Sound recording?

[Lensflare]

How do people find those shotguns that go on top of the camera? I was lucky, I was loaned a hand held recorder (ZOOM H6) with a shotgun, a stereo head and an ambient head.... it has spoiled me! They do a ZOOM F1, which has the same shotgun mic on it that can be used hand held or mounted on the camera with a seperation mount to prevent vibration etc. The problem is, they are a lot of money! I tried a Rode top mounted one but it was a bit broken and the result is pretty poor to be fair, loads of background hiss, despite being all in the green with just an occassional pop up into the yellow.

Any suggestions as to a decent sound machine?

 

[4wd]

The best thing about them is you can use a wind muff thing which will transform your audio.
The worst thing is another thing to carry you might not need and it looks a bit intimidating if you point even a smaller one at people.
You don't need to spend a lot to give it a try and increase the directionality, an unpowered one should be fine.
I have this one but use it *much* less than anticipated

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A good lavalier type with wind muff is a better buy depending what you want to do.

 

[ah5168]

What sort of thing are you trying to record. I have never had good results from mic mounted on cameras, they are better than the cameras own internal mics but not much.

 

[Tdes]

Good sound capture has always eluded me, which led me down the path of buying a Tascam DR60d mk2.

It sits on my tripod, under my camera. 2x xlr inputs and a stereo 3.5mm input and records all 4 as separate tracks, it also has the option to record a -6db track alongside, great if you want multiple mics and want to balance background noise with speakers voice with variable volumes going on. It is really handy having the dials to adjust the gain on the fly.

I have a patch cable from the Tascam to the camera, the preamps are so good that I can turn the camera gain down to the lowest and get really clear sound. I do have it recording to its sd card as a backup but usually the sound on the camera file is good to go.

My main mic is a rode NTG4+ (xlr with battery on board). You have to be careful as to which adapter to buy if you want to go straight into the camera (xlr to 3.5mm) as some don't work, (something to do with the internal wiring). It sounds ok on the camera, but a huge difference when run through the Tascam. Even a cheap lav mic I have sounds great through the Tascam.

I wouldn't consider not use it for a job involving sound recording, the difference is too great!

T

 

[TimHughes]

There's no doubt sound it tricky. For a simple budget friendly set up with people speaking I'm using Boya Lav mics, or for general ambient sound Rode video mic. For the next step up for speaking I'm using Rode NTG 3 to Zoom H6 (or direct to a capable cinema camera) on a boom pole and for ambient rode videomic pro. That's quite an investment might not be worth it, depends what you're doing.

 

[Lensflare]

Hmmm... I might try the Marantz shotgun with a dead cat on it. £35 for a powered mic and Marantz had a good name in hi fi in the 80s so they know sound - unless it is like so many other companies, got bought for the name to stick on cheap tatt!

I am keeping my eyes open for a ZOOM F1, I think it will give me the most options. I looked at Tascam, but they don't go on the camera and I could do with that flexibility. Buy one unit that will do several jobs, mounted on the camera, or stand alone.