On Fri, 2010-06-11 at 17:09 -0500, June Newman wrote:
> purpose and topic and I'll enjoy listening in. My fear is that I may =
> fall prey to the condition many of you appear to suffer, and get
> hooked. I guess I could do worse.
:-)
I too have learned more than I imagined I needed to learn from people in
this group, and am grateful beyond words for all the help I have been
given. One thing that I really like is that people here are hooked on
sound, not on equipment. If equipment discussions sometimes seem to
predominate, that is when they have a direct bearing on what you hear,
otherwise they are irrelevant, and I _really_ like that.
When you do decide on a better external microphone to use, please do
follow the standard advice to buy the best you can afford. Initially I
did not, and now have at least one microphone that is unlikely to ever
be used again.
Which is not to say that you cannot do interesting stuff with budget
equipment. Here is an example done with an inexpensive Rode Videomic
(sorry it is not birdsong, all my birdsong recordings to date are
muddled up in ambient recordings):
http://tinyurl.com/3568dmb
but if I had a bottomless wallet this mic would be replaced with a
Sennheiser K6/ME66 combination tomorrow, because it is well, better in a
way that you can actually hear (all this assuming that you want
something that is reasonably easy to carry around - otherwise Telinga
parabolic dishes seem to be the industry standard for directional bird
song recording).
Whatever you get, do also consider how to mount the microphone, to
reduce handling noise. Subsequent to making that recording (which has
significant handling noise) I found a neat pistol grip that converts
into a mini tripod. Otherwise, if possible, just use whatever fixed
mount you might have available. This is the kind of thing that really
does make a difference.
Richard
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