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What's your favorite on-camera mic?


michaeleaglehall

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I've had very good results with the AT875r as a cheap but decent sounding lightweight camera shotgun.

 

It's smaller, more rugged, and I think better sounding then the Rode ones.

 

And its pickup pattern seems to be just right and versatile for most guerrilla doc camera-mic-is-the-only-option scenarios. Narrow enough to get a decent sounding interview with a single person directly in front of camera. But wide enough to decently capture a whole room, group of people, or some sort of event or ambience.

 

I don't think putting an expensive mic on the camera is worth the risk vs. sound quality gained. It's on the dang camera anyway so it's never going to sound great. It feels much better putting a $160 mic on the camera that still sounds decent.

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I mixed "Crank: High Voltage" shot with prosumer HD cameras. We did tons of tests to get a good compromise of size and quality. We were lucky to have MKH50 in a nice mount with a softie, until the directors/operators decided they were in the way. We periodically checked the results, went over the workflow with painstaking details about where the camera sound would go, etc. It was very rarely to be used for dialog, if ever, but with a director on rollerblades chasing our lead into 360 fight scenes shot in direct sun, the boom couldn't always be in place and the lav wasn't always ideal.

In the end, I asked Soundelux how much of the camera sound had been used. They replied, "What camera sound?" Lesson learned!

But the 50 was great!

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Great thread, i like the rycote mic mount solution and the AT 160$ Mic for the size and price.

For now on camera i have a kmr81 that i find a bit long and a me-66 that i don t like much.

2aputa9u.jpg

On a side note, i always put my camera mics at a lowish manual level so i can avoid the pumping of background noise. Out of curiosity do some of you sometimes set it to automatic so camera can handle higher sudden screaming or whatever?

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Great thread, i like the rycote mic mount solution and the AT 160$ Mic for the size and price.

For now on camera i have a kmr81 that i find a bit long and a me-66 that i don t like much.

2aputa9u.jpg

On a side note, i always put my camera mics at a lowish manual level so i can avoid the pumping of background noise. Out of curiosity do some of you sometimes set it to automatic so camera can handle higher sudden screaming or whatever?

What is the name of the rycote mic mount?
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i need an on camera mic sometimes for doc work where the sound person can't be always around. found the MKH416 excellent for it's sonic qualities, robustness, hot output - only downside is that it's on the heavy side. i agree that the MKH50 is an excellent choice too. 

 

chris

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I mixed "Crank: High Voltage" shot with prosumer HD cameras. We did tons of tests to get a good compromise of size and quality. We were lucky to have MKH50 in a nice mount with a softie, until the directors/operators decided they were in the way. We periodically checked the results, went over the workflow with painstaking details about where the camera sound would go, etc. It was very rarely to be used for dialog, if ever, but with a director on rollerblades chasing our lead into 360 fight scenes shot in direct sun, the boom couldn't always be in place and the lav wasn't always ideal.

In the end, I asked Soundelux how much of the camera sound had been used. They replied, "What camera sound?" Lesson learned!

But the 50 was great!

I recently shot a documentary as well.  The crew wanted an onboard mic just in case I missed something since we were all running around like crazy.  Popped my spare MKH50 on the C300's mount and figured "why not".  Sure enough, it turned out pretty good for those random odds and ends that they snagged when I was not there at that exact second they needed me.

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The crew wanted an onboard mic just in case I missed something since we were all running around like crazy.

This is the reason I use onboard mics for every docu-series I manage. I bought six ME64s and mount them on every camera as backup backups and they have captured critical audio at least three times over the last couple of years. Worth every penny.

Cheers,

Evan

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I just had a request two weeks ago to mount an on board camera mic (for reference sound) on a Arri Alexa on a steadycam rig. I didn't want to take the preamp route,and add unnecessary weight to the steadycam rig.  So I rented a Rode Video mic Pro which has a small preamp with a +20db setting, made a mini jack to 5pin XLR adapter. Adjusting the Alexa's line in to maximum gain, gave us enough recording level .Cheap and light weight solution :-)

 

post-238-0-80754500-1413017505_thumb.jpg

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Had some problem recently with the 600: It needs a lot of phantom (more than 4 milliamperes) so that cameras like the pxw-x200 can't handle it's power hunger sufficently. I guess the green LED needs so much current.

Consequence: Phantom voltage breaks down to about 30 volts and the 600 becomes very noisy.

Only solution is using the internal AA battery which is not quite comfortable. That's more a problem of the cameras anyway but the 600 is made for this market!!!

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34 minutes ago, allistair said:

If cost wasn't an issue, I'd go with a MKH8060 with softie. I've used it before on C300s with decent results. Decent reach, smallish size, and a hot output so you don't have to drive the crappy camera preamp too hard.

Oh absolutely!  That's definitely on my list. But in the interim, for run & gun on camera, I find the MKE 600 is not bad at all.

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