Band Footage using Built-in Microphone
 

After being in a quiet coffee shop for a few hours, some guys started setting up for their band 'Grupo Lunes' about 20 feet away from me. (Figured I might have a good seat). 10 minutes later a guy walks up to me and says he's going to setup his drum kit right next to me and within an hour I'd have trouble concentrating on what I was doing. I wondered why they'd need such an enormous amount of space for a coffee shop gig? Nevertheless, it seemed like a good shooting opportunity for me, and they were interested in getting their performance on tape...

Camera: XH A1 on tripod, WD-H72 WA
Settings: gamma&color matrix=cine2, color gain=13, sharp=-3, black=middle
Post: Some sharping

http://www.io.com/~smg/xha1/GrupoLun...SaxFingers.mp4

The built in microphone sounds nice! Were the audio levels set to manual or auto for this recording?

Audio was set to auto and the signal level appeared to peak between -12 and -6 on the camera display. After the shoot, when first playing back the recording (on a good sound system) I was a little taken back at the good quality, and listened to the 1.5 hour performance again while dubbing a tape for the band.

The footage looked nice to me.....the audio is good too- thumbs up.

Wow--a full blown swing band in a coffee house. Was there any room for an audience? Stuff looks and sounds good. Available light, I guess?

Thanks! It was fun and I'm learning alot from this form. The following link is to a photo taken with the camera (while shooting) that shows what the lighting was like (sets of little spot lights on the ceiling -- no cans). Most of the audience was to the left of the picture and there weren't many more of them than band members. (A lot of people left when the band was setting up, but others came). I was next to the front counter.

http://www.io.com/~smg/xha1/GrupoLunes/IMG_0156.JPG

This reminds me of a bumper sticker that was popular in Austin a few years ago, "We're all here because we're not all there".

Its interesting how much noise there is in the still compared to how good the video looked.

questions
 

I assume you had no auxillary lighting?

What cafe was this? Are these guys regulars there (I live in Austin too) - they are good.

Did you have the CORING adjusted? Noise reduction on?

Thanks,
Lou

Good point. In looking over the stills I see that they are consistently noiser. A still for the same frame exported from my NLE timeline is cleaner. The following links are to a still taken during the shoot (from just before that first video clip) and the same frame exported from the timeline. (A link to the corresponding custom presets file is further down).

http://www.io.com/~smg/xha1/GrupoLunes/IMG_0158.JPG

http://www.io.com/~smg/xha1/GrupoLun...omTimeline.jpg

Oops, yes only the available lighting was used. To my knowledge that was the first time they played there. Here are links to the Coffee House and the Band websites.

http://www.dominicanjoe.com/
http://www.grupolunes.com/

[The band website seems to be off-line at the moment but I did see it up a few days ago. Let me know if you want the email address for the head of the band -- don't want to post it because of spamming.]

For the first clip the corresponding Custom Presets file is http://www.io.com/~smg/xha1/GrupoLunes/IMG_0158.TXT

(Also, I was shooting with 60i.)

I did try some of the noise reduction settings during the shoot but, with the exception of NR1, I didn't see much difference in the camera's LCD display. (One of my 'take-aways' from that shoot was to look at getting an external monitor -- seems critical). The following link is to a (10 sec?) m2t file from that shoot with NR1=Low. The other setting are vitually untouched from what I've posted.

http://www.io.com/~smg/xha1/GrupoLunes/KeyboardNR1.m2t

I would post more material but my (ancient) website is very limited. (Getting a new one is on my list). The following are a 15 sec. excerpt and another still from that shoot.

http://www.io.com/~smg/xha1/GrupoLun...esTrombone.mp4
http://www.io.com/~smg/xha1/GrupoLunes/IMG_0161.JPG
http://www.io.com/~smg/xha1/GrupoLunes/IMG_0161.TXT