Posts tagged Canon

The first round of pimping my 5D Mark II involved the attachment of a dedicated battery grip and the E1 hand strap. Those accoutrement make the camera run for longer and easier to hold.

The next round gears the 5D Mark II to the task of video recording. With the inclusion of manual control during HD video recording, this DSLR is a replacement for a camcorder, provided one remembers that no single recording can extend beyond 4GB and that extended use can make the camera too hot to handle.

The first addition caters for both stills and video. It’s a simple upgrade, namely the insertion of a 16GB Sandisk UDMA compact flash card. Ultra DMA flash memory is an absolute requirement for the camera to be able to record video. With compact flash cards rated at lower speeds, the camera’s internal buffer fills up and cannot be flushed to the external storage quickly enough. Of course, the recording of photos (even in RAW format) will function to compact flash cards that are not UDMA-enabled.

Though expensive, it makes sense to plan for the eventuality that one will be utilizing all features of the camera in a single session of use. It’s not really that easy to switch from one compact flash card to another. With the 16GB card, I have more than enough space for RAW photos and the occasional video clip without having to worry too much about available free space.

Good video quality shouldn’t be let down by poor audio. Though the EOS 5D Mark II features an integrated microphone, that component has no hope of matching the awesome visual output the camera can deliver. The obvious addition of a decent stereo microphone makes sense. My choice came down to a Sennheiser MKE 400 versus a RODE VideoMic. In the end, the RODE was selected. My choice was based on a similar price for both, but the RODE package includes additional accessories that incur an extra cost when opting for the Sennheiser. The fact that I picked Australian over German is something I’d rather not get into

The RODE VideoMic boasts some impressive audio recording capabilities. Its large size cannot entirely be blamed on the fact that it requires a 9V block battery to operate. It’s sturdy, weighs almost 300g and is mounted to the camera using the hot shoe attachment.

To secure the microphone, it is simply pushed onto the accessory shoe and fastened. Next, the 3.5mm jack is plugged into the audio in port of the 5D Mark II. The 9V battery is inserted once the top mic section has been removed. Once all that is done, one of three switches on the back of the microphone turns it on. Three switches in total are available on the back the mic: pad, power and HPF. The power switch does what one would expect it to. The pad setting permits the photographer to alter the level at which the device levels audio input. Either at 0db or -10db. The High Pass Filter may be used to filter out unwanted noise, though using that setting may affect the overall audio quality somewhat.

The accessory that is included with the VideoMic that is a separate USD 40 purchase for the Sennheiser is the oddly-named dead kitten windshield. The dead kitten covers the microphone to assist with noise reduction caused by wind, for example. In any case, it adds a touch of class to the microphone…that faux fur effect

The dead kitten is best left on the microphone to assist with suppression of ambient noise. The only problem with mounting such a large microphone on the DSLR is that an attempt at peering through the viewfinder will result in a pump to the forehead. As all video work on the 5D Mark II is done using LiveView, that presents no real issue.

Performance of the microphone is very good as I’ve found in some very limited testing. The runtime the 9V battery will provide is something I can’t comment on. Should be good for a number of hours, I expect.

My fully pimped EOS 5D Mark II looks something like this when all the bits are attached.

Pretty radical for an SLR, no?