I read a lot, research is probably closer to the mark and feeling a little under the weather today, I grabbed my laptop and decided to look at mics again (Zoom M3, MKE-600, Zoom F3 etc).
What struck me was hardly new, it just probably came at the right time and with time to explore.
I consider myself a generalist, someone who needs to be pretty decent, from an outsiders perceptions, at most things I try. A generalist comes unstuck sometimes when faced with specialist scrutiny, but specialists rarely cast their eye my way. Those people do their own stuff*.
Video, stills, audio all need to be done well enough to be professionally acceptable, but due to a small budget and often limited needs, I try to research as deeply as possible (I have been doing this for 30 years so reading between the lines has become a real skill), make clever moves, buy well, which requires patience, buy to do the end job, not take the many wasted micro steps that growing into a new field can sometimes force on you.
Mostly I want the best “bang for the buck” option.
I make mistakes, plenty of them, but so far, most of these have been slight, not catastrophic.
Stills.
My mix of Olympus and Panasonic M43 has been a giver. I have professional grade cameras and lenses covering 16-600mm (full frame equivalent), have depth, options, specialist gear and I always get the job done.
Never have I been accused of falling short technically (well gear wise anyway), so this has been a good move. I have some full frame for video, but rarely feel the desire to use it this way.
A 35k+ kit of a pro level full frame camera, 600mm f4 and the holy trinity of f2.8 zooms for my needs?
No way.
Video.
Panasonic has been my main ride here and it has been all good.
The G9 mk1 (with latest firmware, but not the upgrade key), the G9 Mk2 and my full frame S5 have all provided something here, often beyond my actual needs and with the OSMO pocket, not much escapes me now.
Full frame was a good move in last years landscape, a slight miss-step in light of this years, but the lenses that have come my way have been amazing. Always room for good lenses.
Sound.
Zoom has been my main recorder and interface base line and probably my one rare submission to the norm, although my approach has been unusual. Sennheisser, Lewitt and sE are my mic choices outside of that.
In all cases, I have prosumer grade by cost, but can manage most pro needs by buying carefully, with a plan and to my skill set now and in the future.
*
Getting there.
I review deeply, carefully and comprehensively. I have effectively developed another skill over the years, reviewing reviews. This started with photo mags in the 1980’s unbroken through to now with the internet.
When reading reviews, the first thing you need to work out is who is writing the review, what they personally use or need (if they do at all), what context their review is written from, what forces were at play at the time of writing and any hidden or openly revealed allegiances or bias.
Lets unpack the rules of the game.
First, what questions are you asking?
Are you looking for affirmation or clarity. Is hard and often unkind honesty genuinely sought after or are you looking until you find the answers you want? When you find those answers, do you understand them or do they raise even more questions? If they do raise questions, are these due to poor reviewing, overly technical talk or have you just broken through to another knowledge ceiling (which is good).
The reviewer.
If the reviewer is a generalist, like a generic tech mag doing a “best buys” article, where they may be drawing from other sources or limited reviews of their own, then they are limited in scope, but can still be helpful if used in conjunction with other similar reviews (the rule of three comes in here).
I only yesterday read a “best audio recorders for professional videographers” list which had the Zoom H8, H5, F1 and H1n on it (the first two as numbers 1 and 2). It was an Australian mag, so the availability, price and local popularity of the products had to be taken into account and the mag in question was a photo mag, not an audio one.
It may look the biz, but I am realistic. I know it does what I need now, probably way more, but I am open to upgrades in the future if they are warranted.
Great! I have those, job done, nice buys, but I have read other lists that do not even mention most of them and I would have to say if I were to write the same list myself, I would probably have added other interfaces from Zoom and their competition and dropped one or two from the list.
I would have because I have read more and looked under more stones, owned some and found issues and tricks. The problem here was the title “professional” videographers, should have probably read “aspiring to be professional”, but even then, it was a seriously slanted perspective.
If the reviewer is a specialist, they may have extremely high expectations so you have to put yourself in their thinking “shoes”. This comes from being in this space all the time and it happens to anyone.
The more you know, the less you tolerate and the higher your base-line expectations or assumptions may be. Many of these reviewers are reasonable and fair, but comments like “unacceptable noise floor” or “unusable edge softness” are usually too critically measured for every day users**.
Only a top end sound engineer or overly critical “wall chart” photographer will likely ever even notice these issues, the average punter, will probably not notice them even if you point them out.
Noise, both visual and audible are my two favourite Bugbears. Rarely does either matter, both are removable with software and often the chosen presentation platform removes them anyway, but measuring these two beasties can go to extreme levels.
Worse still are the pseudo-specialists, the theoretical experts, who do exhaustive reviews with flawed technique or incorrect assumptions and rarely actually use the gear. They use jargon and assumed imperatives to push their case, often with little idea themselves. These are rare, but not impossible to find.
Incorrect comments or terminology like “more of a depth of field”, “smaller apertures” when they actually mean wider ones*** (smaller numbers), or illogical conclusions like “this lens produces grainy images” are giveaways if you know what you are looking for, but that’s the point. If you know enough to pick frauds, you probably already know the answers.
If the reviewer is a new owner and someone who does not have the luxury of other options, but seems to know what they are doing and are doing it well enough, they are a good source of real world usage and discovered issues, but not a good comparison point.
I tend to like these reviews as they are honest and often enough once you have narrowed the field. They avoid analysis paralysis. Be careful of overly effusive “I bought it so I better like it” bias, even sponsored pushing, but often that comes across quickly.
Special mention - Forums.
Forums have to taken for what they are, often a helpful but rarely controlled space. Some of the weirdest, most misleading and harmful opinions I have come across come from these, which is a shame as they often contain the best way of getting multiple opinions in one place and a good feel for how something sits in its relative space.
Reviewers by definition tend to sign up more or less to a basic expectation of fairness, information paring and objectivity, well, more or less.
Forum goers adhere to no such guidelines, so range from those who actually put miss-informaion to the test and placate misgivings or reduce confusion to blatant attacks on any who disagree with their take on this micro world.
I use forums usually to find specific answers to specific questions or the get a feel in a general sense for a product or brand when I am new to a space. I never accept them as gospel.
Mixed loyalties.
We are all aware more or less that sponsorship is a thing, something some rely on to make a living and good on them. Many are up front about this, but not always.
Lists and reviews by stores will always have a certain level of bias, often this is hidden in their omissions. They are highly unlikely to negatively review their own products, so in lieu of a bad review, they will often not bother or may even divert.
These reviewers are also very good at giving exceptions to products like “if you are looking for a good budget item” or if you need battery operated, so always take these exceptions into consideration.
Context.
This is a tricky one. The title of the review may give you some idea what the reviewer is thinking, but even then, time, location and use case will often shift this.
Is the item the same price now as when reviewed****, is it dearer or cheaper in the reviewers country, has anything come out since that might compete with it (even a newer model of the same), what other gear are they using, what purpose are they working towards, are there other elements at work?
All of these factors can and often do have some effect.
A surprise can even pop up here when a working professional reveals a bit of gear that they probably would not have even thought to use until circumstances forced a work around and the results exceeded all expectations. Real use retrospectives and long term user reviews can be the the most useful you will come across, as long as they are relevant of course.
Need often creates clever work-arounds and rediscovered features and applications. You may even find a fix you already have.
Out of context.
Look outside the box as well. The best place to find the right info may not be where you think.
I recently found a brilliant video bag (5.11 Range Ready bag), while shopping for utility pants. I literally tripped over it in the shop and came away with a cheap, perfectly formed, robust bag capable of taking those oddly shaped video rigs and accessories.
Limiting myself to camera bags only coughed up the same, over priced specialist bags.
The drag effect.
This one is a little bit of a side note, but something I have added today, because the day after I published this post, it actually happened and I had not thought of it before in this way.
When you find something you like, you follow the trail, find more reviews, opinions, users, often you lose sight of the relevance of that item/idea/effect in the larger sense.
This came to light for me when I had a chat with a fellow videographer, someone I had not talked to in a while and someone more advanced than I, about cine lenses, or more specifically alternatives to brand name lenses for M43 format.
He mentioned names I had not stumbled over and I did the same for him. We had both found our “holy grail” brands, but neither had found each others.
I felt 7Artisans, TTArtisans, IRIX and Sirui were the best of their type and he threw new names at my like Kamlan or reminded me of discarded ones like Laowa or Samyang (based on being a store employee most likely).
We both learned something, but I learned the additional lesson that when you follow these trails, you tend to find what you are seeking, possibly at the expense of a wider view.
*
For me, the magic lies in a product that has minimum wastage, can be duplicated in some way adding depth and redundancy, is a class leader and often versatile, which for me is usually set to moderate or semi-pro level and finally is easy to use.
*I did photograph a wedding for a wedding photographer once. It was his daughters and he was forbidden from taking a camera.
**I had to choose between the Lewitt 040 Pure LDC with basically no noise floor and the 240 Pro MDC with a relatively higher noise floor. I went with the 240 (twice but for less), because I wanted depth, consistency and a rough price and performance balance with my 040 SDC’s and 440 dynamics (2 of each). Listening to some first field recordings through the 240 to the H8 Zoom revealed clarity and quietness far beyond anything I had ever heard.
If I had bought the dearer mic, I would have attributed all this to the superior quality of the mic, but the reality is the noise floor of the 240 was out of my danger zone and completely irrelvant if there is any actual noise to record.
***This one is common and really ticks me off. When understanding that a wider, brighter, larger aperture with less depth of field is a smaller number and a smaller, darker, closed down one with more depth of field has a larger number, is hard enough already. It does not help when the so-called advisor gets it wrong.
One of my favourite video Vloggers tends to call wider/brighter/opened up apertures smaller, which is just wrong.
****The Zoom H8 was almost twice it’s curent price on release a few years ago. It is now placed in the “great value as a skilled all-rounder” class, down from the “premium music recorder” class. I bought it as the former for under $500au, but many reviews were made when it was in the latter at $900-1100au. Was it a good buy? I doubt my needs will ever exceed what it offers, but it does give me a better than 90%’er in the areas of podcasting, field, music and video work.