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Advice on MKH 8040s and 8050s


Rustic River

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Hey guys (and gals). I work solo for 90% of my work and have been shooting a lot of interviews (exteriors) with Sennheiser MKH 8060s mounted to boom poles which are sitting on stands. Both of my 8060s are equipped with MZF 8000 modules. I also use Sanken COS-11D lavs as backups sent wirelessly to my Sony UWP-D11 wireless kits. A lot of my interviews are two person interviews, so I've been using two booms and two lavs like this, one set for each person, and it's worked great.

 

Lately I've been having to shoot a lot of my work indoors, so obviously I need to move away from the gun mics for most of those times due to room reflections. Because of this, I've recently added a matched set of MKH 8040s to my kit as well as one MKH 8050 for single person interviews. My thinking was that the wider cardioid pattern of the two 8040s would make my inside interviews more forgiving when/if the two people I'm interviewing move around while interacting with each other, thus keeping them from falling out of the mic too easily. I thought that the 8050 would also be great to have for when I'm just working with one person and can keep them positioned in one spot when shooting interviews for commercial work, thus allowing me to have more rejection than the 8040s and a little longer reach so I can go wider if necessary on my framing.

 

I was wanting to post this here to see if this was a good move or not. I'm a professional shooter, but am not going to claim to be a pro audio guy, so I'm asking here to make sure that my thinking was ok. I want the highest quality possible for my projects, so I'm wanting to see if this was a good path. Thanks!

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How about an old school MKH50?  I am not sure if there is anything about the 8050 that is different.  I have no experience with that mic.   But the MKH50 has great "reach" indoors and was my go-to interior dialog mic for years.  I used Schoeps Mk41s for a long time but the MKH50 blew it away in terms of both tone and "reach."

 

YMMV

 

D.

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I was always happy with my mkh8050 in the middle of a 2 header IV, 1-2 inches towards the quiet talker. 

(Due to other reasons I now use mkh50's)

Always found a mkh40 a bit wide for my IV locations, even on a 2 header. I understand your thinking but the 8050 has a wide enough pattern from around a foot+ away for a 2 shot, well, it sounded fine in my situations.. If you can, have a listen with your kids or other family members sitting on a couch like a 'real IV', I found that's the best way to check mic's. My kids often turned into fake IV subjects when testing new audio kit.      

 

Grant.   

 

 

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