Camera microphone for birds / ambient nature sounds.

If you would like to post, you'll need to register. Note that if you have a BCG store account, you'll need a new, separate account here (we keep the two sites separate for security purposes).

Zof9

Zof9

Member
Member's gallery
Looking for a small (pocket sized) lightweight, good quality, cheap 😳 mic to sit on top of my Nikon Z9 (occasional use only)

Fed up with listening to my mouth breathing or wind crashing from the inbuilt mic.

Thanks!
 
Member's gallery
Many small mics that mount on the hot shoe of a camera. Best to get a self-powered one that uses an internal battery and to invest in a "dead cat" or muffler for the mic. This Rode mic is as cheap as you can get but it is powered by the camera's battery (not a problem with a Z9 but may be with a Z7 or Z6):


Be aware that these mics can still pick up lens noise while shooting.
 
Member's gallery
Thanks for the replies. Got me Googling 😊

Just went for a Rode VideoMic GO II
£79.20 brand new from ebay UK

Hopefully good enough to get me going..
 
Member's gallery
Calson said:
Many small mics that mount on the hot shoe of a camera. Best to get a self-powered one that uses an internal battery and to invest in a "dead cat" or muffler for the mic. This Rode mic is as cheap as you can get but it is powered by the camera's battery (not a problem with a Z9 but may be with a Z7 or Z6):


Be aware that these mics can still pick up lens noise while shooting.
Click to expand...
I have a Rode VideoMic Go and have used it for commercial work. It's a step below the one linked above, but it works well.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GQDORA4/?tag=backcogaller-20

Be sure to get the cover for wind. I simply mounted this on the hotshoe of my Z6. I had no problem with using the camera battery - the microphone does not draw any significant power.
 
Member's gallery
Any inexpensive shotgun mic should be fine -- you don't need to buy the best. But even using a deadcat wind noise will always be a problem when outdoors and it will still pick up any noise you make around the camera. For ambient sounds I carry a Zoom H1N that I use when opportunities present themselves, which unfortunately is surprisingly rare due to pervasive noise pollution even in non-urban environments.
 
Member's gallery
I started with the cheaper RODEs (the ultra compact one that uses the battery of the camera) and then moved up to the one that uses a rechargeable battery (one more thing to worry about charging, the NTH Hybrid Analog/USB one referenced by Nimi. This one allows one to better amplify the sounds. However as Garfield noted, even with a "dead cat" microphone windshield, it will pick up wind, airplanes, others shooting, etc.

​

 
Member's gallery
Garfield said:
For ambient sounds I carry a Zoom H1N that I use when opportunities present themselves..
Click to expand...
I also use the H1n as a stereo mic. I use it off-camera and it does a decent job except that I find it a pain to find and synch the sound segments that I want to use. So I am starting to experiment with using a pair of bluetooth transmitters/receivers to feed the sound directly to the camera. That way, I get the advantages of off-camera moise isolatiion but still have the synching I'd get with on-camera use. The H1n recording can provide "b roll" sounds if I need to cut-and-paste from a different time than the video shot. I don't have enough experience with this approach to recommend it yet, but so far it looks promising. BTW, you'll need an impedence-matching cable at the camera end, whether you use the H1n remotely or on-camera.. FWIW
 
Member's gallery
ricardo00 said:
However as Garfield noted, even with a "dead cat" microphone windshield, it will pick up wind, airplanes, others shooting, etc.
Click to expand...

Years ago way before stills cameras shot video and Windows was on 3.1 I was well into video. Used miniDV in a dedicated video camera and had 4 or 5 VCRs, a small sound mixer and video controller and miles of wiring to connect them all together to do the editing. I used to leave my completed projects going overnight for my computer to render, often finding that it had failed in the morning.

Recording sound drove me mad. Just a passing butterfly would get picked up - or so it seemed. I used a decent mike and windjammer too, but the slightest puff of wind was faithfully recorded but it sounded more like an F16 doing a low pass at full throttle! Also finding incidental music was hard back then. This, and the utter boredom of editing video drove me away from it. I once came back from a holiday in Italy with over 2500 clips and fond the one I needed to get from one location to the next was missing. Video takes a lot more planning than stills and there is a good reason why shooting pro video is done by a team.
 
Member's gallery
I tried a Rode Videomicro - but it soon developed defective audio output, likely the output jack.

So replaced it with a Movo VXR10PRO. Great $50 mic. It has a supercardioid pickup pattern to reduce audio pickup from the rear. No battery. Gets power from mic jack on camera. Comes with shock-mount for camera shoe, dead-cat muff, and mic to camera cable.
 
Last edited:
Member's gallery
tclune said:
I also use the H1n as a stereo mic. I use it off-camera and it does a decent job except that I find it a pain to find and synch the sound segments that I want to use. So I am starting to experiment with using a pair of bluetooth transmitters/receivers to feed the sound directly to the camera. That way, I get the advantages of off-camera moise isolatiion but still have the synching I'd get with on-camera use. The H1n recording can provide "b roll" sounds if I need to cut-and-paste from a different time than the video shot. I don't have enough experience with this approach to recommend it yet, but so far it looks promising. BTW, you'll need an impedence-matching cable at the camera end, whether you use the H1n remotely or on-camera.. FWIW
Click to expand...

Yes, I don't bother synching ambient noise -- I just use it for recording complimentary background sounds for esthetics.

FWIW I just picked up the JMI wireless two-mic set. For remote nest shooting I'm going to attach one of the transmitter mics to the focal point of an inexpensive vinyl bubble umbrella I picked up from Amazon which will be mounted on a tripod and placed in close proximity to the nest, and then place the second transmitter on the camera so I can record pseud-stereo sound and can even operate the entire rig remotely. I'm hoping to get better sound quality as on-camera shotgun mics are have very limited working distance when it comes to bird sounds.
 
Member's gallery
Many mics have a low frequency cutout switch that can help to filter out unwanted noise. The pandemic shutdown was great for reducing road noise which can travel for miles. It helps a great deal to be lower and even slightly below a noise source.
 
Member's gallery
I am looking for a microphone that can be mounted on my Nikon Z8 or Z9 and can catch bird songs upto to 100 ft away. Hope I a not asking for too much. Parabolic dishes are too cumbersome for mounting on camera.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top