Zoom H1 with DSLR?

[Victor Nguyen]

wait...magic lantern can't control agc on t3i? then why does it work on t2i?

[Evan Bourcier]

You can turn off AGC without magic lantern on a t3i.. you just go in the menu and change audio to manual then set your levels.

I made a video a little while ago comparing on camera audio, an Azden shotgun straight into the cam, and the same Azden shotgun with a $10 headphone amp in the middle, and I've had what I would consider completely usable results with the headphone amp in there and using manual levels.

Don't judge me, I'm no pro haha! it's also out of focus a lot :\

http://youtu.be/v1DEd2PFL6k

if you skip to 4:40 you can hear the shotgun with the amp, with no editing done, I think it's pretty clean.
I also just started using a friends h4n, and the quality is awesome, but it's kinda bulky.

[Zachary Grimshaw]

In that test did you turn off AGC in the camera? Or were the results that clean because you had the amp?

[Evan Bourcier]

Both. You run the amp and it boosts the signal into the camera, so you can turn off the ACG and run low manual levels, effectively bypassing most of the crappy internal preamp in the cam.