Joshua Milligan
Well-known member
My go-to camera is a FS7II which I use for a lot of run & gun doc style projects. But for some shoots, like when filming remotely in the mountains, I don't want to lug the FS7 with me and would rather use my two Sony mirrorless cameras (the A7RIII and A7III) as they are much lighter. I typically record three channels of audio, a shotgun mic for ambient sounds and two wireless lavs for recording dialogue. On the FS7, this is a breeze, but on the mirrorless cameras it's not so easy.
Sony has the K2M adapter which allows you to record up to two channels of XLR audio directly into their mirrorless cameras, but that only gets you up to two channels. As such my workaround has been to mount a Zoom H5 recorder with the shotgun mic attachment to the top of a cage so that the shotgun mic is recording the ambient audio directly into the recorder and a Sony dual wireless receiver is plugged into the two XLR inputs on the bottom for my lavs. The pic below demonstrates my setup, except this is with an older Sennheiser receiver and not the Sony dual wireless receiver I use now.
This combo works well to get me the three channels I'm after and sounds really good, but I find that when recording doc related content on the move, I sometimes forget to hit the separate record button on the Zoom H5. I still am capturing audio when this happens as the H5 is plugged into my A7 camera via a 3.5mm cable, however that's premixed and is really only supposed to be used for mixing in post, or as a backup track.
What I am trying to find is a recorder that is similar to what I have that can be triggered by the record button on my A7 cameras. This would keep me from having to remember to hit record on the recorder for every take. I'm assuming nothing like this exists as I cannot find anything anywhere online, but perhaps someone here knows of a product that can do this that I'm not aware of. Any input is appreciated!
Sony has the K2M adapter which allows you to record up to two channels of XLR audio directly into their mirrorless cameras, but that only gets you up to two channels. As such my workaround has been to mount a Zoom H5 recorder with the shotgun mic attachment to the top of a cage so that the shotgun mic is recording the ambient audio directly into the recorder and a Sony dual wireless receiver is plugged into the two XLR inputs on the bottom for my lavs. The pic below demonstrates my setup, except this is with an older Sennheiser receiver and not the Sony dual wireless receiver I use now.
This combo works well to get me the three channels I'm after and sounds really good, but I find that when recording doc related content on the move, I sometimes forget to hit the separate record button on the Zoom H5. I still am capturing audio when this happens as the H5 is plugged into my A7 camera via a 3.5mm cable, however that's premixed and is really only supposed to be used for mixing in post, or as a backup track.
What I am trying to find is a recorder that is similar to what I have that can be triggered by the record button on my A7 cameras. This would keep me from having to remember to hit record on the recorder for every take. I'm assuming nothing like this exists as I cannot find anything anywhere online, but perhaps someone here knows of a product that can do this that I'm not aware of. Any input is appreciated!
