Anyone know how to disable springs in audio controls?

nedcam

nedcam

Well-known member
Due to the recession I have been doing more one man bands than usual. Last Saturday night I shot what was described to me as a "poetry slam" and took a feed from a very professional audio mixing service and we did sound checks. I had hired a second cameraman but we did not have an audioman besides the guy at the board in back. Usually no problem.

The poetry slam developed into a full throttle, top of their lungs, lips on the mic hip hop concert (formerly known as Rap) and suddenly my levels were all over. A problem occurred that I have had on other one man band shoots with the 300 but this was much worse because i had to keep a tight shot of a bouncing performer: Due to these springs they put in behind the audio control wheels I have to press fairly hard to adjust them, which the viewer may see as a jerk. I like free spinning wheels that I can tape down after receiving tone. So my solution is to get rid of the spring action so I can gently adjust levels without the audience seeing me fight the panning motion.

Every time I have tried to carefully pry the two plastic wheels off I reach the point where I know the plastic will break. Does anyone have a trick or know of a tool that will take the wheels off? Am I correct in assuming it's just a little spring I can discard? And hey Panasonic, it's not too late to lose the damn springs in the 370 I hope ;-)

Thanks,
 
Simpler solution is use the audio from the "A" camera with the feed only. Synchronise the other camera's audio to that in post. Then delete the overmodulated tracks.
 
I don't understand. I was the A camera and I was able to control the levels but not smoothly. What do you mean?
 
Was it just one channel you had to ride or both? If it's just one, you can assign it to the Front Audio Level knob, which spins much easier (especially with the little extension nub included with the camera).
 
So then you had a runaway mix from the console? Did you have the limiters active? I've run into this quite often. One thing you can do is ask the sound engineer to give you a 0DB feed from his
output and set your levels to -12DB to allow enough headroom. My experience is that as a live performance mix tends to creep up as it goes on. Usually the band will engage in guitar wars, with each musician turning up their instrument, causing the others in the band to do the same. You could add an outboard limiter/compressor to your kit, and let it help you. That way you could concentrate on your shooting.

http://www.ashly.com/clx-52compressor.html
 
I really like that idea of assigning at least one channel to the front wheel, I have never used the front control on any of my cameras because I was paranoid I'd hit it during hand held b-roll. But that's a great way to get past this spring issue.

I do not have limiters engaged, never liked them. I had though the audio board guy during soundcheck understood this was a "not too exceed" signal level. But I think when the energy ramped up maybe he accidentally hit the slider? Maybe I should have taped it but that would have been insulting to him and I don't think it would have been a good start to a live event.

I am still trying to figure out how to pop these wheels off and kill the springs. On a mission.
 
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