Canon 5d mark II audio with Zoom H4N

With 5D mark II man­ual audio con­trol, I’ve been try­ing to con­fig­ure out ways to record bet­ter sounds. Canon 5D Mark II has a 1/8th inch stereo input which allow to use exter­nal micro­phones such as Rode ViodeoMic.

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Rode VideoMic

Like

  • small
  • doesn’t require exter­nal power source (with 9v bat­tery, gets 100 hours of power)
  • switch­able high-pass fil­ter (works fairly well)

Dis­like

  • build qual­ity (it’s made of plas­tic and fragile)

Later, I returned the Rode VideoMic and bought pop­u­lar Zoom H4N by Samson.

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pop­u­lar Zoom H4N by Samson.

Excel­lent audio qual­ity and 4 chan­nel record­ing allow me so much flex­i­bil­ity (adding lav mic etc).  I am going with dual sys­tem which means I will have to record sounds sep­a­rately and edit them in Final cut.  If dual sys­tem is has­sle, try this:

I just found a spe­cial cable with 25 dB atten­u­a­tion from Mark­ertek allow me to con­nect Zoom H4N line out to 5D Mark II stereo mic level input.

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Zoom H4N with 5D Mark II

Set cam­era vol­ume around 30% (with man­ual vol­ume con­trol, you can do this) and always use wind screen.  I’ve been test­ing audio (ambi­ent) qual­ity with it and it’s been great so far.  I also have stereo Y-cable so that I can mon­i­tor sound at the same time.

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Leave a Comment

7 Comments so far

  • Suggestions for External Microphone for DSLR Bodies w/Video? says:
    July 20, 2010 at 11:31 am -

    […] You can use spe­cial cable (so that you don’t have to mix in post). I have some pic­tures on my blog Canon 5d mark ii with Zoom H4N | Soobum Im Pho­tog­ra­phy I also love olym­pus DS40 with lav mic It’s 44.1 khz so you will have to con­vert it but it’s very […]

  • Jeff Rhode says:
    August 19, 2010 at 6:42 am -

    Hi Soobum. I have a Com­pact solu­tion for visual jour­nal­ists like your­self. It allows an audio recorder to be mounted along with a shot­gun mic and wire­less receiver on the DSLR cam­era. All is synced in post with the cam­era using Plural Eyes. The whole set up weighs less than a Canon speed­light and and 3 acces­sories with shoes can be mounted. Please check it out at www.thej-rod.com. It is called The J-Cube and can be pur­chased on the site, or at B&H Photo or Amazon.

  • Soobum Im says:
    August 19, 2010 at 8:22 am -

    I heard good things about the J-cube. I will def­i­nitely try sometime.

  • Soobum Im says:
    October 16, 2011 at 11:51 pm -

    can you record to your zoom h4n? check your con­nec­tion (line / camera).

  • mario says:
    October 17, 2011 at 4:03 pm -

    Yes I can record to my h4n sep­a­rately and I have checked the line/camera con­nec­tion. Per­haps I’ve got a faulty cable.

  • Roberta says:
    March 12, 2012 at 10:30 am -

    fea­si­bil­ity of using the 7D with the same benefit?

  • Soobum Im says:
    March 12, 2012 at 4:52 pm -

    I don’t think this would work for 7D since you can’t dis­ble AGC.







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