Hi all,
Recently I purchased a 14-140mm GH2 with the following additional hardware:
- Voigtländer 25mm f0.95
- LCW 77mm Fader ND Digi Pro HD + step up rings
- 2x GH2 Battery
- 2x Sandisk 64GB SDXC 95mb/s class 10
- Lowepro Vertex 200AW camerabag
- Sachtler ACE tripod
- Caruba CXS-1 + Contraweight (planning to replace this with Zacuto rig in time)
- Various cheap and old Pentax K lenses + Kipon adapter
All that's left is finding a good audio solution so I can go out and start shooting. Unfortunately the purchases above stretched my budget almost to the max and I have only 300 euro's left to spend.
The way I see it there's four possible routes of which only two routes are currently within budget range, the other two being ways to expend upon in the future:
1 - Rode NTG-2 (battery powered) plugged directly into the camera with XLR-Jack
2 - External Audio Recorder: Zoom H4N / Tascam DR100MKII. Fitted to shoe-mount, recording straight from the internal mics of the recorder
3 - Rode NTG-2 + Pre-amp(JuicedLink CX231) or Field mixer (MixPre-D)
4 - Rode NTG-2 + External Audio Recorder (Zoom H4N or Tascam DR100MKII)
With 300 euro's the choice is pretty much between buying a NTG-2 (+ shoemount, windsock, cable) or a Zoom H4N as the Tascam DR100, Pre-amp and field mixer are currently outside of my budget.
I understand there is probably a justified negativity against plugging the mic straight into the camera however it seems to me that if I buy a NTG-2 now and use that, for the time being, straight into the camera it will give me the most diverse options to expand upon once I accumelated more budget.
However if I buy just the Zoom H4N now I'm stuck with a number of issues;
- Tascam has better pre-amp and audio-controls but is out of budget range at the moment
- Battery lenght (1 hour) and the necessity to switch out battery's on both the camera and the zoom regularly
- Will need to press record on both the Zoom H4N AND the DSLR to get both video and audio recorded. This hampers with the freedom during run-and-gun shoots to quickly capture an unpredictable situation.
Would love to hear from others about their experiences with similar setups and what the pro-and-cons are of each approach.
On top of this I'm also investigating purchasing an Electronic View Finder and a External Battery solution for the GH2 so if anyone has some advice in those departments I'd be very gratefull aswell.
Recently I purchased a 14-140mm GH2 with the following additional hardware:
- Voigtländer 25mm f0.95
- LCW 77mm Fader ND Digi Pro HD + step up rings
- 2x GH2 Battery
- 2x Sandisk 64GB SDXC 95mb/s class 10
- Lowepro Vertex 200AW camerabag
- Sachtler ACE tripod
- Caruba CXS-1 + Contraweight (planning to replace this with Zacuto rig in time)
- Various cheap and old Pentax K lenses + Kipon adapter
All that's left is finding a good audio solution so I can go out and start shooting. Unfortunately the purchases above stretched my budget almost to the max and I have only 300 euro's left to spend.
The way I see it there's four possible routes of which only two routes are currently within budget range, the other two being ways to expend upon in the future:
1 - Rode NTG-2 (battery powered) plugged directly into the camera with XLR-Jack
2 - External Audio Recorder: Zoom H4N / Tascam DR100MKII. Fitted to shoe-mount, recording straight from the internal mics of the recorder
3 - Rode NTG-2 + Pre-amp(JuicedLink CX231) or Field mixer (MixPre-D)
4 - Rode NTG-2 + External Audio Recorder (Zoom H4N or Tascam DR100MKII)
With 300 euro's the choice is pretty much between buying a NTG-2 (+ shoemount, windsock, cable) or a Zoom H4N as the Tascam DR100, Pre-amp and field mixer are currently outside of my budget.
I understand there is probably a justified negativity against plugging the mic straight into the camera however it seems to me that if I buy a NTG-2 now and use that, for the time being, straight into the camera it will give me the most diverse options to expand upon once I accumelated more budget.
However if I buy just the Zoom H4N now I'm stuck with a number of issues;
- Tascam has better pre-amp and audio-controls but is out of budget range at the moment
- Battery lenght (1 hour) and the necessity to switch out battery's on both the camera and the zoom regularly
- Will need to press record on both the Zoom H4N AND the DSLR to get both video and audio recorded. This hampers with the freedom during run-and-gun shoots to quickly capture an unpredictable situation.
Would love to hear from others about their experiences with similar setups and what the pro-and-cons are of each approach.
On top of this I'm also investigating purchasing an Electronic View Finder and a External Battery solution for the GH2 so if anyone has some advice in those departments I'd be very gratefull aswell.
