I do a lot of video recording at church. My usual setup involves 2 GoPros, a Canon T2i, a Kodak Z3 and a Sony sound recorder in case the main sound recording flakes out. That’s a lot of gear to lug back and forth. Also, the T2i only shoots 12 minutes of video at a time so it means I have a lot of clips to synchronize in Premiere when I get home. It was time to simplify.
Church now has a Canon VIXIA HF R500 camcorder. It shoots 1080p video and will do that for hours on end. That takes the place of the T2i as the main video source. I still set up a GoPro and the sound recorder for now but those are small and easy to deal with.
The Canon camcorder isn’t as good as the T2i in terms of video quality. Shooting in church is generally a low-light situation and the camcorder just doesn’t have the sensor in it to handle that super well. The result is acceptable though and given how much simpler it makes my life, I’ll go with it.
I’ll probably still lug all the gear with me every once in a while, but generally I think I’ll be using this camcorder.