Tips for recording stage performances

knight427 wrote:

I'm looking at the Sennheiser MK 400. I'm not worried about wind noise or even vibration isolation. For these videos, I intend to go the back of the auditorium and shoot from the center of the room, leaving the camera alone to capture the whole stage (no zooming). I want to record direct to my camera. I think having some directivity would be beneficial to reject some of the room reverb, but I don't really know. But if my price ceiling is $200, what mic do you recommend?
For one of the performances, our school has a professional sound mix station. I might be bale to get access to this area. Is there a simple way to get the mix audio into my camera? I imagine handing a long cord to the audio tech and running it into my camera...is that a thing?

I've done that before, but I was in the balcony, in close proximity to the audio mixer, and I was using an XLR cable, which isn't susceptible to radio frequency interference like unbalanced minijack cables.

I've also plugged a wireless mic transmitter into the audio mixer's output, but the results really depend on the performance of you're wireless TX/RX kit.

You could also plug an audio recorder into the mixer, and sync that recording with your video in editing software.

Audio mixers generally have XLR, 1/4" phone (NOT RJ11), & RCA outputs. You might need a stereo line isolator box to bring the signal down to mic level.

With that said, it might be beneficial to have an alternate source of audio, as the sound guy might accidentally leave a mic muted, or leave the off-stage performs mics on, which will overlap with the on-stage performers.

An on-camera mic in the back of the auditorium won't yield very good results. Microphones are typically intended to be used in close proximity to their subject, so you'd be better off with something like a Zoom H1n audio recorder placed near the stage.

Get an inexpensive mic like a Takstar SGC-600 or Movo VXR10-PRO and use the camera audio as a scratch track to sync with audio from an external recorder.

Regarding video, the only demanding part is dealing with the changing lighting. Both cameras have excellent dynamic range, but I don't really know much about video. I do know the camera is going to need to make very large adjustments to exposure and I really don't want to be doing it manually. Any tips on which settings to use?

Most of your camera's dynamic range is thrown away in video mode, so you could try shooting with Prolost flat picture style settings to hold onto a little more DR, but noise will be more apparent.

Look to see if there's a Magic Lantern hack available for your camera, as it will give you exposure tools like false color, zebra stripes, and waveform scopes.

If you're not manning the camera the whole time, enable auto ISO, set the metering mode to evaluative, and dial in the necessary exposure compensation.

Your camera has a record time limit, so you'll have to restart the recording periodically.

Older Canon's used sRGB gamut, but wrote BT.601 in the metadata, so make sure you set your software to interpret it correctly.