Microphone advice for outdoors

[theBB]

We have a Canon Vixia HF100 that we use for family travel videos. We are quite happy with its image quality, but the wind noise is quite strong in many of our clips. Is there a microphone we could mount on this camcorder that would suppress the wind noise without any of us having to hold it in our hands, but still provide good voice recording at an acceptable quality for at least the person standing in front of the camcorder? I don't think we would care if it was mono.

 

[theBB]

Bump?

 

[senseless]

Wind noise is a huge problem with internal mikes. If your Cam has the accessory shoe, look at the Canon DM-50 microphone. It has a foam windfilter and can record in shotgun mono and 2 stereo modes. The accessory shoe powers the mike without the need for a battery. If you use a non-Canon mike, you run the risk of forgetting to turn it on or winding up with a dead battery.

 

[Photomax]

One of the things you can do is lower the volume on the audio with your editing software and then add recorded voice over (in better conditions) narration and music. This might salvage what you have.

Generally mikes on the camera sound bad. Even if you are using an external mike it still sounds bad near the camera. Recording good audio can be much harder than doing the video, and like most famous movie directors will tell you "audio is 50% of the experience..."

 

[jla930]

If your camera does not have an accessory show, does it have a built-in filter for cutting down wind noise? Even if it does, it probably won't get rid of it altogether.

I just finished editing a half-hour vacation video, in which I used very little of the original audio. The original audio had either a lot of wind noise, or the hum of the camera's motor. Of course, my camera isn't exactly top of the line, but wind and motor hum seem to be a problem among many cameras.

If you want to spend about $100, you can get SoundSoap.

 

[Photomax]

Seems like a lot of the kids are recording audio externally to a solid state device with a wind noise cap (dead cat) away from the camera. The Zoom H4N is becoming very popular.

 

[theBB]

Seems like a lot of the kids are recording audio externally to a solid state device with a wind noise cap (dead cat) away from the camera. The Zoom H4N is becoming very popular.

$350 is a bit pricey for our budget, but thanks for the suggestion.

I am looking into some third party shotgun microphones from BHphotovideo. I have not purchased one, yet. I'll definitely take a look at Canon DM-50, as well.