DSLR Users, what mic do you use?

I have a Rode video mic pro, and I just got a Tascam DR-07 MKII and it was only about $130 and you can add a cable and camera mount. Sounds really good and has a good signal for the DSLR.
 
Ok this might be a LITTLE bit long.

To clarify, your starting budget is around $900.
You're looking to use something like a Rebel T3i. If you're including the camera as part of what's coming out of that $900, you will have to increase your budget some. The T3i with a good lense will cost you that much by itself. The Amazon deal on it that comes with the kit lens will work OK at first but you will want a new lens eventually. This is the camera we use on our web series and you can get some amazing stuff with the right lens.

On sound - mics mounted on cameras are a waste of time and money unless you plan to put the camera 1.5 feet from the subject at all times. Do not do this if you want professional sound quality. Remember that SOUND is at least, 50% of your production. If people "notice" it, it's usually bad and detracts from the overall dramatically. The BEST way to ALWAYS get quality sound is to make sure the mic is 12 inches from the subject's mouth. 18inches is the MAX unless you really know what you're doing and you're using some high quality equipment. If you follow this rule, you can get great sound quality even with low budget stuff.

Bottom of the Budget here - cheapest I would go for any kind of quality.
Canon T3i Rebel w/kit lens - $565
The great thing about the T3i is that you can shoot continuous video clips with it for as long as you want. When you move up to the 5d mkII or mkII, you can't do that. You're capped at about 7 to 11 minute shots or the camera will overheat and sometimes they will just shut down. The T3i can go for hours. So if you're filming something like a Vlog or an interview, you don't have to cut with this thing.

Recording - The T3i is a piece of junk for recording sound, even from an external mic. Forget about it! DSLR's in general are not good for this until you spend quite a bit more money. Having said that, there are a couple of routes you can go.
Zoom H1 - $100: This is cheapest thing I would use. NEVER use this to directly record with its on-board mics. It's crap. So is the H4n and all the others. They're all crap and pointless to use for their mics. I have a lot of experience with the H4n and the reason I say just go for this $1oo H1 is because NONE of them are clean compared to options that don't really cost much more than the H4n. If you're going to spend $350 just for a noisy recorder, you might as well get a mixer and a whole set up and eliminate the coloring/noise.

Lavalier Mic - Keep that mic close!
Using a WIRED Lav mic, you can ensure that you keep the mic very close and get excellent quality without spending a ton of money. For Vlogging and interviews, a wired lav is absolutely perfect because it's MUCH cheaper than wireless, you can easily hide the cord and you can easily and unobtrusively get the mic close to the mouth without having to have boom equipment or another operator. Someone suggested the AudioTechnica lav mic. The problem with that mic is its sensitivity. You have to crank up the gain so much that you'll get background hiss. Now if you had music or something it probably wouldn't matter much but, I'm an advocate of CLEAN audio. We don't want any hiss at all no matter what level it's at.
Rode Lavalier Mic - $249
This mic is brilliant for the price and works really well with the H1. I wouldn't go cheaper than this on a Lav mic myself even on a budget. If you really want to get the MOST out of a lav mic, the Countryman mics are top of the line though more expensive. Don't forget you'll need to purchase a longer wire for this mic (not expensive) as well as a Micron 2 connector. You can look up this mic and what you need online quite easily as it's VERY popular and has been tested by many using the H1.
I personally use wireless sennheiser lav receivers with Countryman mics but that's because a wired mic doesn't work for a lot of our scenes.

So this will put you at around $965 with wires/connectors and what not. You're probably fine with the 2gb storage in the H1 but you can buy an 8gb for it pretty cheap if you need to. The camera itself will need an SD card and those can get pricier. Make sure you go with at least a class 10 for that camera or your HD will look like snot.

As far as the next level goes, we're talking a couple thousand bucks to get in the door. A BETTER solution is to have a really good, boomed mic and someone to operate it but you don't really NEED that with this setup.
If you have any questions, let me know.
 
TheRomanticsWB said:
Ok this might be a LITTLE bit long.

To clarify, your starting budget is around $900.
You're looking to use something like a Rebel T3i. If you're including the camera as part of what's coming out of that $900, you will have to increase your budget some. The T3i with a good lense will cost you that much by itself. The Amazon deal on it that comes with the kit lens will work OK at first but you will want a new lens eventually. This is the camera we use on our web series and you can get some amazing stuff with the right lens.

On sound - mics mounted on cameras are a waste of time and money unless you plan to put the camera 1.5 feet from the subject at all times. Do not do this if you want professional sound quality. Remember that SOUND is at least, 50% of your production. If people "notice" it, it's usually bad and detracts from the overall dramatically. The BEST way to ALWAYS get quality sound is to make sure the mic is 12 inches from the subject's mouth. 18inches is the MAX unless you really know what you're doing and you're using some high quality equipment. If you follow this rule, you can get great sound quality even with low budget stuff.

Bottom of the Budget here - cheapest I would go for any kind of quality.
Canon T3i Rebel w/kit lens - $565
The great thing about the T3i is that you can shoot continuous video clips with it for as long as you want. When you move up to the 5d mkII or mkII, you can't do that. You're capped at about 7 to 11 minute shots or the camera will overheat and sometimes they will just shut down. The T3i can go for hours. So if you're filming something like a Vlog or an interview, you don't have to cut with this thing.

Recording - The T3i is a piece of junk for recording sound, even from an external mic. Forget about it! DSLR's in general are not good for this until you spend quite a bit more money. Having said that, there are a couple of routes you can go.
Zoom H1 - $100: This is cheapest thing I would use. NEVER use this to directly record with its on-board mics. It's crap. So is the H4n and all the others. They're all crap and pointless to use for their mics. I have a lot of experience with the H4n and the reason I say just go for this $1oo H1 is because NONE of them are clean compared to options that don't really cost much more than the H4n. If you're going to spend $350 just for a noisy recorder, you might as well get a mixer and a whole set up and eliminate the coloring/noise.

Lavalier Mic - Keep that mic close!
Using a WIRED Lav mic, you can ensure that you keep the mic very close and get excellent quality without spending a ton of money. For Vlogging and interviews, a wired lav is absolutely perfect because it's MUCH cheaper than wireless, you can easily hide the cord and you can easily and unobtrusively get the mic close to the mouth without having to have boom equipment or another operator. Someone suggested the AudioTechnica lav mic. The problem with that mic is its sensitivity. You have to crank up the gain so much that you'll get background hiss. Now if you had music or something it probably wouldn't matter much but, I'm an advocate of CLEAN audio. We don't want any hiss at all no matter what level it's at.
Rode Lavalier Mic - $249
This mic is brilliant for the price and works really well with the H1. I wouldn't go cheaper than this on a Lav mic myself even on a budget. If you really want to get the MOST out of a lav mic, the Countryman mics are top of the line though more expensive. Don't forget you'll need to purchase a longer wire for this mic (not expensive) as well as a Micron 2 connector. You can look up this mic and what you need online quite easily as it's VERY popular and has been tested by many using the H1.
I personally use wireless sennheiser lav receivers with Countryman mics but that's because a wired mic doesn't work for a lot of our scenes.

So this will put you at around $965 with wires/connectors and what not. You're probably fine with the 2gb storage in the H1 but you can buy an 8gb for it pretty cheap if you need to. The camera itself will need an SD card and those can get pricier. Make sure you go with at least a class 10 for that camera or your HD will look like snot.

As far as the next level goes, we're talking a couple thousand bucks to get in the door. A BETTER solution is to have a really good, boomed mic and someone to operate it but you don't really NEED that with this setup.
If you have any questions, let me know.
Click to expand...
Thanks! That helps a bunch, bookmarking this.
The 900 was excluding the camera but I didn't mention that. The stuff you recommend looks really great and should be all I need for the moment, maybe get 2 lav mics instead of one. I personally don't mind not great video quality as long as the audio sounds good. Just to be on the safe side, which boom mic should I get? If ever an occasion comes up where a lav wouldn't work. Just to be on the safe side :)
Again, thanks so much for taking the time to do this <3
 
I use the Rode NTG-3 as my outdoor shotgun mic. I use it indoors sometimes if a noisy environment calls for it. Keep in mind with an actual shotgun mic, you need someone that can work a boom fairly well to get more than one voice in a scene. You have to point these kinds of mics to the right spot to get good sound. You can't just hang it between 2 people. Now this mic is about $699 by itself. There's a kit that comes with a pole, shock mount and all that good stuff for $1k.

If I was you though, I'd scale back to the NTG-2. This mic is more along the lines of $270 and you can use a battery in the mic for your Phantom power. The H1 doesn't provide enough power to run this mic so the battery would be required. When you start getting into this level of gear though, you might as well buy a mixer and a dedicated recorder. Otherwise, some of your gear is going to start to bottleneck the quality levels anyway.
 
TheRomanticsWB said:
I use the Rode NTG-3 as my outdoor shotgun mic. I use it indoors sometimes if a noisy environment calls for it. Keep in mind with an actual shotgun mic, you need someone that can work a boom fairly well to get more than one voice in a scene. You have to point these kinds of mics to the right spot to get good sound. You can't just hang it between 2 people. Now this mic is about $699 by itself. There's a kit that comes with a pole, shock mount and all that good stuff for $1k.

If I was you though, I'd scale back to the NTG-2. This mic is more along the lines of $270 and you can use a battery in the mic for your Phantom power. The H1 doesn't provide enough power to run this mic so the battery would be required. When you start getting into this level of gear though, you might as well buy a mixer and a dedicated recorder. Otherwise, some of your gear is going to start to bottleneck the quality levels anyway.
Click to expand...
Perfect, thanks :)
 
as silly as this sounds, for our videos at the minute till we can afford some mics, we use my iphone 4s, in a little tripod just below us out of shot, seems to work fine for now
 
I've got a Canon 600d camera, and I film music all the time and I don't even have a mic yet, the in camera mic is decent until you can pull out to get a proper one, just film in a quiet place and hopefully not a windy place and you should be fine, other wise look on amazon for rode mics
 
I'm using a RODE Ntg-3 shotgun mic with a tascam dr100 mk II.
You can try it with your zoom h4n.
but , please dont get the ntg-2 and zoom h4n as a combo.
u will get really low recording level.
 
CodyHongTV said:
I'm using a RODE Ntg-3 shotgun mic with a tascam dr100 mk II.
You can try it with your zoom h4n.
but , please dont get the ntg-2 and zoom h4n as a combo.
u will get really low recording level.
Click to expand...

That's because the NTG-2 is needs Phantom Power and the H4N is no good for that.
 
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