Letus Extreme Mic picking up motor
 

I have the A1 with the Letus Extreme and have an issue with my boom mic. I am using a Rode Shock mount mounted on the hot shoe. Even with the shock mount I am still hearing a low hum of the Extreme in my audio... Any tips or suggestions on avoiding this?

Thanks in advance...

The camera body is the single worst place to put a microphone.

Move the mic off the camera and you'll be fine.

Truer words were never spoken.

I appreciate that feedback however for run and gun situations and a single camera operator without a boom operator... What can I do?

Doug, I hate to be the one to say it, but the *best* solution is to hire a boom operator, *especially* for run and gun situations.

Hey Doug,

I do a great deal of run & gun, understand that at times it's physically or economically impossible to have a boom op, but truth is, you have few options in these types of situations. You can either forgo nat sound and do VO later, you can use a wireless, you can get lots of tone and take a swing at reducing the hum in your favorite audio post program, or perhaps you can get a cheap mixer with a low cut filter and run your mic through that and into the camera from there - you'd need to fashion a strap on the mixer case so you could wear it, but it might help.

Stu

Stu-

Thanks for your tips... Obviously in a pro (paid) situation I'm going to get the mic optimally placed... But I was really curious if a situation like taking my dog to the park and I want to tape her chasing a ball... I'm not going to go to extreme lengths to get good audio but just run and gun basic sketchy situation...

Thanks Stu...

In a run-and-gun situation you probably wouldn't be using the Letus, would you? I'd take it off for those times.

It's also a good idea to have a wireless lav. Even a cheap one is going to give you better sound in an interview situation than a mic on the camera.

I know... no one here gets you. You want to shoot with the adapter for fun. No one understands. Here's what I'd do. When you're done cutting your footage together, just run the audio through a low cut filter in whatever post system you have. Your mic might even have a low cut setting on it. Double check. Some of them do to cut out wind noise and cars and such.

i also would love to have a better solution for camera noise. i do use an off-camera mic, but sometimes need to fill in with the on-camera mic when sounds overload on off-camera mic from unpredictable sources, or levels in spots are better with the on-camera mic. But EQing to get rid of the hum makes it hard to match the mics...
Is there no system of isolating the mic that renders the hum managable? I've experimented with shock mounts and foam, but am unsatisfied with the results so far...
any ingenious engineers out there with suggestions?

You could try record some motor noise only, use it to build a noise profile in your favorite audio editing program, and apply noise reduction to the audio in post.

The Letus site reads "Virtually silent vibration system that will not interfere with microphones" Perhaps you have a defective model?.

Consider the pick-up pattern of your mic. You need to be sure that the mic is positioned to place the Letus in a minimum portion of the pattern.

Or just put a wireless mic on the dog and let audio AGC take care of the levels.