New to speed running and this is the game I decided to start with. Grew up with it and seemed like the perfect entry point. I haven't invested in any capture tech as yet. Wondering if I could submit a run pointing a camera at the screen? I currently have any % down to 16 and was looking to submit once I shave off another minute. Any advice on cheapish ways to capture or what technology i should get is greatly appreciated too. I am mostly playing off a retron 5. Thanks!

There's been instances where runners have had submissions using a camera as capture method. As long as the quality is reasonable enough, its valid. The bigger question is the use of the Retron 5, I have no experience with it and frankly I do not know if its accurate enough for speedrunning.

Edit: I did snoop around within the community. From what I gather, the Retron 5 is slower than the NES to begin with. Whilst some communities seems to allow it, that's not a universally accepted rule as a whole. The consensus being that its generally more suited for casual gaming. Since you don't seem to have an actual NES setup and had plans to record by camera in the first place. I would just straight up advice to start out on emulator. You can always make the switch to hardware in the futre once you have it setup.