external mic mounted on camera

[phil]

Hello All,
Im a Newbie with Canon xha1,
I will be shooting a travel adventure video with the style like "5 takes" travel show. Filming in a car, on a boat, walking stairs, etc. Some interviews on indivduals. Minimal amount of some goup interviews. Not more than 3 people in a group interview. Boom will not work for the style of shoot. Need an external mic for camera. I was thinking cardoid is the way to go as opposed to shotgun. I realise shotgun is not good for indoors but it will be minimal shooting indoors. Will shotgun pickup more camera noise as opposed to cardoid? I realise that I will have to be more exact "right on" with the pointing of the shotgun mic on the subject. PLEASE advise if im on the right tract or PLEASE steer me the right way.

Have a budget of $1,000 including shock mount and winshield. Also any suggestions for specific audio hardware Rode, Sennsheier etc...

Thanks all.

 

[ralck]

You might want to consider a set of mics. Consider getting a shotgun for outside/directional shots (Take a look at the Rode NTG-2 for a decent budget shotgun).

For the interviews, what about a wireless lav setup? You said that you will be filming at most 3 people at a time? You could get 3 lavs which would work pretty well.

If you budgeted accordingly, I think you could get a setup like this for around $1000.

 

[professor aire]

If you go with the wireless lav setup be careful what mics you purchase. Settling in for under a grand w/ 3 decent lavs could get a little tough, especially if you're traveling alot. You need to buy mics that'll stand up to the rigors of the road... you'll also need to put a mixing system together... Unless the XHA1 has 3 mic inputs that are mixable and simultaneously usable (which is possible, I've never used the A1), then you'll need to get a portable field mixer to have the mics mixed through. With wireless it doesn't really work to have 1 receiver and 3 transmitters. You've gotta have 3 receivers. (even if you can make 1 receiver work with 3 mics, it's extremely unreliable and will fail you right when you need it to work the most, guaranteed.) That said, you're starting to look at peaking above 1 grand if you do it right...

With shotguns the right mic is key. I use a Sennheiser MKE 300 mounted on a Panasonic AG-DVC30 (on the upper-handle) so it's separated from the camera by about 3.5 inches and I get zero camera noise. Most of the time even if I bump the camera I get nothing on tape. I can breathe, sniff, quietly sneeze, etc. and not get a bit of it on tape. That said, it's obviously very directional and that's what a shotgun's for. It'll still pick up a fair amount of environmental and ambient noise, just primarily what it's pointed at and very little of what's directly behind it. (For example: I have footage on a lake in a boat with the motor running and music pumping and you can hear the conversation on shore about 65 feet away... You can still hear everything around the camera, just mainly what's in front.)
I also use this mic indoors for weddings all the time and it does stellar at picking up what's happening. It's great because I get a good dose of ambient noise and background stuff, but if something starts happening or people are talking to the camera, or whatever, I get exactly what I need to get on tape every time.

So the thought that you have to be "right on" with where you point the microphone is a yes and no. You'll pick up what's happening around you, usually without too much of a problem, but if there's a specific event or action happening right in front of you then that's what it'll focus on.

I just ran a quick search and looked at the XHA1... It looks to me like it should be able to mount one microphone with the provided mic holder... you could put a cardioid in this holder. Buy a shotgun with a shoe-mountable holder and mount that in your hotshoe. Plug the mics into separate XLR inputs and you've got two mics providing you with audio, with levels able to be balanced appropriately per-scene in post production. I don't know for sure if this would work, again seeing as how I've never used the XHA1, but it's at least worth looking into I would think.

Also try to get mics that have batteries in them so you don't drain power from you camera battery. If you're on the go all-day then you probably won't have much time to charge batteries and it's no fun when your mics drain life even quicker.

Sorry about the length of this, but I hope it helps...

 

[phil]

Thanks professor

 

[crusher310]

I would get a Boom op for the job