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Canon DSLR Question: lenses and External Zoom Sound Recorder
Hi
Hope this is the right forum for this.
I’m about to embark on making work-related movies and have a couple of quick questions re kit:
I’m tempted by the Canon 650D as it’s in my price range and would be an upgrade from the 500D so I can use my existing lenses for both stills and video. My query is about the autofocus function (my eyesight is lamentable) but have heard that the internal mic picks this up which I don’t want, obviously. Is it possible to mount my Zoom H2 onto the camera using some kind of adapter and would this eradicate this issue? I currently use a Sigma lens (17-70mm f/2.8-4 DC Macro Lens Canon AFD) for stills. Would this be compatible with the autofocus function in Video mode? I’d thought of buying the body only as I’d like to use the Sigma lens but if it won’t autofocus for video or would be too noisy I’d be better to shell out for the new, quieter kit lens I reckon?
Can anyone unravel this for me?
TIA for any advice
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4 Replies
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I’m not as familiar with the Zoom H2 since I have the Zoom H4n but I will give this a shot. The idea is that you would use the Zoom H2 as a digital recorder and not for it’s built-in mics. What you would do, typically, is set up the interview subject with a wired or wireless lavalier microphone and then feed the signal into the Zoom H2. This allows you to monitor the sound coming in live into the H2 and make any necessary adjustments. You could also use some kind of overhead boom mic instead of a lav to get great sound of the interview subject and then again feed the signal into the H2.
Now the built in mic on all these DSLR cameras are basically do-do! So what people usually do is buy another external microphone, like the Rode VideoMic, mount it using the camera’s hot shoe and feed that signal into the camera body using the external mic input. This is just to improve the quality of the soumd captured with your video clip – better sound means an easier time syncing the sound recorded by the camera with the sound captured by the H2 – which is the good sound that you eventually want your all clips to use, makes sense?
Regarding the specific lens you mention, I assume it would work with Auto Focus but for a variety of reasons it is recommended that you focus manually. The Canon kit lens 18-55mm is another piece of do-do, buy the body alone and then get the Canon 50mm 1.4 lens which is a great lens for $300 or so – no, it’s not a zoom but I use something called “my feet” to provide that zoom functionality for me, ha ha! If by the new quieter kit lens you are talking about that pancake lens that was announced with the new T4i – the issue I see with that is that the focus ring is very narrow making it hard to focus manually- I don’t rely on AF because it is too easy to make mistakes and focus on the wrong thing in the picture, but then again I’m filming interviews not race cars so this works for me.
Steve Crow
Crow Digital Media
http://www.CrowDigitalMedia.com -
Thanks Steve
My understanding is that using the Rode Mic would mean that the files would come into editing software as linked files, which would be a major bonus.
I’m now thinking the 600D (Cheaper) and the Rode Mic might be a better investment than the 650D.
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Using a Rode VideoMic or any other mic to feed directly into the camera will shut off the camera’s built-in microphone and the videos files would use the sound from the Rode instead – that part is correct. But that is still considered the sync sound, not the real sound. Yes, it will be better sound than using no external mic at all but still not probably good enough for your final video…that’s where the lavalier mic and the Zoom comes in.
Steve Crow
Crow Digital Media
http://www.CrowDigitalMedia.com -
Thanks for this Steve.
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