MatL

I appreciate your point. Thank you for sharing your experience on the field.

Hi Jez, thank you for your reply. I see what you mean. I was planning to use the Tascam DR40 just to get started, only because I’ve already got one. But I was going to replace it as soon as possible based on the final rig set up. Have you got any suggestion for a light recorder with decent preamps I could add to the rig? I've been working on the camera's fans and replaced them so now they're less noisy, but of course there’s still some background noise going on (it’s an older Red camera). It’s not as quiet as a dslr, but not too terrible. The thing is, I'm not sure if a Super Cardiod rear lobe would pick up the camera noise more than a Cardioid, and knowing that would be helpful in order to inform my choice of a mic. Nothing is comparable to have a professional sound recordist on set. Unfortunately, there are situations where that's not always possible in documentary. But there are out there some examples of decent documentaries shot by a one-man-band (just a couple of famous examples: Fire At Sea, Cartel Land). In those cases I guess that quite a big chunk of the budget would have gone into post, though... Cheers

Hi, I hope I'm posting in the right forum. I’m looking for a professional microphone to mount on a Red camera rig for documentary. It will be used on a variety of situations (both indoor and outdoor). I’m not into talking heads interviews, but rather observational documentary style. So ambient sound is very important, but there will also be some dialogue (for these I’ll probably use LAV, unless I've no control over the situation happening in front of me). I’ll record sound into a TASCAM DR-40 (which I can easily attach to the rig). I know traditionally people tend to use a Shotgun mic on camera, but I’m thinking if a mic with a different pick up polar pattern and rejection would suit better my set up, in order to avoid picking up the noise from the camera fan (which is positioned on top of the camera) and handheld operating. Would a Cardioid be a better choice considering the absence of the rear lobe, therefore the ability to reject as much noise as possible from the camera fan and handheld operating? If so, would a Cardioid sound too bad when used outdoor? I don’t mind the ambient sound. I’m looking into one of the following mics options, depending on the polar pattern I'll choose: Shotgun: DPA 4015C or Sennheiser MKH 8060 Super Cardioid: Schoeps CMC1 MK41 or DPA 4018C Cardioid: Schoeps CMC1 MK4 or DPA 4011C or DPA 2011C I know on camera mounted mic is not great, and of course it won’t necessarily be my only way to record sound, but I’m trying to figure out how to get the best result in the worst case scenario and unpredicted condition. I appreciate any advice on this. Thank you!