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My biggest grievance is that born and bred photographers often fail to recognise that sound is a very similar beast to photography; as photography works in the limitations of the visual light spectrum, sound operates within the audible frequency range. We shouldn't regard one as more important than the other. I have heard it said many times that “a good audio track makes or breaks a film”. This is usually the sentiment of filmmakers or soundmen, not photographers starting to branch out to film, but I can’t stress it enough. Technology moves at a phenomenal rate now, and it would be counter productive to review every bit of kit that comes out just for the sake of it. However, now and then something comes along (like the 5D MK II) that not only offers people what they need, but also opens up a whole new learning experience. The Zoom H4n is categorised as a field audio recorder but is capable of much, much more, in fact, way too much for the purpose of this article. It’s got built-in XY axes microphones, adjustable from 90 degrees to 120. It’s capable of the basic effects used by most sound engineers during mixing, such as limiters, compressors and lo-cut filters. It can be used as an audio digital transformer interface (ADT) with your computer, meaning you could used it as a pre-amp direct into
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your sound editing software. It has a tuner and a metronome built in with all sorts of guitar effects like reverb distortions, phaser and flangers, a multi track recording mode and two XLR / jack inputs with phantom power. But let’s get back to the point. If you’re a photographer most of that means nothing and your idea of recording an audio track consists of pressing the big red button on the front and just accepting that that’s it. Fortunately this approach with the H4n can actually produce stunningly good results. Lets go back to school for a minute and look at a couple of the fundamental basics of sound. Don’t worry, you will still only need to press the big red button at the end of this and get away with it. But just think what you could produce if you looked at your sound with as much criticism as you would give a final edit for an exhibition. One big problem with recording a good stereo image is the necessity to record with two tracks, so two microphones are needed. You can equate it to the difference between a telescope and a pair of binoculars. Through the telescope you only have the one point of reference to the position of let’s say, a tree in a field, and therefore are not able to judge its position any more than the fact that you know roughly how big a tree is. Through the binoculars your eyes are able to look at the tree from two perspectives. This is called