Freeheel

Hi Robert, I'll second the sweat ingress theory, I had that happen on a couple of Um400s a few years ago, and I also had one get splashed vigourously with fresh water and it started doing that crackling thing. I have the waterproof transmitters now... cheers, Brent Calkin

About 10 years ago I had a 416T fall nose first to concrete at the end of a 16 foot pole. No Rycote. My regular boom guy was sick and production found me a last minute replacement from a local film school. 2nd scene of the day and he leaves the boom leaning on the wall. I'm in another room and have my headphones off, but I see the meters spike and hear a sinister thunk from the other room. I walk to the other room to find my intern with eyes wide as hubcaps - staring at the downed rig. I picked it up, brushed some concrete fragments from the grill and told him to speak into it when I returned to the cart. Sounded fine. A funny glitchy noise started happening a bit later though whenever the mic was rotated, turned out that one of the internal coils (they look like toroidal coils) had cracked and would created noise when it shifted. A trip to the repair shop and it was good as new. That's why I love my 416s. They are a bit hissy though, So I'm sure your hyper awareness of the mics self noise being different after the fall is likely delusional cheers, Brent C

I actually liked Matts first spelling better. A bag of frozen pee (s) to cool the camera... Cheers, Brent C

My label maker cost $60 and the first thing that I lost with a label on it was returned immediately. That Sanken Cos 11 coming back made the investment seem pretty reasonable. cheers, Brent Calkin

I'll second that, I had a similar issue with the 900s and a power cord that worked fine on sony cameras but dropped the panasonics into record. And yes, wiring the hirose to pins 1 and 4 is the fix. cheers, Brent Calkin

I've got a MKH 30/50 combo in a old style mono rycote. They're sitting stacked inside a generic audio technica shockmount that is suspended by 4 rubber O rings from the original old style metal U. The shock suppression is probably not as good as the newer lyres, but it sits properly in the middle of the rycote.

Usually when I am hooking up to a camera for the first time, I'll ask for a quick record and playback. It probably wouldn't have caught your issue however. And I agree that you are not responsible for the clients lack of maintenance. He should have asked you to run a backup if he thought the camera was going to fail. Unfortunately there are a number of problems that can show up as audio issues on digital tape cameras. I always figured that if the audio failed, the video would be toast as well. This was proved wrong to me with a Sony 900r that had failing head brushes (new camera) The camera would drop audio randomly, but the picture stayed up. On further examination, the video was artifacted, but it was scary to me that a mainly usable image was recorded and the Audio track dropped out. That event made me more insistent on doing my "audio recorder" check. (My ongoing joke with camera guys is that they are just there to carry my audio recorder... Cheers, Brent Calkin

Yeah, I carry imodium for the Amtrak stalls too.. And wasn't it "Jack in the Box" with the e.coli hamburgers?? Dukoral would have been perfect for them!

Dukoral is the s***, so to speak Highly recommended. It's a cholera vaccine that protects against e. coli contamination, which accounts for about 60% of travellers diarrhea. I won't go to any developing country without it. Or imodium, for the other 40% .... cheers, Brent Calkin

I kept a rain cover on my mixer whenever I shot outside in the south, mainly to protect it from the sweat pouring off my face. I used MKH 416 and 50s on that shoot to avoid problems with humidity. Biggest issue for safety- make sure you have excellent drivers. The roads are fairly crazy. Over to Vin for local specifics. cheers, Brent Calkin

Hey Zack, I hate to say it, but ditch the trams and get some Sankens. I had Trams for some years and always felt ill whenever I was faced with business suits and ties. It's very difficult to make a tram silent in any situation other than a nice thin cotton or wool shirt. The Sankens are much quieter! You still have to work on some placements and nasty synthetics will still hose you, but I'd say it's at least twice as easy to set a Cos 11 than a tram... cheers, Brent Calkin

The Mkh30 sounds great and has extremely low self noise. It will probably make your 416 sound a bit hissy (higher noise floor) in comparison, especially for quiet ambiences. As for the shape of the stereo field, it depends on the shape of your sound source. If you are surrounded by a complex and multidirectional sound source, eg in the middle of a marching band, the instruments closest to the 3 lobes of your midside are going to be loudest and your mid lobe will be quite narrow and have quite a bit of off axis sound in it (which will not necessarily sound great) In this case you'd want a cardioid or even an omni in the mid position. If you are recording a wolf howling in the distance down a valley, the 416 will bring it in closer and the side mic could get the echo off the valley wall. Nice! So it kind of depends on what you are planning on recording with this rig. If you are indoors, the limitations of the 416 are still there (comb filtered off axis sounds and reflections) and most of the time we are trying to limit the sound of the room so you don't really gain much by recording in m/s stereo. I recorded some guys singing in a large bare plaster room with a midside rig a few weeks ago. Using an MKH 50/30 combo. When I played it back, the room (coming through the 30) sounded kinda awful and I dialed the side part of the recording way down to make it sound nicer. A nicer sounding stereo field probably would have been created by an XY pair pointed at the each of the 2 singers. A bit of a rambly post. Just wanted to make it clear that mid side can be tricky and is not the end all, be all stereo tool. And that using a 416 and a 30 together is not in itself right or wrong, but is a decision based on what you are recording! cheers, Brent Calkin

Boom to Channel 1 to Track 1 for me. Unless it is a host based show with a lav on the host and the boom is filling in here and there. No particular reason other than that's the way I started doing it and that's what I'm used to... It bends my head a bit when the boom is anywhere else. Also, if I have to grab a fader knob while I'm "one-arming" the boom, I find it a lot easier (without looking) to find the first channel with my free left hand. cheers, Brent Calkin

Comtek RX?

Then why was the bald spot on top of my head under the headband and how come the hair grew back after I stopped wearing headphones? Cheers, Brent

Yeah, I'm having a heck of a time with mine (MM400B) as well. I've given up using anything but Energizer lithiums. I have many different formulations and ages of NiMH batteries and they all last 2 hrs. Alkalines go really fast. Disposible Lithiums ( which seem to be staying pretty expensive in Canada) can go 6 hrs. I wish someone would make a rechargeable lithium AA. Cheers, Brent Calkin

X3 on the P-touch labellers. Careful though - it becomes a bit of an obsession... My labeller has paid for itself several times over with gear that was returned after being left behind. Like my swiss army knife falling out of my pocket AGAIN... cheers, Brent Calkin

No, I didn't try them- I also got tired of the bald spot from headphones and not being able to wear hats properly. And if you want serious isolation - try a pair of canalphones under a pair of earmuffs! cheers, Brent Calkin

A few of you have weighed in with the theory that the enclosed canalphone style earphones can be dangerous with sudden loud noises. That would be very true if we did not have the fine limiters built into today's ENG mixers. If you're working with high peaks of dialogue kissing the limiters, any sudden loud car backfire or whatever will be limited at a slightly higher but still reasonable level. Where the canalphones really shine is when working around REALLY loud noise. When working with tanks firing and full round gunfire, I set levels, turn my volume off and have 32 db of ear protection in my ears. If I'm recording dialogue from a radio feed from a race car while booming the sound of the engine I can set my levels to hear both at non damaging levels. You just cannot do that with open ear headphones - I've tried, I had DT48s ( which had the best isolation I could find) for years, and my ears suffered. The biggest problem I've found with the canalphones is their transmission of mechanical shock into the ear canal. If something hits the side of your earbud, it's pretty loud in your head, and the mechanically induced sound caused by the movement of the wires against your clothes can be distracting. But I feel the tradeoff is well worth it. Cheers, Brent Calkin

One thing I like about my Etymotic ER4-P canalphones is that I can listen at low levels and get all the detail. Normal level on a 442 headphone pot is around 8 or 9 o'clock, if I'm really needing to crank it I might go to 11 o'clock. I used to use DT-48s but got tired of the headache and the bald spot from the headband.. I didn't have a huge transition period, the Etymotics are somewhat similar to the DT-48 sonically. (meaning tons of high frequency detail and somewhat reduced bass)

Hi All, wondering if anyone has any firsthand knowledge of shooting in Somaliland. Apparently it's much safer than the rest of Somalia, but I'm still gathering info before I make a commitment... And no, I don't care which Lectro Blocks will work in Hargeisa... More interested in general health, safety and security precautions on a shoot that will do its best to avoid dangerous situations. Thanks, Brent Calkin

I'll try to get some pictures up tomorrow... cheers, Brent Calkin

Hey John, I've got the Koala, and I like it better than anything else out there, BUT, and this is a large but, I modified the heck out of it. I had one of the original Koala 2s and liked it a lot. I love the quiet comfy, fast adjust waist strap connector, and the nicely shaped but light chest harness - by far the best rig out there (for me). When I wore the bag out (zippers broke) I went to buy another and found that they had radically changed it. The waist strap was completely different and when the bag was loaded, it flooped (technical sound word there) down badly. There was no rigidity to the bag and it would sag about 10 inches from the top of the waist strap to the outer pocket. It hung like down like an old dog's nuts. I hated it. So I looked at portabrace and petrol and didn't see any thing I liked as much as the Kata's potential (nice pockets within the pockets, room for everything I wanted in there - but not all spread out like the big petrol pegz) (I have the big pegz, but refuse to wear it, it kills me cause it sticks out so far and all the weight levers my back badly - not to mention the problem of moving through a narrow door) So I bought the Kata. I think it's the big one - I had some debate with myself whether to go 2 or 3 and I think (weirdly) that the 2 is bigger than the 3. And I went to work. I built a metal frame out of 1/4 steel rod (a real estate sign hanger) and strapped it into the mixer section of the harness. Then zap strapped the mixer to the frame. This meant that the bag was now given rigidity by the mixer and didn't sag. On the old bag, the chest straps were attached to the top edge of the back of the bag. On the new bag, they attach further down - this doesn't work because now the bag actually folds at that point and is a big part of the floppiness problem. So I reattached the straps to the top of the bag. The new waist belt has a modular strap which is way harder to adjust than the old strap. It's also in the wrong place. It's halfway down the back of the bag, which again makes bag sag away from you. ( I would swear that the Kata people design their bags without putting any gear in them - and certainly not a 442, 3 411's and transmitters, a BDS and a lithium NP1) So I moved the waist strap female connectors to the top of the bag, and also spread them further apart than stock so that the bag gets sucked into your stomach. Then I bought more strap connectors and put another connection point further down the bag. So now I have 2 waist straps. This took a couple of days of futzing and trial and error and finding bits and pieces. effective weight of the bag is lessened to be more like carrying a 302 and 2 411's in a normal harness. It's mainly cause of the waist straps which are way more important than a big puffy chest and shoulder harness. I don't really get a sore back anymore and I've always got around 20lbs or more in the thing. Anyway, the result is bar none, the most comfortable, ergonomic, able to carry all my stuff (I can even stuff my 744t into it if I have to) bag I have ever seen. But what a bloody hassle to create it.- definitely not an off the shelf solution. I don't know whether this story will be inspiring, or whether it will scare you back to reassessing a petrol, but good luck, in whatever you choose. If you're interested, I'll post some pictures. I'm shooting 3000 km from home and have no camera, but could post some pictures when home in a couple of days... cheers, Brent Calkin

I'm in Northern Iraq right now, with four full time armed guards, and I felt comfortable taking the job because of the exhaustive job the producers did to make us secure. We have a 62 page security protocol detailing eventualities and how to deal with them. We are also in an area of Kurdistan that is fairly stable. I do a lot of background research on the producers/ directors and production companies of shoots like this and base my decisions on whether to participate based on their level of concern for my safety, and whether I think I have the training to be comfortable in the environment. Ironically, one shoot I turned down on the basis of safety involved a gospel choir travelling across the Northern US in the dead of winter in two Greyhound type buses. I had a bad feeling about road travel at that time and turned the show down (with a lot of deliberation, since it was a producer who I really wanted to work with) On day two of the shoot one of the buses was hit by a tractor trailer and 16 cast and crew were medivac'd to hospital. So trust your instincts and know your own abilities. I feel comfortable going into sketchy mountain terrain in the winter because I have a lot of training in that area, (I've been a mountain rescue volunteer for 15 years in Vancouver) so I know what the dangers are and can control my own safety in that situation. However, I was asked to do a combat shoot in Afganistan a while ago, and I turned it down. The producer was fantastic, and was very concerned about crew safety, but I felt like I didn't have the necessary skills to be in a live fire combat situation. And just always keep your eyes open - the 62 page security protocol for Iraq didn't say anything about the enormous scorpions that have been chasing us around our bedrooms... cheers Brent Calkin

Hey Jason, I use the ER4P - I think you need a power amp to drive the "s" cheers, Brent Calkin