Can I plug a headphone into my Canon rebel T3i?

[Gina Miller]

Ping

[Todd Terry]

The Canon DSLR are not designed to natively allow headset monitoring.

Best you can really do is use a third-party firmware (such as Magic Lantern) which basically hi-jacks one of the other ports to allow it to be used for headset monitoring.

If you must use a DSLR for video, by far the best solution is to shoot double-system sound and record audio to another device (the Zoom recorders seem most popular for this). That way you can use real microphones, with phantom power if needed, and have realtime headset monitoring.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Gina Miller]

Hi Todd, thank you for replying. I thought the firmware was for the T2, am I wrong? Yes, at work we intake audio through the zoom and it sounds terrific, at home I don’t have one and was very surprised that I couldn’t plug my headset directly into the camera. Trying to find a work around.

Gina

[Todd Terry]

I couldn’t say about the firmware and your specific camera, Gina… I was speaking about Canon DSLRs in general, not any particular model.

I’d suggest investigating Magic Lantern some more, to see if it might be applicable to your particular camera model. If not, sadly you might be asking the impossible.

Unfortunately there are many people who’d like headset outputs (and a variety of other things, like audio input control and several other features) that the cameras natively just don’t have. Canon’s position of course is that these are first and foremost still cameras (and darn good ones) that just sort of almost coincidentally will also shoot video. To fill the needs, Canon would be happy to sell those users a real video camera… but of course that’s not the solution that so many DSLR users are looking for. That leaves third-party vendors to try to fill the void… but can’t say if they can in your case.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Vic Noseworthy]

Hi Gina,
I came across this YouTube video that explains how to achieve what you want to do (and, pretty inexpensively). I haven’t tried it myself just yet, though, I’m thinking I will. You can order the specific items needed from B&H for about 25 bucks. Hope this helps.
Vic
Here’s the link to the YouTube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnEtj5l3acs
(cut and paste, if necessary)

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[Todd Terry]

Interesting gadget… and cheap, too.

I did notice that the guy in the video mentioned that he was using the Magic Lantern software, though. I’m not sure if that is required for what he was doing, or if it was just incidental.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[John López montiel]

The problem with this method is when you connect the A/V cable to your Canon DSLR the monitor turn off and you need an external monitor too.

[Vic Noseworthy]

Hey, Todd.
Yeah, unfortunately (for me, at least), Magic Lantern is required. The guy mentioned this after I posted the info here. I thought I was able to use the device for my T3i, but apparently not so (given that there’s no Magic Lantern update for the T3i). So, at this point, it seems there’s no real way to monitor audio being recorded on the T3i. Sucks.
Unless anyone else knows of a workaround… ???
Vic

[Ted White]

Dear Vic–Thanks so much for this info–I can’t believe Canon does not provide a monitoring input
and had the same question as Gina.
But this cheap little audio amp solution is great to know about (a little clunky but at least it’s a way to do it)