A potentially dumb zoom h4n question...

C

custerc

Well-known member
....how easy is it to turn these things on and off, or mess with settings, if they're just left in one's pocket during the course of a normal day?

I was thinking of just getting a couple to these to plug lavs into for an upcoming doc I'm shooting. It seems like it may be easier to deal with than wireless, especially since I'll be shooting in China where I'm not at all sure how carefully regulated wireless frequencies are and I'd be constantly worried about distortion from cell phones and the like.

But I'm worried that if I just take one of these and tell a subject to put them in their pocket and then shoot for the day, that (1) they're a bit bulky, no? and (2) they might bump the wrong thing and accidentally turn the recorder off.

How much of an issue is this? Has anyone used them to shoot in this way, and is there a better choice?
 
It's very easy to bump the wrong button and accidentally stop recording.

This question has been coming up a lot lately, and the answer has not changed. Relying on a portable recorder in your subject's pocket to record your audio leaves you no way to monitor while you record, so how are you going to know that you have usable audio until it's too late to do anything about it? This is a bad idea all the way around.
 
I have to agree that it's a bad idea. In addition to the answers given already, the mics are delicate and can be easily damaged in one's pocket.
Unless you are in a very controlled environment, the H4N needs constant monitoring and adjustment.

It should be a good idea so +1 for innovative thinking. It just won't work well.
 
If you're doing a shoot in China, you're going to want to make sure you have all of your i's dotted and t's crossed anyway. So if you're going to do this right, you should make a point of looking into the legalities of shooting in that country.

I use the H4n sometimes, and I use the Edirol R09HR a lot too, and I find that they both end up getting bumped around. The switches and buttons on these recorders always seem to get altered accidentally. True, you can put the HOLD function on, but even HOLD manages to turn itself off accidentally.

That said, if you were doing an ultra-low-profile shoot in China, I could see how you could make the portable recorder as wireless thing work. It would probably require putting gaffers tape over the HOLD switch. This would not be a set-it-and-forget-it situation. You're going to need to check the recorders numerous times throughout the shoot. I also wouldn't trust using just one machine. I would experiment with planting two separate Sony PCM-M10's on the subject, using two separate 3.5mm mini-plug lav mics. You would need to make sure both mics aren't picking up wind noise or clothing ruffle, so a lot of testing would be required. Again, this isn't the best way to work, but you could make it work with enough preparation.

I'm currently testing out a few different 3.5mm mini-plug lav mics with portable digital recorders, so as it stands I'm not sure which one I'd recommend using. I'll try to remember to share the results of my tests in this thread.

Any portable recorder with XLR inputs is going to be too bulky for this kind of shoot.
 
We did something similar for a radio doc. The guy was Kayaking around the bay so it really had to be a small recorder. We tried a few and found the Olympus to be the best for what we were doing. Small, long battery life and a metal housing. It also sounded better than the Zoom h2. Not sure why, either a better match to the mics or just better mic pre's? The H4 is going to probably sound better than the H2 but the H4 is pretty bulky for a plant recorder.

Wireless is very regulated around the globe so I would make sure you have a permit before using one in China. I suspect they are very strict about personal broadcasting (and that is what wireless comes under in many places).
 
Interesting. Sounds like wireless is probably a better choice then....ugh...that is going to be a big pain I can already tell, but I suppose better that than the pain of shooting for a day and discovering we missed the best stuff because the zoom h4n turned itself off. Ah well....
 
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