Camera Boom Mic

camera boom mic
Need tips on using a boom mic with a camcorder…?

My Sony SR-11 has a mic input, and I’m looking to use a boom with it.. my question is.. can I use the BOOM MIC hooked up directly to the camera? I hear that I can, but I want to make sure..

Also: Can anybody suggest an optimal way to record sound for an independent film? I’m going to figure out one way or the other, but any assistance would be appreciated…

essentially, how can i go about making sure my audio is of a decent quality?

Can you? yes. Would I recommend it? No.

The SR11 has a 1/8″ (3.5mm) stereo mic jack. The mics that usually use this small connector use unshielded cabling. Any unshielded/unbalanced cable over about 15 feet has a huge potential for picking up electro-magnetic or radio frequency interference (EMI/RFI). To eliminate this, you need to use shielded/balanced cable. The decent mics use XLR connectors – they will not fit in the 1/8″ mic jack. To connect the XLR connector from the mic cable into the 1/8″ mic jack, use an XLR adapter like those from juiceLink or BeachTek.

You can find a XLR-1/8″ tail/converter. These are not recommended because the 1/8″ plug can break inside the camcorder – then you are really in trouble.

The SR11′s manual audio control is very limited. Also, shotgun mics – at least the low-end ones – are mono mics so you end up recording to only the right channel on the camcorder – you can fix this in post production… or, if you use an XLR adapter, you have very granular control of the mic gain AND, most XLR adapters can be set to mono so if only one channel has a mic plugged into it, you will still record to both audio channels in the camcorder.

Another method is to use an external “field recorder” like those from M-Audio, Zoom, Sony, Edirol, Fostex, Marantz and others. I like the Zoome H4 because it has external mic connectors for XLR mics AND has a decent built-in stereo mic. In editing, just replace the camcorder’s audio with the audio from the field recorder – this is much more like the way the big boys and girls do it…

Audio Technica has a wide range of shotgun mics… their high end and those from Sennheiser are probably the best out there. The NRG Research SA-568 (amazon) is a decent, affordable, “switchable” condenser mic that can be boom mounted. You will also want a softie from Rykote (bhphotovideo) and a universal shockmount (like a Jabra SMM-1 from Guitar Center).

Testing out Sony DXC-D30WS and Boom Mic

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