dynamat on camera
 

This might be a crazy idea but let me know if you think this would work.

I was thinking about wrapping parts of my camera with dynamat which is a sound deadening material used in car audio. The reason is to reduce the motor noise so that I can get better sound with my on camera shotgun (rode vm). My camera is a Sony HC-1 which has a touch screen and not too many buttons on the outside. Do you think this would be effective? Has anyone tried something like this? If I were to do it, which part of the camera is most of the noise coming out of?

I remember seeing a demo at best buy where they had two bells, one wrapped in dynamat. They both ding when you press them but the one with dynamat doesn't resonate. It seems like this would be effective for one time noises, how do you think it'd react to the constant hum of the camera motor?

Isn't dynamat an asphalt-based product? I used something like that in my Jeep. I wouldn't put it anywhere near a camera. The best thing is to move the mic farther away.

Famous last words.

I would say...um....no. Just move the mic.

Bryon<><

And yes, it does sound crazy:-)

You're describing what film camera operators called a "blimp" back in the days when movie cameras were noisier than they are today. But the bottom line is that unless you are shooting very very close to the action, camera noise is the least of your worries when it comes to getting decent sound. Even very expensive shotgun and hypercardioid mics need to be within a few feet of the sound source to get really high quaility results. So spending time and effort to further sound deaden your camera is going to take you from lousy sound including a little camera whine to lousy sound without the camera noise. But most of what you think of as camera noise is probably camera OPERATOR noise and unless you blimp him with the dynamat it's not going to do much anyway. Focus instead on getting the mic off the camera and close to the action.