Zoom H1 or H2 experience

iHartVideo

iHartVideo

Well-known member
Hi all,
I am looking for a small, easily mountable recorder for use on a DSLR rig for wedding videos.
The forum fave H4N is overkill for my needs so I was looking at the smaller (and cheaper) H1 and H2.
Does anyone have feedback on either of these recorders?
Would they work well for wedding vids?
 
H1 handling noise is a major problem with the unit. The body is plastic and there is no internal damping of the noise, so any slight sound you make on your DSLR body transfers to the H1. You'll need a shock mount and windscreen of some sort. I think H1 is better suited as a plant mic, and off-camera.

H1 has no menus, and no REC pause, so I find it for run and gun work to be less than ideal. For instance, I might pause a couple seconds after I stop video recording, and then start up again a few minutes later. The only choice with the H1 is to stop recording (creating a lot of individual files you'll need to manage later) or continue recording, thus wasting battery and memory card.

Never used the H2.

I like the H4n, but the weight is a big problem mounted on camera. Pressing REC twice to start recording bit me in the ass one time, whereas the H1 is very simple to use. It's quite the dilemma for me.
 
iHartVideo said:
Hi all,
I am looking for a small, easily mountable recorder for use on a DSLR rig for wedding videos.
The forum fave H4N is overkill for my needs so I was looking at the smaller (and cheaper) H1 and H2.
Does anyone have feedback on either of these recorders?
Would they work well for wedding vids?
Click to expand...

A compact recorder bolted to the DSLR is going to have the same drawbacks as ANY camera mounted mic, namely being too far away from the sound source to produce a quality recording. Couple that with the fact that the recorder's mics are typically cardioids with very limited reach, picking up a lot of superfluous sounds other than the people speaking, and you have a recipe for acoustic disaster. I suggest you go back to a clean slate and rethink the entire approach. Just FYI, when recording human speech, a typical shotgun mic has an optimum working distance of about 24 inches, a hypercardioid about 18, a cardioid about 10, and an omni about 4. That means you have to hold a compact recorder with its cardioid mics about 10 inches from the speaker's mouth to record them with the clarity you would expect from professional audio (and if you're charging clients for the wedding videos you shoot, anything less than professional quality is simply unacceptable IMHO).
 
Steve House said:
A compact recorder bolted to the DSLR is going to have the same drawbacks as ANY camera mounted mic, namely being too far away from the sound source to produce a quality recording.

(and if you're charging clients for the wedding videos you shoot, anything less than professional quality is simply unacceptable IMHO).
Click to expand...

Good info, thanks.
I like the idea of a H1 or H2 because I can take it off the camera and place it in a more appropriate spot as required.

I see the recordings being used in 2 ways:
1. as 'snippets' for key moments with a music bed underneath.
2. Recording the speeches. In this case the Zoom would be wired into a mixer so distances won't matter. Ill take ambient room sound from my camera's mic.
 
iHartVideo said:
Ill take ambient room sound from my camera's mic.
Click to expand...

ANY camera's microphone + it's own preamp = not professional quality. Use it for reference if anything.

If you want ambient and a speaker at the same time, I would save for at least the H4n. It can record 4 channels (stereo ambient pair, plus a feed from the mixer).

The H4n IS the budget solution. The professional level gear that you're sidestepping the price tags on is Sound Devices, Lectro, Nagra, ect...
If you don't have enough for the budget gear, you need to consider what kind of results (and reputation) you want to be associated with. There's only so many corners you can cut before you're cutting your own legs out from under yourself.
 
Gohanto said:
ANY camera's microphone + it's own preamp = not professional quality. Use it for reference if anything.

If you want ambient and a speaker at the same time, I would save for at least the H4n. It can record 4 channels (stereo ambient pair, plus a feed from the mixer).
Click to expand...

Sounds to me like a reason to get two H2's rather than one H4N. That way I could have one cabled to the mixer, one with me to record 'stereo appropriate' ambience.
 
iHartVideo said:
Sounds to me like a reason to get two H2's rather than one H4N. That way I could have one cabled to the mixer, one with me to record 'stereo appropriate' ambience.
Click to expand...

Since the ambience likely doesn't need to be in sync, that may very well be an excellent idea.
 
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