Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
DIYP got an exclusive first look at Hollyland‘s brand new Audio Lark C1 microphone system for iPhone. It’s so new, it hasn’t even been announced yet. It’s due to be announced in October 2022. But nonetheless, we got to chat to Skylar Liu from Hollyland and see this secret new product with our own eyes and find out why it’s so groundbreaking.
This isn’t Lark’s first rodeo at producing microphones. They already have the Lark M1 and the Lark 150, but the new C1 is a bit of a game changer.
Reference mics can be a vital tool when it comes to audio. They’re the microphones that capture the uncoloured sound, with a flat response and almost complete transparency to let you measure the acoustic characteristics of the room in which you’re recording. They let you test rooms for echo and reverberation. They let you hear (and see, on charts) what frequencies your room naturally enhances or destroys.
Reference mics can be quite expensive, though, so GitHub user loudifier decided to design his own and make it open source. It’s called OpenRefMic and it promises a low cost with a high performance that “meets or exceeds the performance of professional reference microphones”. And while commercially available reference microphones aren’t all expensive, they usually come with pretty high self-noise levels. And none are this cheap!
Godox has been building up their microphone collection for a little while now with various different mics including a dual wireless mini lav kit, and now they’ve added a new phantom-powered XLR shotgun microphone to the lineup. It’s the Godox VDS-M3 and looks like your typical super-cardioid shotgun microphone, with a longer interference tube than the Godox VDX-M1, except that this one comes with a built-in battery.
Described by Godox as a “production class shotgun microphone”, they say it’s ideally suited to indie filmmaking, commercial production, broadcast and all the usual places you’d expect to use a shotgun microphone. Except, this one’s a little different as you don’t have to use a phantom-powered recorder. It also features a built-in battery for recording straight into devices like cameras and even smartphones (with the right cables).
Sennheiser has launched the second generation of its MKE 400 on-camera microphone, bringing with it some significant improvements over its predecessor and a stylish new design that looks a lot more like last year’s MKE 200 than the previous model MKE 400. Those features bring it in line with some of the models we’ve seen from the competition recently.
The two stand-out features for me are auto-power that turns the microphone on and off when it detects that you’ve turned the camera on and off as well as the Type-C USB audio connection, turning it into a digital audio device when plugged into a smartphone, bypassing low-quality preamps. It also has more gain settings, headphone monitoring and more.
Sony has launched two new microphones for use with Sony cameras. The ECM-W2BT, a Multi Interface Shoe compatible wireless microphone and the ECM-LV1 compact stereo lavalier microphone. These allow you to get good audio away from your camera without having to deal with any cables (even between the receiver and the camera), but with the option to lav up when needed.
I remember the first time I bought a wireless lav system. It was a lot of money, but I finally bit the bullet and bought my first wireless Sennheiser G2 system. There I was, $600 down, but as happy as a clam. At the time, you couldn’t get a (decent) wireless body-packs for less than $450. My eyes were always set on Sennheiser though. Fast-forward half a decade later, and we have a bunch of wireless options. The prices have been going down and good quality has become more affordable. At $200.00, the Rode Wireless GO is one of the cheapest, most discreet, featured pack wireless systems on the market.
Audio is often the biggest challenge for filmmakers, especially newer ones. Most people just coming into the world of video don’t realise how much of a big deal it really is to get good quality audio. And while can be quite gear dependent, you don’t always need the most expensive kit to get decent quality sound. In this video, filmmakers Parker Walbeck and Nick Sales talk though their top ten tips and techniques for getting good quality sound for your videos.
Deity’s S-Mic 2S short shotgun microphone is an evolution of their popular S-Mic 2 shotgun microphone. They had them on show at IBC 2019, but we were too focused on Deity’s new Connect wireless microphone system to notice. Now, though, the S-Mic 2S is getting ready to ship.
The Deity S-Mic 2S is essentially a shorter version of the Deity S-Mic 2, which has become one of my favourite shotgun microphones, offering a nice rich sound right out of the box. The S-Mic 2S has a similar sound but is tuned better for smaller spaces, but also fits well on top of the camera, too, for things like vlogging.
The Sony A6400 is a camera of choice for many vloggers: it has good video features, a flip screen, and retails at a reasonable price. However, if you want to add an external microphone to it, you either have to rig it on the side of the camera, or it will completely block the screen when you flip it. In this video, Jason Vong will show you a simple and dirt cheap solution that will let you mount a microphone on top of your camera for cleaner sound without blocking the screen.
Shure has announced their new MV88+ Video Kit for smartphone video shooters. The kit builds on the success of Shure’s previous MV88 iPhone microphone. This time, though, it’s compatible with Android, too, via Type-C USB and it comes with a Manfrotto Pixi tripod, phone clamp, and shoe mount microphone clip.
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