I went through the same exercise about 4 years ago when I was heading to California for the Desert Trip concert festival. I wound up getting the Canon G5X. It's an older model now, but is still available and at a price point that won't break the bank. It's not DSLR quality (with a 1" sensor), but it does the job with all the settings you're used to on a DSLR. And with a viewfinder, articulating screen, decent video specs, and RAW capability, it checks enough boxes that this is my "everyday carry" camera.

https://www.cameralabs.com/canon-powershot-g5x-review/

I'm including a shot I took with it from Nick Mason's recent Saucerful of Secrets tour. The iso and exposure were bumped a bit so there is some noise, but I'm pretty happy with the result. And at this concert and Desert Trip, they were restricting cameras to "non-professional" models, and this one made it through both checks pretty readily.

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I've managed to get way behind on my UHH digests (between the COVID crisis and getting a house ready to sell, I've been otherwise occupied) and just read this today. Did your friend ever try to do anything with the film in the camera?

The first image I've processed from a senior photo shoot I did with my stepdaughter yesterday.

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I'll try not to rehash too much of what has been covered already, but may do a little to emphasize some things. Let me qualify this all by saying I have no experience with your camera, so keep that in mind. I'm a Nikon guy. About a year and a half ago I started shooting synchronized skating as my soon-to-be stepdaughter skates on a team that competes on a national (U.S.) level. Having gone from shooting football, baseball and basketball with my three sons to shooting skating was a huge adjustment.

You didn't say if your daughter does figure skating, ice dancing, or synchro, but from your comments, I'm guessing figure. With figure and dancing, you can get away with a quality prime lens, as long as you can sit relatively close to the ice. At major competitions, the stands can get pretty full and seating is sometimes restricted to certain portions of the rink, so if your daughter's performances are well attended, a prime may not be a good choice for you, as you'll need varied reach if you don't know where you'll be sitting.

With synchro you pretty much need a quality zoom as you are zooming out to catch scenes of the whole team, and zooming in to focus on one or two skaters in action. I take both my f2.8 17-50 and f2.8 70-200 for shooting synchro and find they give me the varied focal lengths I need for most rinks and most seating locations.

For skating performances, the lights tend to be much lower than for hockey, and also vary depending on the house set up, the number of spots, and choreography. I do bump my ISO to 800, and for darker shows, 1000 or a bit higher. I use a Nikon d500 which manages those ISOs with no issues. I shoot shutter priority, and try to find a speed and ISO combination that will give me decent depth of field, as I am often trying to fit a dozen skaters in some broad arrangements into the frame. Auto white balance works for me.

If you aren't using it, use the burst mode on your camera. If you're relying solely on your eye and finger to catch the right moment, you won't. I don't know what your camera is capable of, but a high burst rate and a larger buffer is a plus.

Also, be aware that many rinks use lights that flicker at a rate you can't see with your naked eye, but that the camera will capture. If your camera has an anti-flicker setting, use it. I didn't think about this when I started shooting skating, and ended up with some bizarre capture behaviors until someone on this site mentioned this to me.

Finally, if you don't use back-button focus, start. For skating, my thumb is nearly constantly on the focus button as the action and the scene move fast.

Oh...and one more tidbit...if you can use it, a monopod is great. Not all places will let you bring one in, but if you can, it helps a lot with support. I use a monopod with a ballhead, keeping the friction at a point that provides stability, but enough motion to articulate below the camera as I swing and tilt back and forth and up and down.

Coming to this a little late, but want to add my two cents. I prefer a ball head, as long as it's sturdy enough for your camera/lens combination. As has been mentioned previously, it allows a lot of flexibility if you are in a position where the monopod is not in a straight up and down position. But more important to me, it allows me to drop the camera from landscape format into portrait format easily, while maintaining the stability provided by the monopod.

This is the ball head I have been using, and it has served me well with a Nikon D500 and a Sigma 70-200 2.8 lens: https://www.adorama.com/3phb2.html?gclid=Cj0KCQjwi8fdBRCVARIsAEkDvnLIlcPJiUaU5F_uftIAvk7lys4nHZe1cefcsBHUVlhWABQRWyheH8IaAoWqEALw_wcB

Every now and then someone gets it...typically a lost child of the 60's.

A Nikon user would never have fallen for that....

Thank you for posting. I have a son, the middle of three, who chose to serve in the USMC. He is at Camp Lejeune now, having recently returned from Okinawa. His brothers and I could not be more proud, nor more humbled, by the commitment he and so many others are making, and have made, for those of us who have not served. God bless all those who serve on our behalf!

Dennis

Starting tomorrow (6/30) the Stone Circle opens for its summer series. Poets, storytellers and songwriter/singers at their best...outside around a campfire. Well worth the experience. Not so much a photo experience, but if you appreciate art in its myriad forms, planning a Saturday night here is well worth the stop. http://terry-wooten.com/stone-circle.html

My son was giving me some crap as I was sorting through my equipment. He noticed that I have all my camera batteries lettered. I have six, lettered A-F. When he asked me why I told him I use them in order, A through F as they run down and get recharged. So, for example, when D comes out of the camera, E goes in and D goes straight to the charger. He laughed at me and called me anal.

I just want to keep usage and charge cycles even across all the batteries.

Anyone else manage their batteries in a similar way? Or am I just weird?

Dennis

Quite a few good comments here and a lot for you to consider. The one thing that regularly gets overlooked when folks buy a new machine is the Power Supply Unit (PSU). This is the component that the power cord plugs into from the wall outlet (or better yet, a surge suppressor or uninterruptible power supply) and what distributes power to all the components in your machine. https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/power-supplies-101,4193.html (You will have to copy and paste the ",4193.html" part of that url after clicking the link).

If you buy a machine with a quad-core processor and 16 gigs of ram and hope to add upgrades down the road (e.g. more powerful graphics card(s), optical drives/burners, extra fans, or anything that requires power), you need to make sure your PSU is rated at a high enough Wattage to support everything, and you need to make sure you have ample available power feeds to connect to the new components. I realize this is getting more complicated than you wanted, but the last thing you want is to buy a machine that has a PSU that is just enough for the way it's configured when you buy it, but can't accommodate future upgrades.

And you can be pretty sure the average floor salesman at Best Buy or Costco will have no idea what to say if you ask about the PSU. Take some time to read at the link above and do your homework, and you'll be set for years to come. If upgrading is not a concern, then take what you get. But if you want to add components in the future, you don't want to find yourself having to upgrade the PSU first to have enough juice to power the monster graphics cards you just bought.

Dennis

Posting an update.

Thanks to all who replied to my original post. After reading everything here, I decided my best option was purchasing a new video camera (GAS attack). After looking at what fit my budget and my needs, I purchased, as a refurb from B&H, the Panasonic HC-WXF991K. I did my homework on livestreaming on Facebook, and got everything set up.

Commencement was today, and here is the result https://www.facebook.com/Marygrove.College/videos/10156480606457193/?t=433 . In addition to the stream, I also set up the stage lighting and the sound. I fed from the soundboard via three linked-together patch cords straight to the camera, so there is some degradation to the sound, but all-in-all, I'm pleased with the results. I'm seated on the stage to the right in the third row (big guy with the grey hair), so I wasn't managing the feed realtime, but I did have my phone out checking it while the ceremonies progressed.

Again, thank you all for your input!

Dennis

Thanks for the heads up on that...I was completely unaware of that issue.

How'd you guess?