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Lav mics direct to camera
  • GethincGethinc

    anyone have experience? just spent hours trawling you tube reviews and the conclusion I came to is that the recorder makes a world more difference to the final quality than the mic! I want to go straight to camera, my budget doesn't allow time for post syncing and it hardly needs to be a work of art. I was thinking of getting the rode lavelier, but if its going to sound nasty straight into the camera I may as well get a cheaper and nasty mic. (olympus ME15 maybe). WOuld love any feedback on these mics, staight to camera/vs recorder...

  • 9 Replies sorted by
  • GethincGethinc

    BTW, this is about the best of the reviews I found

  • Mr_MooreMr_Moore

    The RØDE Lav has a very short cable. I doubt you’ll be able to plug it directly into the camera (unless you get an extension cable, which isn’t very long to begin with).

    Syncing in post isn’t really time consuming. FCPX can do it automatically and virtually instantaneously. What can really be time consuming is fixing noisy audio from a bad microphone.

    I did a video comparing the cheap but popular ATR3350 and the RØDE Lav plugged into a Zoom H1. I was specifically interested in the two mics’ gain and self noise. My conclusion was never to use the ATR when recording dead-quiet indoor interviews. Outside, with plenty of background noise, any cheap microphone will do.

  • rockroadpixrockroadpix

    In a pinch, I have plugged my cheapo Audio Technica wireless lav into my GH2 and it worked pretty well. I'm not going to say that the sound was fantastic, but it worked and it wasn't an issue...

    This was done that way- I had tested it beforehand and this is a rough cut without the audio "sweetening" some is a little hot, but it's fixable in Audition-

    password ; ousod

  • soundgh2soundgh2

    In my youth we had to buy a round for the whole sound dept if we even opened the box for the radio mics on set - stick a pole on em :)

  • rockroadpixrockroadpix

    That is preferable, but I didn't have a boom for her. It was a "let's go grab this" 3 hours before we shot it. I really wish that I had gotten a sound guy. It's always the BEST way to go. I took a lot of audio in school and I appreciate good sound.

  • MikeLinnMikeLinn

  • kingmixerkingmixer

    I don't think the recorder makes more of a difference than the mic – unless it's a really, really bad recorder that you're talking about.

  • _OZ_OZ

    @kingmixer: It depends on the specific part of the recorder we are talking about. AD conversion is pretty solid these days in even the most low-end gear. Preamps on the other hand can be noisy, etc. However, within the chain, there is no question that, as you've said, mics make the largest difference, not just in universal goals such as noise level, but also with regard to characteristics (frequency response, handling of transients, proximity effect, etc).

  • MikeLinnMikeLinn

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