Splash

Location
Melbourne Docklands
Equipment
Zoom F4
Sennheiser MKH 60
Tripod Mount

For some time now I have been planning a new way of mounting my equipment to make it easier for hands free operation. On a few occasions lately I have needed to use both of my hands when recording and the boom pole set-up has not been very practical. In port Melbourne when I was recording the football sounds I had to strap the boom pole to one of the fence poles pointing in the right direction. This did work alright but a solution like this means I am limited to where I can strap the boom pole to some kind of support.

The main issue is that the screw thread size for standard microphone accessories is different to that of camera screw thread. After some hunting around though I found an adapter that converts between the two thread sizes. This will allow me to mount any microphone clip onto any standard camera stand. My new set-up now allows me to attach the windshield system onto a camera tripod.

Today I got to test out the new tripod set-up. I am using a standard camera tripod with an adaptor that allows me to attach the Rode shock mount. I haven’t yet built a proper mounting system for it so the H4 itself is just strapped to the tripod with Velcro, but ti works ok for the moment. I needed to record some water splashing sounds, so considering I live about 50 meters from the water I took a bucket and rope and headed down to the docks.

The rope was originally to attach to the bucket so I could throw it in the water and pull it out when it filled. It was so windy today that the rope also ended up doubling as an anchor for the tripod. The set-up is actually pretty stable even with the top heavy mic attached, but the wind was just too much for it to stand up, so I attached one end to the tripod, secured it to one of the docks mooring points and then attached the other end to the bucket. I am sure everyone down there thought I was a total nutter as I spent 20 minute hauling buckets of water out of the bay and tossing them across the dock. The cool thing was I didn’t waste a drop of water because it all just ran back into the bay. The wind however was determined to defeat me and the material I recorded was just too contaminated with wind. I guess I’ll be coming back again.