Quicky Wind Noise solutions?
 

The weatherman just threw me a curve. The wind is going to be up to 18mph on our outdoor shoot this weekend. I have an A-T835ST with the foam cover and a Mike's Muff on it. It will be up on a Shure 15-A mast. Experience has shown that I start getting noise at about 10mph on camera.

What have some of you had success with to use as a quick solution to augment my noise reduction? I was thinking maybe a wool sock? No time to get fake fur and sew it. Too little time and funds to try to get something like a 'dead cat.' Maybe a towel with rubber bands?

Thanks for your suggestions in advanced.

George,

I have heard about this trick but haven't done it personally. Take it for what it's worth.

I have been told that some news photogs will attach an extra mike to the tripod to pickup ONLY wind noise and no dialog. The boom mike picks up the wind and dialog. In post, you would take the tripod mike audio and revese the phase of it, then combine it with the boom mike. The noise should be the only 'common audio' between the two and should cancel out for the most part.

It's worth a try if you have a spare mike to work with.

regards,

=gb=

George,
A wool sock is good. Also, go to an OxFam outlet (or whatever you can find in your area) and pick up a used fake fur garment. You may be able to fit it up with staples and gaffer tape and sew it later.
Don't worry what your talent will say when you stick a big ugly hairy pink orange thing in their face. If they're for real they'll get used to it.

Greg, do the mics have to be identical for that to work?

Emre,

It wouldn't be a bad idea to use identical mikes to get the response curves as close as possible. We are dealing with basic algebra so the closer to 'identical' you can get, the better the cancellation by phase inversion.

=gb=

Thanks folks. Off to the store in 20 minutes to pickup my rental VX2100. Cannot do the inverse phasing as I do not have the audio equipment for it yet. It may be the terrycloth towel trick, as I have seen that once before. Not sure I can get to the store to get the fur. I have a band shoot tonight at 7:30.

The good news is the forecast has now dropped it to 16. ;)

PS - This is an all day Marching Band competition.

Follow-up:

It sounds like it went well. I was on the other camera, but when I got a chance to listen, we did not have any noise except the wind in the trees on the other side of the field. Oh, that and the crash when the stand blew over. Lots of duct tape prevented a repeat performance. Gusts must have made it to about 25 or just a little more. I had a dish towel over my Mike's Muff. ;)

I will know when I get to post, for sure. Too tired as we started taping cables down at 8:30 and got home at 10:30, 14 hours later. My eyes hurt ;)