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.