Cross Church Road Tests BZBGear's BG-BSHAN Box Camera: Surpasses Expectations

When churches need a smaller camera for stage shots of instrumentalists, to capture youth events, to take to off-site gatherings—or just for smaller worship environments, the tech team is usually looking for something small, and easy to operate - but with more professional results than a smartphone.  BZBGear has introduced the BG-BSHAN Box Camera for situations just like this. It’s a small box camera with flexibility and value and you can even stream directly from the camera.

"It did better than our main cameras." - Alek Fortner, Technical Director, Cross Church, Fayetteville, Ark.

The BZBGear BG-BSHAN Box Camera has received the Church Production Road Tested Certification.

The tech team at Cross Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas recently gave it a Road Test. Technical Director, Alek Fortner in charge of one of their three campuses in the college town of Fayetteville, which is home to the University of Arkansas. He was amazed at the quality. “We got to use it outside at night and it did really great. It did better than our main cameras. Honestly, those shots looked better than our main cameras for that event,” Fortner explains.

The camera allows for streaming over IP, has a high quality CMOS sensor that goes up to 1080P at 60Hz. Fortner says they also used it indoor at their Pinnacle Hills campus, which has a lot of natural light. He says the results were fantastic. “They have these massive windows and artificial light and it bounced back and forth well and held its white balance and coloring well. So, it was real quality in every environment we got to use it in.”

"I came in thinking this might be just kind of a regular old box camera, nothing special about it and honestly, it blew my expectations away.” - Alek Fortner, Technical Director, Cross Church, Fayetteville, Ark.

In situations where a large broadcast or cinema camera is just overkill, this camera really just houses the sensor, zoom, and focus controls, and the outputs, making it extremely compact. While ease of use and compact size are really important, high quality can’t be overlooked – especially in live production where lighting can be all over the place. “I think what surprised me most was that it was really easy to get the white balance because a lot of times with those POV cameras you struggle to balance them with your existing cameras and this was so easy,” Fortner enthuses. “The only other thing that I would say about this camera is it surprised me when it came in that not only could I control the zoom and focus online through the unit interface, but I could just walk up to the camera and there was a little toggle button on the back and I could zoom in and focus it there, which made it much easier to get in focus than when we were dialing it in than trying to sit from a desk and do it.”

The BG-BShan Box Camera from BZBGear can sit on a tripod or mic stand or it can be mounted anywhere in a room where you can run cabling. You could even put it on a motorized slider. It could work well as a POV camera or even a streaming camera. Fortner concludes, “I came in thinking this might be just kind of a regular old box camera, nothing special about it and honestly, it blew my expectations away.”

Original article written by Deidra Blackmore for Church Production.