Gadgetory

hi and welcome back to pocket FileMaker this week we're looking at how to record good quality sound with our smart phone films now it's not quite as hard as what you may think but there are a few challenges you need to keep in mind now smartphones are being fantastic they're really really portable we've looked at a couple of different ways that we can get great quality pictures out of these so far however why do they let us down when it comes to sound the reason simple it's the on-board microphone now even for filming these webisodes I'm recording a sound that's going to this this particular clip right now from a lapel microphone that's pinned to the top of my shirt I'm going to get Trent our cameraman just to unplug that microphone input and you'll see what this sounds like now when I'm recording the sound direct from the camera microphone okay now this camera is about a meter and a half away from me and you'll be able to hear a lot of destruction in the sound room echo you can hear the air conditioner in the background all because the microphone is that much further away from me it plugs it back in however nice good crisp quality sound because the microphone is right near the sound source okay now one way to get great quality sound with your film is to actually put a sound recording device very close to the action that means taking the sound away from your camera now device like this is called a zoom digital audio recorder is fantastic okay now these come in a number of different models but you know for a couple of hundred dollars you can have a pro quality audio recorder however that's only good if you're going to edit your film because you're going to need to find a way to marry the pictures from your smart phone to the sound from this device to be frame accurate if you're after a really inexpensive way to get better quality sound from a smartphone happily one of these are endless on ebay fantastic little microphone just plugs into a standard three-and-a-half millimeter mini jack is going to improve the audio over and above the onboard microphone on most smartphones and the great thing is you can angle it into a number of different directions to your sound source that's going to make it nice and clear would you believe you can actually get better quality audio from your pocket camera by adding a lens attachment to it I'm going to show you how you may recall an webisode one where we looked at lens attachments for smartphones and I showed this little one which was a wide-angle lens attachment its optical glass it's metal it's very good quality now my iPhone here if I just snap this onto the front of my iPhone what it does is it opens up the angle of view so even now in this picture here you can see without the lens how far away I have to hold the camera to get myself into shop there whereas if I put this lens on the front there I can drag it a lot closer to me and still get the same sort of framing now what that means is I'm closer to my microphone so I'm doubling my audio quality here's a little example out in the field to show you how that works okay quick experient I'm outside I'm standing against the brick wall the cameras held that by my arm here so it's probably about half a meter away from my face we can hear my voice okay you can also hear Federative background stuff coming in too now if I put this lens attachment onto the iPhone I'll be able to bring the microphone and the camera bit closer to me so here we go probably about 20 centimeters away from me now and whilst you can still hear some reflective noise in the background my voice should be a lot sharper and a lot clearer so there you go shows you how a lens can help you get better quality audio - if you want my absolute must-have audio accessory for pocket cameras got to be one of these Belkin produce this it's a mini boom microphone these things are fantastic because it's got two sound modes on it it's got switchable fields from narrow to wide which opens up a whole scope of audio recording possibilities again it just plugs into the stereo headphone jack there straight away professional quality sound it doesn't get any easier than that absolutely perfect increase or rather film you've got to check out this week is called space balloon you will not believe it okay this family over in America decided as an experiment to send their iPhone up in a space via a helium balloon it recorded pictures came back to earth it's absolutely amazing gotta check it out alright that's about it for me next time we catch up we're gonna look at moving pictures so I'm going to show you all sorts of crazy things like table dollies steadicam devices for pocket cameras you won't believe what you see see you then bye