Parabolic Microphone Suspension

[Conrad Obregon]

Good Suggestion. Now I'll have to figure out the hardware.

[Greg Miller]

This might be overly simplistic, but I can picture a piece of aluminum U channel (for the sake of stiffness) mounted from the tripod screw forward (below the camera), then the mic mounted upside down from the front end of the channel. Worst case it might involve a little bit of TIG welding. A rig like that would put the mic slightly below the tripod mounting plate. You'd just need to figure out a shock mount that kept the mic up high enough so it wasn't at risk of running into the tripod legs.

If I had a detailed assembly drawing of the dish and mounting details, I could probably be more specific. As it is I'm just working from imagination.

[Greg Miller]

Originally Posted by Conrad Obregon

I'm surprised that no one else seems to have experience with a parabolic mic. The sound field is much deeper than with shotgun.

Theory says that the frequency response of a parabolic mic is not flat. Gain decreases as frequency decreases, and there's a low cutoff frequency related to the size of the dish. (The same is true of RF behavior of parabolic antennas, which is why today's 12GHz satellite dishes are smaller than the 4GHz dishes 30 yrs ago.) To get frequency response low enough to pick up natural sounding male voice, you'd need much bigger than a 9" dish. If you want to film someone 500 ft. away, you hang a lav, either wireless or with a pocket recorder.

BTW there has been some past discussion about parabolic mics, including some very interesting links to huge WWI listening devices. Search the forum and you'll find some of that info, if you're interested.