Photography hey! It's not a cheap thing to get involved in. And now, the manufacturers are conspiring to get us to part with more of our hard earned cash.

The EOS 5D Mark II is an amazing product. The only thing that lets it down for filming is the audio capture. Sure it may be 44.1Khz, 16bit, and stereo when using an external microphone, but it still has auto gain control to even out the levels. I've written before about this and about why it's like that, as well as why I won't be expecting it to be changed anytime soon. So because of this, if you want to shoot video and get really high quality sound to match the performance of the visual side, you need to look at third party audio devices. 

For a while now, I've been using an Edirol R-09. It's a compact 24bit WAV/MP3 recorder. The sound quality is good and it takes up hardly any space in the bag. It also uses AA batteries and stores sound files to a memory card.  In short, it's a very good solution for capturing sound with your audio.

Recently though, I decided I wanted to get a bit more high-end. I'd like to be able to capture a 'fuller' soundstage with more tracks. So the other day I purchased a Zoom H4N. This thing is truly remarkable. While it is bigger than the Edirol, it packs in a very good stereo microphone, and the ability to do four track recording. If that wasn't enough, it can phantom power two XLR mics as well - yep there are two XLR mic inputs on the bottom of the unit. that's how you can get the 4channel recording - the internal stereo mic will do two channels and external mics plugged in can have two more. 

Like the Edirol, it too runs on AA batteries and stores audio clips to an SD card. The indlued foam windshield is OK, but I'm awaiting the delivery of a proper 'dead-cat' style wind beater from America. Once that's here, I'll get a little video up showing the Zoom with it's redhead so you can see it and hear how good it is. 

I've been testing it with a combination of  a cheap lavalier (tie-clip) mic and an XLR shotgun mic, and in both cases it works like a charm. 

I'll be doing more on this in the future, especially on a little trick I've developed to make syncing audio and video easier, but for now, if you're in the market for an audio recorder to make your movie clips sound much better, the Zoom H4N is highly recommended. 

Well, after the success of last week's quiz entry, it seems you came down to earth with a bump this week!

The question was:

"Which of the following flash functions is not available with wireless flash?" 

The correct answer being  "Second Curtain Sync flash" which 18% of entrants got right.

It is, in my experience, one issue with wireless flash  - you just can't do second curtain syn with the IR system. High speed sync is no problem, but second curtain sync is just not available. This means you're stuck with an OC-E3. And that only gives you about 60-80cm of movement away from the camera, so you're really going to struggle for any really good shots. That's the reason you never really see any fantastic shots taken with second curtain sync - there's always shadows in the wrong place!

If you do want to experiment with second curtain sync flash, then try bouncing the flash off a white wall or ceiling - the flash will have to work harder, but at least you'll get softer lighting and better looking results. Clearly outside, this isn't going to work, so it can also be useful to have a reflector to hand that you can bounce light from. 

Check out the top right hand corner later today for the next weekly quiz question.  Why not enter? what have you got to lose?! (We won't tell anyone if you get it wrong.....!)

It looks like it's been a tough year for Canon. Despite the results still showing profit, the general consensus is that they have been losing market share to the other big manufacturers. However, is this really the case?

Now, we know there a lies, damned lies and statistics, so take this with a pinch of salt, but if you look at the images uploaded on flickr and use their 'Camera Finder' tool, you'll see that 3 of the top 5 used cameras are Canons - the EOS 400D, EOS 450D and EOS 40D. Nikon have one showing in there (the D80) and it's currently in fourth place. The fifth entry, equal with the EOS 400D is the iPhone, which is not really surprising given how many have been sold. 

So what does that tell us? Well, Canon do seem to be doing quite well actually. There are more active users posting images to the biggest online sharing site than from any of the other manufacturers. Of course, it may also mean that Nikon users don't post their images on flickr....because they're ashamed they bought Nikon or because they know the picture quality isn't up to it! ;-) (Only kidding Nikon users reading this blog!) 

The really interesting part about the camera finder page though is the 'point and shoot' graph - 5 of the top 5 camera models used are Canons. That is quite astonishing actually as I never really though Canon had as much market as that at the compact camera level.

Of course, this could all mean nothing at all, but it's an interesting snapshot as it stands today. 

What do you think? Have you ever counted cameras while out to see what you see more of? Or am I a special kind of geek that does that? :-)