audio for weddings for use with Canon 60D

nho

Well-known member
what would ya'll recommend for a recorder and mic for weddings? as of right now I don't need any lavs/wireless stuff. just a recorder and mic. was thinking either a zoom or tascam, but I don't know which tascam to go with, since there seem to be many different types. and as for a mic, a rode shotgun mounted on top of the dslr should be sufficient yes?
 
what would ya'll recommend for a recorder and mic for weddings? as of right now I don't need any lavs/wireless stuff. just a recorder and mic. was thinking either a zoom or tascam, but I don't know which tascam to go with, since there seem to be many different types. and as for a mic, a rode shotgun mounted on top of the dslr should be sufficient yes?
Shotgun mounted on the camera? Absolutely NOT! Try that and your audio will be both faint and sound like the vows are being recited in a metal culvert under the highway. Shotgun's are not "telephotos for sound," such things don't exist. For clear recording of normal speech even a shotgun mic needs to be less than 2 feet from the person speaking and aimed very precisely at their mouth. You're not going to be anywhere near that close to the wedding party with your camera during the ceremony. Yu might be able to set up a mic on a stand right next to the officiant but then you have to worry about the members of the party being properly on-mic. So how do you get a mic close enough for clear recording? In a word ... lav. A lav mic on either the groom or the officiant. (Or both. If you were shooting it for a feature you'd mic all three - bride, groom, and officiant - but mic'ing the bride is not so common. Or you'd cover it with a boom, but that's out for a real wedding.) To record, either a wireless transmitter hop to the camera or recorder or a portable recorder in the pocket of the person wearing the lav.
 
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Shotgun mounted on the camera? Absolutely NOT! Try that and your audio will be both faint and sound like the vows are being recited in a metal culvert under the highway. Shotgun's are not "telephotos for sound," such things don't exist. For clear recording of normal speech even a shotgun mic needs to be less than 2 feet from the person speaking and aimed very precisely at their mouth. You're not going to be anywhere near that close to the wedding party with your camera during the ceremony. Yu might be able to set up a mic on a stand right next to the officiant but then you have to worry about the members of the party being properly on-mic. So how do you get a mic close enough for clear recording? In a word ... lav. A lav mic on either the groom or the officiant. (Or both. If you were shooting it for a feature you'd mic all three - bride, groom, and officiant - but mic'ing the bride is not so common. Or you'd cover it with a boom, but that's out for a real wedding.) To record, either a wireless transmitter hop to the camera or recorder or a portable recorder in the pocket of the person wearing the lav.

I know this. I'm not really in the market for any lavs/wireless stuff, but I guess if I could find a cheap portable recorder + lav mic I'd purchase one to mic up the groom. but when I said I'd use the rode videomic on top of my dslr, I meant it to be used for regular sound when recording around the wedding, not for dialogue purposes during the ceremony.
 
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