What's up?

[Chris Harding]

Hi Lynne

That's an awful lot to ask for the price you pay for a Hero! DSLR's like the Canon 5DII which cost over $3K for just the body also have terrible preamps on the audio channels and despite the price they don't apologise.

GoPro make awesome little cameras at a very small price and excellent value for money...to expect XLR audio quality for that cost is a little much surely?? As already said, if you don't like the audio then use a DVR .... most DSLR users who spend money in bucket-loads on their video gear STILL will go out and buy voice recorders rather than use the cameras audio channel.

Chris

[Dean Sensui]

Pretty tough to protect a camera from deep immersion and still maintain good audio. It's generally an either-or choice due to the thick-walled housings necessary to provide a watertight space under pressure.

Getting good audio is a whole art in itself, requiring well-placed mics which can cost more than a GoPro. In my situation I just want audio that's decent enough to enable decent sync in post production. The talent is already wearing wireless mics and that's the production audio.

I did come up with a solution for the GoPro that works OK as far as reference audio is concerned.

I used a skeletal housing and covered the big ports in the side packing tape, sealed with gaskets made of 3M's VHB tape. The result is a housing with very thin sidewalls that are waterproof.

It's completely splash proof. Can't immerse it. But the thin sidewalls now allow sound to pass through relatively freely.

[Evan Donn]

Originally Posted by Lynne Whelden

When you start to look at extreme sports this way, a perceptive (some would say innovative) filmmaker would have to conclude, "Gee, maybe sound is important to record under these extreme conditions. Maybe we've been missing out on something by sticking the mic out of the way, behind plastic walls, with low sensitivity and cheap preamps and counting on rock music to cover over everything."

I actually agree that there's plenty of missed potential there - I just don't feel like it has much to do with the onboard preamps, and I disagree that anyone would take Sony to task for using low quality preamps on the camera. If you want to get some really unique, innovative, and also clean, high-quality audio in an extreme sports situation you're going to need more and better equipment than you'll ever find built into a helmet cam, regardless of the manufacturer.