[waynehoskins]

I'm something of a vidiot as well as everything else, so here's my two cents:

The common term for what you're doing is "IMAG", a shortening of "image magnification"; at least that's the church production term for it.

You don't want to use Firewire or anything digital, because there is terrible frame delay in conversion. If you're shooting anything with fast movement, the delay is horrible. Half second sometimes.

You do want to use good coax (RG-59, RG-6, RG-11 even better) for composite video. If you can get component or RGBHV out of the camera, that's even better, but less likely.

Stay away from S-Video (Y/C), even though it's a better signal, because the crappy cables and connectors introduce more loss than you would have with a plain old composite signal down good coax.

You want at minimum a 2K projector, though realistically you want 3K or more. I have a pair of 2Ks at church that are bright enough, but just barely, and we're reasonably dark. If you have to compete with stage light or ambient light, you need more lumens.

If you're not going to have this camera shot on screen the entire time, you want a video switcher, to transition between sources (or in this case, a source and black).

You'll also need to do some research on lenses. My experience is that you want about one magnification factor per three feet of shot distance, so for a 75-foot-long shot you want a 25X (pronounced "twenty-five-by") zoom lens. There are two common 2/3-inch lens mounts, B3 Ikegami and B4 Sony. There's also half-inch B4. B3 Mount has the coupling ring on the lens box; B4 Mount has the coupling ring on the camera head.

You also want a decent fluid head and tripod. That alone should set you back your budget. Bogen/Manfrotto make some good somewhat-affordable ones. Hand controls too, you'll want hand controls (manual focus, servo zoom usually), and EVF: these collectively, with the camera plate, make a "studio kit" for an ENG camera.

Is the purpose of IMAG so that people far away in the audience can see the live action, or is it more for short-term effect? If it's the former, I'd think that you really want at least two cameras and a switcher. A one-camera shoot is the hardest thing to do, because your one shot has to be a good shot all the time, and the ways of getting from Important Shot A to Important Shot B are usually not all that good or easy.