Theatre camera?

beyond the blue

beyond the blue

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I've been holding off asking for advice on here for many months, but it's not been sorted, so here goes. I work (voluntary) in a small 100 seat theatre programming and running the lighting for plays and band performances. We have a very old poor quality colour camera covering the stage area so that we in the tech gallery (restricted view) can see what the audience sees on a small monitor. We are looking to upgrade this camera to one with a lot better image quality. As mentioned we need to see exactly what the audience sees so we don't want any led or infrared lighting built into this camera if the audience can only see gloom then that's what we want to see. We already have an infrared camera to see in the dark. We have tried setting up a small security camera that I use at home and turning off the illuminators but because of the very small sensor the image in gloom is too poor. We don't need to do any recording with this new setup. Can anyone come up with an idea of the route we should take? I am not the most technical guy at the theatre.
 

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Well I'm certainly no expert on this but my suspicion is a DSLR/mirrorless isn't going to work, most have short running times at best, although I'm guessing you can connect an output to some.
A video camcorder might work, most I've seen have outputs to connect to tv, and some can be powered from external sources.
You've gone down the route I would have suggested with budget cctv. Best guess is you need a proper cctv system but thats not going to be cheap and probably going to give your theatre a fright when they get a quote.
Sorry thats no help mate.
 
I think the key difficulty will be to get something that sees exactly what the audience is seeing including in gloomy conditions. The human eye has a dynamic range of 21 stops while the very best video cameras have 15 or so meaning this is mission impossible. Maybe you need two cheap cameras one calibrated for gloomy and one for bright?
 
If its just a dumb camera that happens to feed the lighting box and also a TV in the bar which are for either late comers or front of house staff to monitor the production, then a fairly simple HD CCTV camera with the largest sensor available, and a suitable lens to cover the stage.

Edit: I would have thought a relatively basic camcorder should provide an output as well.
 
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No expert, but CCTV are biased towards making everything look as bright as possible, at least that’s what mine do. What they show always looks much brighter than to the human eye. Not sure if turning down the brightness on the viewing device has the right effect.

Edit: typo
 
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This is the camera we use at the moment. Don't know anything about it spec wise as it's been in donkey's years before I joined.
 

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beyond the blue said:
This is the camera we use at the moment. Don't know anything about it spec wise as it's been in donkey's years before I joined.
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By what’s written on the lens it’s a Vista camera and the firm still exists so maybe it’s worth looking at their offerings?
 
I have 2 sony Cameras an XL1 and a sony Z1 both wide screen HD and the CCD Blocks do very well in low light and the spotlight does a good shob at coping with bright light Both available as surplus now they are tape cams but have outputs to suit
 
If you want to know what the audience are seeing, wouldn't it be better to put someone in the middle of the seating area to report?

With a cellphone or a walkie-talkie, you'll get accurate instant feedback. Sometimes a camera isn't the tool to choose.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
If you want to know what the audience are seeing, wouldn't it be better to put someone in the middle of the seating area to report?

With a cellphone or a walkie-talkie, you'll get accurate instant feedback. Sometimes a camera isn't the tool to choose.
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We have a camera already we are just looking for a better quality one. The camera feed is to the lighting control box so I can make lighting adjustments during the performance if anything looks weak in places. I don't think the audience would welcome someone talking on a phone during a performance but thanks anyway.
 
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You can have a man in the auditorium on dress rehearsals and tech rehearsals, but you can’t have one a show where there is an audience, and in those times you are being reactive one step removed rather than trying to be proactive and anticipating problems.

I’ve never liked lighting events based on a monitor image as they do not have as wide a dynamic range as the human eye. It’s a useful tool I found to locate hotspots and dark spots, but no substitute on having eyes on the stage.

I always preferred using a lighting board with manual overrides - you can guarantee that actors, given half a chance, will find a shadow to stand in.
 
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andrewc said:
You can have a man in the auditorium on dress rehearsals and tech rehearsals, but you can’t have one a show where there is an audience, and in those times you are being reactive one step removed rather than trying to be proactive and anticipating problems.

I’ve never liked lighting events based on a monitor image as they do not have as wide a dynamic range as the human eye. It’s a useful tool I found to locate hotspots and dark spots, but no substitute on having eyes on the stage.

I always preferred using a lighting board with manual overrides - you can guarantee that actors, given half a chance, will find a shadow to stand in.
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Thanks Andrew. During rehearsals (6 weeks) I take the lighting board into the auditorium to build the lighting plot as like you say there is no substitute other than to see it as the audience sees it. After tech week the equipment is taken back up to the operating room. As you can see from the poor video the view (lighting / sound) is from above and to the side of our small stage and although it's doable its good to be able to see it as the audience sees it on our monitors. This feed also goes to monitors back stage, dressing rooms, and the lounge/bar area. We also have I/R cameras to see what the audience can't see in a black out.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0uYu1u_GCY
 
Any decent video camera should give you a good enough image, the trick I suspect will be callibrating the set up to match reality.
 
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