up, you have to manual focus it to get it the right shot. But it does do it. There is a crop factor there.

But if you’re shooting a 1080p HD video, which is what most church projectors are going to be at anyways at this point, this thing is gonna do a great job.

I did upgrade to a better lens. This is the 22mm lens. The kit lens is actually pretty good too. I just like this one for its low-light capabilities.

The nice thing about the Canon 50 is that it has a flip screen. So you can flip it out and see exactly what you’re doing as you’re filming yourself. Or you can spin it around and look at from behind while you’re filming.

But if you upgrade to this camera, much like using your own phone, you’re still gonna need a microphone with it. So I would recommend the Rode VideoMicro. And that’s this little fuzzball right here.

It comes with a windscreen. And this is great if you’re filming outdoors because when it’s windy outside, you’re not gonna hear that wind blowing on the microphone. And that just attaches right up on top of the camera, plugs in on the side, and it looks kind of goofy but it’s gonna get you some great audio and some great video.

Tripod

Alright, now one other thing that you’re probably going to need is a tripod and a phone holder or some kind of clip to hold your phone.

You can use a lot of different types of clips to hold your phone, but I’ll throw a link to the one that I have here.

And this is just a basic clip that you can open up, take it out there and put your phone on.

And this tripod, honestly, is the cheapest tripod that I could find on Amazon. It is the Amazon Basic 50 inch tripod.

It gets the job done. It’s lightweight, which is nice because it’s easy to move around and it’s portable, but it’s the highest quality.

But it will get the job done.

Now, one thing I do wish, since I’m a taller guy, is that I would have spent a little more and got one that was taller. This one when it’s completely stood up, I’m a little taller than this tripod when it’s completely standing.

So if I wanted to shoot a standing video with a tripod like this one, I’m gonna have to prop it up on some chairs or on some boxes or something to make it work.

Lighting

Now the next thing we need to talk about is lighting.

And lighting is gonna make a world of a difference in your videos. Good lighting is gonna make a video look a lot better, even if it’s filmed on a phone, than when you’re shooting in bad lighting.

So let me give you an example of what I’m talking about here. This is a Yongnuo YN300 Air.

And this guy is small, it’s thin, it’s portable, it comes with a little stand there. If you want to, you can mount it on a tripod as well. But it gets powerful. It’s crazy bright.

And this guy will help you out if you’re on a budget. It costs about 40 bucks on Amazon.

Alright, so I’m sitting in a spare room in my house right now with the lights completely off. There is a window over here to my left with a little bit of light leaking in. The blinds are shut but some of the light is leaking in.

As you can see right now on the iPhone you’re gonna be able to see some of it because it’s automatically adjusting the ISO.

On the Canon, my ISO is still set to 100, which is exactly as it was in my office. And you can see the difference of how much light you’re getting.

Alright, now I’ve boosted the ISO on my Canon and 50 back up to 3200, and you can see the difference now here in the low-light between the iPhone video and the Canon M50 video.

And you’re gonna see a big difference now in such a low light environment. It looks kind of moody, looks kind of dramatic not too bad.

Now,I got the Yongnuo YN300 air that I was talking about earlier. Just watch the difference that this light can make, how powerful this little guy is.

Whoa! That’s that full brightness, and you can see it just lights up the whole room. I can bounce it off the ceiling to get some different looks, bounce it off a wall maybe if it’s too harsh. Right on me read me it’s like blinding like the Sun.

You can see the difference when I’m holding this light up, the difference it makes on my face, on the shadows in the room.

You can get kind of a moody look if you go off to the side. If you’re going down it looks a little scary. From the bottom up it’s kind of intimidating, right? But if you want to get a good light, you can prop it up.

A cool thing about this light is you can actually change the color temperature. Just bring down more white color temperature bring up something that’s a little bit more of an orange glow to it.

It’s also adjustable so I can turn it down a little bit if I want, or all the way up.

So I’ve got one off to the side. It’s called the key light. It’s kind of your main light. You can see it right over here bouncing off my hand. And I’ve got a second one here that I can play around with.

You can see some of the difference. I’ve now popped on one behind me more of an orange glow that kind of makes me stand out from the background a little bit.

So here’s with it off, and that just kind of adds it’s cool glow behind me.

So now I’ve taken my second light and I’ve stuck it over here on the couch, kind of behind me a little bit, to kind of give me a cool backlight feel.

It’s gonna make me just kind of pop out from the background a little bit more, separate me from the darker wall behind me. Now, I kept it in the frame so you can still kinda see it. You probably want to move it out of the way, or maybe you like the way that looks and keep it in there.

But you can see just with a couple of these LED lights, you can get a really cool look.

Now on the iPhone, it’s not gonna look as good. The M50 is gonna do a lot better in low lights. It’s gonna look a lot clearer. It’s gonna look a lot nicer. But you can still get a decent look.

I’m looking right now at what my iPhone is looking like, and it’s a lot harsher. It’s a lot brighter, so you might have to play with it.

You might have to turn down some of the lights a little bit to get what you want. And then, maybe you’ll get a little bit better look on iPhone.

But on the M50, you’re gonna get a really clean, really awesome look in a lowlight situation.

So lighting is extremely important in videos.

Great Church Videos On a Budget

With some good lighting, a decent camera, and a good microphone, that’s all you need to set up a great video shoot.

It’s gonna look more professional.

It’s gonna look a lot better quality.

And you can make some great videos for your church on a budget.

Best Budget Camera Gear for Churches

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