Community shoot.

I’ve shot quite a lot on HDSLRs. I loves ‘em. They are cheap, highly flexible, and generally produce a phenomenal image quality.

However, as many people will hasten to point out, they have a a number of drawbacks. Chiefly – they’re not really meant to shoot video, and hence they don’t have some of the things that videographers take for granted (at least in a grade of camera that produces a similar image quality – not in a grade at a similar price). One of the main hurdles is recording proper, useable audio.

They do have built in microphones, but these are tiny, tinny, and omni directional. They will probably pick up the sound of the operator as much as the sound of the subject, and will definitely capture the sound of the actual camera operation (focus/zoom movements, handling noises, stabilisation motors etc). So, if you’re wanting to record sync audio, it’s best to get an external set up. The very least that’s required is an external microphone. On the Canon 5D MkII, the standard for HDSLR video, this mic can plug straight into the camera. However, there is no headphones output, so you will not be able to monitor the recording, and as there’s little option for manual audio control (some firmware updates and third party plugins can facilitate this) recording audio onto the camera is somewhat a leap of faith.

So, below you can see my solution. It involves using a Sennheiser directional microphone plugged into a Zoom H2 portable recording device. I can monitor the audio directly from the Zoom, and have the inbuilt sound as a guide for syncing later (pluraleyes is a handy tool for this) and in case i need backup ambient tracks. I’ve built a little bracket to make life easy, and it works both on a tripod and hand held. It’s by no means the most complex 5D rig out there, but it does the job. Here ’tis:

First with tripod:

Then my hand-held version:

And the bracket that i made to make it all possible:

So, as i say, pretty simple. But it did the job.

I shot the first session with the tripod mounted on the camera, and carried them both around when i did moving shots. The tripod actually helped to stabilize the camera a little, but after a while i found it pretty tiring, and a little cumbersome. Using the hand held set up was much easier, and allowed me to dart around a little more easily. People also seemed slightly less distracted by the camera in that set-up too. Maybe they’d just gotten used to me by then.

Anyways, so was happy overall. Have been looking for an solution to the audio in/on camera thing for a while, and this setup seems to work quite nicely.

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