Peter Duggan

It can be bad for the mic. When you're firing a gun, it is sending out a very loud noise. This vibrates the capsule in your mic, and if it goes over a certain level (I'm not sure what it is on the Azden mics), it can blow the capsule even if the mic isn't plugged in. Luckily though, the Azden mics are crap and it would probably be for the best if you blow the capsule on it. Pick up a Sennheiser next time.

So a friend and I are heading down to Mexico to shoot a documentary in July. Very low budget, we are students, we will be shooting with a panasonic ag-dvx100b.

 

Anyways, we arent sure how we should do the audio.... a lot of our shots will be interviews, and we think a wired mic would be the best way to go. Now, when it comes to audio, our budget for audio is between 100-300 dollars. We would love to get a wireless Mic, but i dont see that happening in our budget.

 

Any suggestions would be appreciated as to what model of microphone would be best for what we are planning.

 

Thanks.

I would suggest seeing what you can do to raise your budget by a few hundred. You'll need at least a Sennheiser ME66 microphone, a boom, shockmount, and zeppelin. This is the bare minimum. You can plug it into your DVX and have whoever is booming carefully monitor the levels, but with your budget it will be difficult.

Are there any compact analogue field recorders though? Sony TC-880-2 Reel to Reel...is it any good? Better ones?

The Nagra IV is spectaculat. Are you specifically looking for a multitrack recorder, or will any rtr work?

April fools :P

Audio post equipment. Really stuff that belongs in a sound sweetening room. Unless you really have a specific use for it or plan to dive into the complex world of high end professional audio, I would try to sell it to someone with a post facility and spend the money on some useful field production audio equipment, such as a field mixer, deck or some wireless mikes. It may also be the case that this is antiquated gear, in which case you may have some attractive doorstops.

Keep the case though. I have a 30 year old Calzone case for my Teac, and it can still survive being hit by a tank.

From what I see there is a key skill to being a good soundman. Keep your ears open for scenes that have absolutely no dialog and minimal sound. Like a guy walking to his car and getting in. Then carefully place your boom so it is reflected in the window of the car. If there are no reflective surfaces but still no dialog and minimal sound a good soundman will try to place a shadow on the face of the talent. The producer will immediately know you are a professional soundman. When filming an event that can not be repeated like a gorgeous sunset with a sailboat drifting through the golden ball it is mandatory for all sound man to place the boom in the top of the frame.

That's finny because I tend to see more camera shadows and reflections in a shot than a boom even on the most high budget films. Is that the boom op's fault too?

I feel the same way. I've been shooting on digital for a few years and convinced myself that digital is the way to go until I can afford s16 or 35, but I've been playing around with super 8 and I don't think I'll ever go back to digital. Newer is not always better.

I hope someone can help: I am going to purchase a Cannon GL2 for videographer work. A lot of the shooting will take place outside in Manhattan. The reviews I've read describle the Mic that comes with the camera as poor in quality. I was thinking of getting a Sennheiser supercardiod with a beachtek (sp?) but neither the Cannon website or the Sennheiser wesites are very helpful.

Does anyone have a link that can help me find a mic that a) atually fits the camera and B) is the best value. Also, does anyone have an opinion to the contrary on the mic choice for outside work? Any thought or opinions would be appreciated.

You'll need to get an adaptor if you want to plug the mic directly into the cam. It has a 1/8" mini-jack, but it sounds terrible and the design is weak. You can use any XLR mic with an 1/8" adaptor, so any mic will fit it, but I wouldn't recommend it due to the poor sound quality of the input type.

It would help to know what your budget is. I have used the Canon MA-200 adaptor for the GL-2 which is running for around $170 so I could digitally connect an XLR cable through the advanced hot-shoe mount on the cam and it sounds very good. If you can get a boom operator (and you'll need one if you're shooting outside in Manhattan), he can just rrun a line into that and monitor the recordings using the headphone out on the GL-2. Depending kon your budget, I would suggest the Sennheiser ME66/K6 mic which is fairly directional and has a very nice sound. It runs at around $500.

Nevermind. They just e-mailed me about the order I placed yesterday and verified that they are in fact out of the Quartzchrome.

Thanks, that explains alot.

I just used that ruler on wikipedia. It's being read as 64 ISO.

I guess it was just my light meter acting up on me, because now it seems to be exposing correctly. And they aren't out of it yet. I just checked on Widescreen Centre's website and actually ordered a few more rolls to experiment with.

I picked up four rolls of it, and have one in my cam at the moment. The ones I got expired in 1992, but I'm not too worried about it since it's B&W reversal. I think that the exposure is picking it up incorrectly. For some reason it's setting the f-stop at 1.4 in a poorly lit room, which I don't think is correct for a 50 ISO rating. I haven't had any of it processed yet, so I don't know how it will come out. Does anyone know if the Ruskies have a different way of notching their cartridges? It almsot seems as though the camera is reading it as a 250 cart.

Spectra processes the negative cart for $14. They prepped my neg even though I didn't ask them to, but I'm not sure if it was because of the delay in processing or if it's because it's part of the price.

Super-8 still has an important place in Kodak's professional motion picture business. B) Kodak is investing in moving Super-8 production back to the USA, and new equipment is involved.

Cool. I know that the fate of 50D for super 8 is still undecided, but is there any chance of other stocks making their way down to super 8? I'm particularly interested in the Double-X neg.

Wow, that super 8 looks amazing. That inspired me to stop shooting film until I have enough money to get a decent cam and light meter. I didn't think that super 8 could look that good, and I was instead using it as a stepping stone to 16mm, but now I might have some use for it if I start getting some experience with it. I didn't think you could even shoot film with that little light.

Let's just hope that Kodak doesn't kill super 8 production on us

Thanks. I'll look into that when I have the money to do so.

Yes, I know that 500 ISO being exposed for 250 ISO is one stop overexposure, I was just throwing out a random number as an example. I know that it reads 200 ISO film as 100 ISO, so I just wanted to make sure that it wouldn't assume that the 500T was something other than 250T.

As for the camera, I'm just learning at the moment and unfortunately broke. Once I get the money, I'll be upgrading and getting a light meter, but unfortunately it's just not possible at the moment.

Yes though, it does have a manual aperture control. I've been playing around with that and hopefully I'll be able to upgrade to something better in the near future.

Thanks for the advice.

I hate to do this, but bump. Anyone know how the 500T will be read in a Cosina XL40 cam that doesn't read that high. It looks like it may pick it up as the 250, but I'm not certain and I would like to find out before getting it back from the lab five stops overexposed.

Sweet. Thanks.

Thanks. What about the 500T cartridge? Any idea how that will be picked up on my cam?

I am currently shooting on a Cosina XL-40 to experiment with super 8. I was looking at the chart for the ASA/DIN ratings that the camera can take, and I was surprised to see that 200t is not one of the ones recognized. The chart jumps from 160 ISO to 250 ISO. I have a few rolls of Vision2 200T film here to play around with, and I was wondering if the cam would pick it up as being 160 ISO or 250 ISO, and how should I over/under expose to compensate. Thanks.

Now recorders can grab 192hz at 24bit pretty simple, so the analogue advantage is decreasing as the digital resolution is higher. The "harsheness" audiophiles talk about is bittiness from the sample rates. I still wouldn't argue the point - but I would wonder out loud how much a difference it would make once that warm analogue sound is processed through the protools dialogue editor's system and then passed on to some pretty serious digital enhancement on the mix stage.

The quality of the capture is as important as what you do with it. Film still looks like film when it's transferred to a disk after a telecine for editing while video will always look like video, and analog works the same way. When an analog signal is transferred to digital for mixing, it is still an analog signal, it's just digitized. Ther is a loss in quality when you do this, but it still sounds better when you transfer a tape to digital. The warmth is still there since it was present in the initial recording. Digital is much more convenient, but the quality isn't as high as analog is yet.

It all really depends. I'm pretty broke right now and just using whatever I can get my hands on. For some shoots I'll use my Boss 4-track, but I despise the sound quality of that, and in addition it's a pain int he ass to transfer it over to a computer. It's too sensitive. I have experimented with recording on my old Teac reel to reel 4-track, and it sounds wonderful but it's so inconvenient simply because of the size of the monster. It's about three feet tall, two feet wide and weighs a good sixty pounds. I'm only an amateur at the moment though, so these are fine for the shoots that I'm working on, but it irritates my ears.