60d for sound

The sound is very slightly early. It so slight but if you watch his lips you will see sound is 1frame or 2 early.
 
J Davis said:
The real trick is to develop a system of audibly naming your files so at the end of
several days shooting when you have 30 shots at 50 takes a shot you can quickly locate QUOTE]

Well said J., plus avoid loosing your mind in post at the same time.
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Though it is clearly better to have manual control over audio, as far as I'm concerned the answer to the question - Is it good enough for professional work is a resounding NO! Would you trust your clients to an audio recorder with no ability to monitor the sound? How do you know what the quality is do you have hits on a wireless, is their a hum etc. Shooting without headphones to monitor is simply unprofessional IMHO. Only a small step above AGC.

Actually I'm interested in whether the dials and controls are faster and more intuitive than the T2i and if there are Kelvin color temp adjustments.
 
Lenilenapi said:
Though it is clearly better to have manual control over audio, as far as I'm concerned the answer to the question - Is it good enough for professional work is a resounding NO! Would you trust your clients to an audio recorder with no ability to monitor the sound? How do you know what the quality is do you have hits on a wireless, is their a hum etc. Shooting without headphones to monitor is simply unprofessional IMHO. Only a small step above AGC.

Actually I'm interested in whether the dials and controls are faster and more intuitive than the T2i and if there are Kelvin color temp adjustments.
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Shooting professional? Sometimes you have to laugh at these statements...... Shooting professionally would be in a perfect studio isolated from sound. So if I'm out in the wilderness with what people consider to be a nice microphone connected to xlr adapter and some nice mic pres it's still going to sound like ****.... You need a studio/set properly designed to capture professional audio and more than likely you would want to be recording into a Pro Tools Hd System. So yeah the 60d disabling AGC is HUGE but even still just like xlr cameras in the field the sound with out being properly designed on a set will still not be 100% professional.

But if you can isolate your sound in an area and manually adjust you can get some nice recordings.....
 
life - professional sound happens all the time in the field. Being in a studio doesn't make audio magically professional. Good mic placement, proper mics and recording gear, and always using headphones makes a recording professional. Plugging straight into a DSLR is not very professional. Dual system sound, when done correctly is professional. But the main thing that makes something professional is the person running the gear, not the place you make the recording. IMO
 
Chadfish said:
life - professional sound happens all the time in the field. Being in a studio doesn't make audio magically professional. Good mic placement, proper mics and recording gear, and always using headphones makes a recording professional. Plugging straight into a DSLR is not very professional. Dual system sound, when done correctly is professional. But the main thing that makes something professional is the person running the gear, not the place you make the recording. IMO
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I do not agree entirely with your post , but in order to not derail this thread lets leave it here. Dslr audio in the field and your sound recorded in the field is STILL going to introduce unwanted sounds.
 
Yes, but when "professional" tools are used you are not likely to ruin your recording as a result of not hearing the audio, distortion from consumer preamps, clipped signals from a lack of real knobs to adjust levels on the fly. You'll get just as crappy a recording using a half-arsed DSLR setup in a studio. "Professional" usually means that the gear does what it's supposed to, and doesn't break easily. You have proper monitoring and controls for everything. Yes you can get a good recording with consumer gear under good circumstances, but what sets the pro stuff apart is reliability and flexibility, not the space you use it in. No you wouldn't record vocals for an album on a street corner, but you also wouldn't record a flock of birds taking off in a studio. But in both cases you would use a good mic with XLR cables, a good mixer/preamp, and record uncompressed audio at 24 bit into a machine with low noise and lots of headroom if you want to optimize your recording quality.
 
I'm thinking od upgrading to the 60D ONLY if the manual audio is useable for multitudes of purposes. I personally think that for the same price, the new 60D features make these DSLR's worth up to 600$ instead of $400, which pleases me. However, if I wanted to use manual audio, I want to use it for simple dialogue, ambient sounds, sound effects, the whole deal, as a seperate recorder is a daunting concept to me. I don't want hiss, but I would not mind if the quality is slightly flat or whatever, I plan for my trademark sound type to feel slightly retro and tape-based anyway, so it matters more to me that these built-in recorders work well with MICs that are made to capture different types of sound, as opposed to quality. Like, I want the audio to capture the effect of being in a natural room's fullness and all, opposite to the interview talkshow type of sound, but wouldn't this rely on the MIC as opposed to what its recorded on?

Like, I relate this to album's released back in the early 90's. I know of some mega-hit albums that honestly do sound like they were recorded on much less advanced audio options than albums nowadays, but even then, they managed to make it sound great by at least making sure each instrument channel was seperate sounding and the editing/mixing process seemed to help more than anything. Wouldn't this hold a bit true for DSLR audio, too?

I mean, again, over half of my scripts call for almost a rustic feel anyway, I'm not even so sure the Auto-AGC would truly hurt me, but...manual audio, if it works decently and doesn't produce hiss or just horrible noise out of the random blue, I feel like having it built in is worth $100...
 
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Snapper, there is no "retro" sound really as far as proper mic placement goes. 90s music was recorded with the same mics as now, and in the 80s and 70s. The only thing that has changed is the medium (recorded digitally now, and in the 90s) and the style of music. Of course you add the advent of looping drums and instruments, and overusing Autotune for a vocoder effect, there is your "modern" sound. But all of that was still recorded the same way using the same mic techniques. And nobody on any album plugged a battery operated mic into an 1/8" jack and called it good. Good mic placement is just physics. The further away you get the more room sound you have. The idea with getting a nice mic sound without wall reflections is so you have total control after the fact. If you have a roomy sound going in, you can't fix that if it turns out to not work in the scene. Believe me you're not going to accidentally sound like a talk show just because you use a proper mixer and mic. And you are not going to get more of a "tape" sound with a 60D. Much of that retro sound is not from tape, but from the sweet ass preamps they use. Tubes have a lot to do with the "retro sound". Digital audio sounded pretty brittle in the 80s, but it's come a long way.

The thing to find out as far as DSLR audio goes is, A: will it sound OK? IE, it doesn't sound thin or distorted. B: Will you be able to make adjustments on the fly when you need to? IE: Can you change the level while recording? C: Can you see the level meters at all times, and have headphones monitoring at all times? IE: How will you know if your levels are too hot on that one word the actor said really loud? All these things are needed so you do not waste time having to go back and re-shoot a scene again, which is more expensive than buying the right gear for the job. I'm not saying that you can't do it on a 60D (I want one too BTW), but I am saying that the less you put into your audio gear, the more production time you must spend to get a passable sound. If you wish to go as cheaply and simple as possible, go for it. But test it a lot. If at that point you see it's not working you can then decide to get a mixer, or an external recorder. I just think it's harder to get actors together to re-shoot a scene than it is to slate all your shots and line them up in post. But that's just me. Good luck!
 
Adanac had asked this question 10-27-2010. I didn’t see an answer. Does anyone know?

Can the inputs of the 60D accept both mic and line level inputs?
 
goetzpd said:
Adanac had asked this question 10-27-2010. I didn’t see an answer. Does anyone know?

Can the inputs of the 60D accept both mic and line level inputs?
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The 60D input is mic level only.
I get around that by either running the audio through the SD Mixpre or taking the output of the Zoom H4n through an attenuator cable.
Either way, I would highly recommend recording separate audio, otherwise you won't be able to monitor what you're recording.
 
goetzpd said:
Adanac had asked this question 10-27-2010. I didn’t see an answer. Does anyone know?

Can the inputs of the 60D accept both mic and line level inputs?
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No You need an attenuation cable to take the line level signal down to mic level. There are no DSLRs that accept line level. All the DSLR audio is still consumer level.
 
Luis, the MixPre only puts out line level, even on "tape out". You would still need an attenuation cable to go from that to a mic level device.
 
I was not trying to answer my own question here, but upon further investigation we found this:

Sescom LN2MIC-ZOOMH4N 3.5mm Line to Mic 25dB Att. 9 Inch DSLR Cable for Zoom H4N and Zoom H1

30 bucks and it has resisters built into it. "This cable features a -25dB L Pad attenuator on both audio channels to reduce the Prosumer Line Level output (-10dBV) to the cameras mic input sweet spot level."
 
A short film I shot about two week s ago using an AT897 straight into the 60D. (all except the kitchen scene)

http://vimeo.com/17450671

I had planned to use external audio, but had the at897 plugged into the 60D at all times, when I went into editing, I didn't feel the need to go back and sync all the audio from the external recorder. The only issue is not being able to trust the 60D is getting the right levels, or not knowing if the mic is currently having issues, since there is no way to monitor.

(i know what I have written may be redundant for this thread, but the video is real world use.)
 
James I can hear that signature 60D hiss, especially right after the kitchen scene when they are first walking in the street. I'd try to get a mixer in between the mic and the camera, or better yet don't record int the camera at all. Nice film BTW!
 
Chadfish said:
James I can hear that signature 60D hiss, especially right after the kitchen scene when they are first walking in the street. I'd try to get a mixer in between the mic and the camera, or better yet don't record int the camera at all. Nice film BTW!
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For sure, you are totally right about that. (also thanks for the compliment.)

I've never used dslr in-camera audio before, but wanted to play around with it in the 60D since it is touted as having "audio features"(although I knew that was not true).

These are really only audio features for super no budget, or extremely discreet situations. I have used the at897 going into a tascam DR-7 and felt that the 60D had less noise. I wonder if those little sony audio recorders would be any better than the 60D with a ntg-2 or at897?

Anyway, I don't think the 60D audio features can be taken seriously. It's very limited, has some hiss in quiet dialog, and no metering ability makes it rather more a rarely used freebie, but I am glad to have it vs. something like the T2i or D90.
 
If you have a signal going to a 3.5mm jack, I think the Sony's would sound SWEET. Their pres kill the Zoom and Tascam mini recorders. The D50 is really nice, but the 10 has good pres too according to the buzz over on tapressection.com. Just no XLR/phantom. I'm saving for a D50.
 
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The sony 10 looks fantastic. I paid about the same price for the dr7, which has horribly hissy preamps. Sounds fine with line in recording from a mixer, but then you lose the small form factor. So, the sony d50 and the m10 look promising.
 
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