Cheap DSLR Audio – The Azden WLX-PRO

Opening the box for this thing was like swirling in a Hot Tub Time Machine. I was directly taken back to Radio Shack of the 1990’s. Plastic, large sliding buttons and a FM antenna.


So why bother with this $130 wireless system? Most people know they need a Sennheiser EW100 as at least a baseline wireless system. But now in 2011, many people are buying DSLR cameras for video and spending less than $300 for excellent video cameras that have terrrible audio. Most first inclinations are to add a completely useless shotgun to the top of the camera.
Even if this system isn’t the greatest, it’s still 100x more useful than tiny shotgun 7 feet away from your talent.

So how does it fare? For the price, it is certainly usable for web work. The line output is fairly low, but most of these DSLRs have AGC so it’s probably not going to matter. It captures a very compressed and bass-y version of the human voice, but for no budget run and gun style web videos I could see it being perfectly adequate. No, its not going to work over long distances. No, its not going to work with any other interference in the area, but it is going to work better than the built in mic on your dslr and it will work better than a silly shotgun sitting on top of the camera.

Nikon D7000 Video Mode – Mini Review

Spent a half hour with a D7000 and here’s my brief conclusions

Likes:
Solid Construction, well laid out menus
Shutter and ISO control while shooting
Dual SD slots

Dislikes:
No aperture changing while in Live View. If using a electronic lens, you must stop recording, exit liveview and change aperture.

Conclusion
Without going into the video quality (which matches Canon at 1080p – moire and all) the inability to change aperture while in liveview is a deal killer unless you plan to only use manual lenses. What was Nikon thinking?