Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Professional Quality Wedding Ceremony Audio Recording for $125


If you're not quite ready to invest the $600 needed to get a quality wireless lavalier system, consider a budget alternative that gets great sound, but will not empty your wallet.

Griffin Hammond (known from Indy Mogul on Youtube) is a professional videographer whose freelance work is about 25% weddings.  He captures professional quality audio of wedding ceremonies by placing the recorder with a lavalier attached into the groom's pocket.  This allows clean, distortion free audio capture of all the wedding vows.

He uses the older Tascam DR-08 that is almost identical in size and weight to the newer DR-05 model.



The Tascam DR-05 handheld audio recorder is only $100 on Amazon and B&H Photo.

The omnidirectional Azden EX-503 lavalier mic is just $23 at Amazon or B&H Photo.

I've used this Azden mic for almost all of my video interviews and it records clear, crisp audio for interviews and promo videos. The only time I couldn't use it was during a education demonstrations where I needed to monitor that the audio was in fact being recorded. Previously I would connect the lavalier mic to a Zoom H4n recorder and place the recorder on the lap of the person talking (or in their back pocket if they were standing).

The zoom is bulky and it was obvious that some the interview subjects were uncomfortable having the recorder bulging out of their pocket.

For controlled environments and indoor interviews, this combination is a great way to get solid audio quality for less than $200.

Without batteries, the DR-05 audio recorder weighs just 4 ounces.  With two AA's it weighs 6 ounces.  The Zoom H4n does not fit as well in a pocket and is a heavy 12 ounces with batteries installed.