I'm looking for an inexpensive, $100 range, recorder that I can use to record in the field. I like to record natural sounds and combine them into collages. If it would interface to a T2i, so much the better.

Any suggestions are welcomed,
Thanks,
Burt

Nothing I can recommend in the $100 range.
Now if you were to up your budget to the $300 range or better things change dramatically.

Nothing at all at your price - you set the bar far too low.

Inexpensive recorders worth looking at are:-

Olympus LS-10
Olympus LS-11
Edirol R09HR
Zoom H4N
Sony PCM-D10

Nothing I'd want for $100. But you could probably get a used dat recorder like a da-7. but not with mics. I agree that things dont really get interesting until around the $300 mark.

Seems like most of the recorders John mentioned are in the $300 range. Are there others worth mentioning?

Thanks,
Burt

You may be able able to find a used H2 for around $100. The internal mics sound decent and have some spacing/front-back/quad options. If recording low SPL environmental sound, internal pre-amp noise may be an issue. The external mic input sucks altogether. If you have a good external mic & pre-amp the H2's line-in is an option.

You may get lucky and get a second hand Zoom H4(original) for about a 100 bucks. Check out the ones below also. All below 200 bucks.


Ikey Audio G3(
Ikey Audio M3
Tascam DR-07
Alesis ProTrack
Zoom H2
Alesis Palmtrack
Tascam DR-1
Teac VR-10
Tascam DR-08



Nicole

After reading thru all the posts it seems like the Zoom H4N is the most popular and probably the most suitable. I can pick one up for about $275 so I'll save the pennies and bite the bullet.

I'm not a professional and I don't have aspirations for rewards of any sort. This is my first venture into video. My output will be strictly for myself so absolute standards are not essential.

Thanks for all the input,
Burt

One thing to keep in mind if you want to send the output of the recorder into the T2i, many of these recorders (including the newer H4n) have only one output that serves as both headphone and line out.
The original H4 had two separate connectors for headphone and line out and would therefore be a lot easier to monitor when also sending the signal to a camera with no headphone jack of its own.
I'm not familiar with all the recorders that have been listed in this thread, but I know many of them only have one output jack. You might want to research for any that have two separate outputs.
Since you will also need some accessories like a furry windscreen, attenuator cable between the recorder and camera, a mount or a stand for the recorder, spare memory cards and batteries, etc., it would be great if you could find one that was less expensive than the H4n. Especially if you're doing this just for personal projects and with a camera that has a relatively short maximum clip length like the T2i.

Jay,
Thanks for that advisory. I didn't even think about output jacks. Just assumed everything would be there for whatever I wanted at the moment. However, now that you mention it, what about sync? How does that work? Is it something to worry about or just let everything roll? I doubt I'll ever need anything with dead-on sync longer then a very few minutes but it's something I should be aware of.

Also, I read alot about the perils of agc. Is this a curse or is there a cure?

Burt

After reading thru all the posts it seems like the Zoom H4N is the most popular and probably the most suitable. I can pick one up for about $275 so I'll save the pennies and bite the bullet.


This is definitely your best option and the H4N is much better than the earlier version.

To achieve sync between a dSLR and a separate audio recorder, you should obviously record audio on both devices. The method of doing that (mainly on the dSLR) varies according to your project, your equipment, how much effort you want to go to in the field, etc.
Some additional practices such as good slating habits at the beginning and end of each shot, as well as setting both devices to the same clock time, will help you keep organized after the fact.
Really, keeping organized is a bigger potential headache than actually achieving sync on your timeline, which is not too hard to do.
Back to the camera, there are several methods to record audio, each with benefits and limitations. With the T2i you can't avoid AGC but there are some methods that can prevent AGC from being a huge problem but that adds more expense.
You don't have to connect the output of your audio recorder to the camera, but that is the easiest way to get essentially the same audio on both devices. (As I said before, that can require additional steps in order to monitor your sound correctly depending on the recorder.) This can be very beneficial if you're using software like PluralEyes to achieve sync automatically. However, if you're trying to do very mobile shooting with a stabilizer, then having the two devices physically linked together can be a real problem.

You can also add a separate inexpensive mic to the camera to get better audio than is recorded with the built-in mic, but this is really just to give you a better signal to sync with, not as really useable audio.

Tell us more about how you envision shooting so we can narrow down the discussion of possible ways to do double-system sound.

At the moment, most of the sound recording that I envision is ambient sound, i.e., wind in the trees, crowd noise, water, cats, dogs, etc.

Knowing the way things go in real life, I know that once I get going with the camera and sound recorder, I'll be doing things that I can't presently imagine. Start off doing A but end up at Z.

From what I hear about the Canon DSLRs, recording decent sound is somewhat of a challenge. I'm trying to cover my bases but being realistic at the same time. My output will never get past the occasional posting to Vimeo or YouTube. (I'm old, cranky, tired and retired).

A very long time ago I was a musician/composer and worked with 4 track tape and synthesizers. A lot of the "music" that I wrote was made using tape, a razor blade and sound I made walking around using a Nagra. When I made these sound collages, I would "see" the sound. At that time portable video was black and white and weighed about 75 pounds (and cost a lot).

I still hear those sounds. Now, I can add vision to that sound. I guess that's what I'm trying to capture. So I'm trying to get a handle on the various ways of capturing sound and what problems I will encounter.

Burt

Sounds awesome! I'm from that era too, but was a senior in high school when I first used a black&white 1/2-inch reel-to-reel Sony video recorder (which could be easily clogged by fingerprint oil and tape oxide if you didn't thread it correctly!). Times have certainly changed!

I think you can work easily by keeping the audio recorder on a stand and simply slate with a handclap and audible comments at the start and end of any take or important new subject.
The H4n does a good job of keeping sync without much drift.
The minimal consideration with feeding audio into the camera is to get enough signal that you can listen to and more importantly see as a waveform on the timeline in order to double-check your sync in the middle of a long take (where checking the slate clap may be inconveniently far away on the editing timeline or may have been cut away completely when you start chopping segments down to smaller parts.
With ambient sound the requirement for critical sync is lower, but also the ability to recognize clues to achieve sync is also lower. You may not have many noticeable waveform peaks to hone in on with either device so you'll need those sync claps.
If you go to the trouble of mating and locking whole video and audio takes from the two devices (or rendering out as a new file with better audio) and then cutting down to smaller bits, you'll spend a lot of time and physical space on your timeline with long files to start with, but you won't get frustrated with trying to get sync just by listening to the wind for example. On the other hand, if it's just the wind and you're doing different layers of sound anyway, it's up to you where "sync" is from a creative standpoint. Distance from your subject may also play a role here, you may need to shift the audio to account for the delay of sound in relation to your images.
I think you easily have the experience to try it out and modify your process from there.

My T2i arrived yesterday. The sound is horrendous. Will an external recorder override the agc noise if plugged into the camera?

There are a number of threads regarding how to improve the sound recording of these AGC equipped dSLR's, both in this audio section and in the section specific to the T2i on this board.
I think it would improve the sound, simply because you're feeding it a much stronger signal, but I haven't personally done this yet. It should be an adequate improvement to provide you with sync comparison of the two audio tracks.
Since it's essential that you get an external recorder anyway, it will only be the cost of a simple mini-TRS to mini-TRS cable in order to at least test out the improvement. You'll need to keep the output volume from the recorder very low since it is substantially hotter than what the camera input is expecting.
The other alternative is to add an inexpensive mic to the camera, just to improve the sound enough to get sync but without having to tether the two devices or give up the headphone jack on your sound recorder.
There are threads regarding these mics too.

Hopefully the image is great! There are also lots of threads here about lenses.

No.

But using a separate recorder is not as bad as you would think. I just finished a project for a "challenge" using the 7D and a ZoomH2. I do the following (and cut it all out in editing):

I announce to the whole crew "Sound on (my sound guy confirms the H2 is recording - or I've started it myself if no sound guy is present), camera "rolling", ...and ACTION!"

I also had a Rode SVM on the 7D just to provide better audio for synch and as a backup in case the H2 audio failed (it didn't).

I edit the H2 audio using the free program Audacity, trimming just before the word ACTION and boosting audio levels there if necessary, then export it as a WAV file. I do this for each scene or "take" I want to use.

In the NLE (I still use Pinnacle Studio 12.1) I put the WAV file on the separate audio track and drag it until the waveform peaks on the word ACTION are aligned. When I can hear it with the least "echo" then I can mute the camera's audio and I have synch that works. At that point I can trim the clip to the "IN" point I want and trim at the "OUT" point.

When I do this I'm using the ZoomH2 as if it were an external mic. I've found that for ambient sound and dialog it's built in mics do an incredibly clear job if you put it in close like you should any mic. Mine is usually stand mounted and placed as close to the talent as I can get it and just out of view of the camera.

Should work the same way for you with the T2i. As a matter of fact I'm counting on that.

I just picked up a T2i as something lighter to cart around and as backup for the 7D.

I spent the day recording hours of video. In the end, the ambient sound was...ok. I don't know what I did yesterday to create such horrible sounds but today it was..ok.

I will still get an external mic to start with and then a recorder. As all of this is new to me. I discovered that I can't see the LCD very well (I have weird vision). On top of that I found the kit lens to work much better then my 28-135 IS, but that's just the way I ended up shooting today. I would probably want a 10mm but that's way out of budget so a mic will be next.

Thanks,
Burt

Hey Burt,

Just a few audio tips I would provide for those of us DSLR users on the cheap:

1) if you are going to use on board audio or mic plugged in to the camera, there are ways to remove a good portion of the hiss in post. Audacity has noise removal, and there is a pretty good tutorial at this link: YouTube - remove unwanted noise from audio / video Audacity Sony Vegas (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nwwje8jUTcE) otherwise you can use the track eq in your NLE to remove certain frequencies if the audacity trick removes too much noise. I have used both methods, and they both work quite well.

2) if you buy an audio recorder, and want to plug the line in to the camera, you can trick the auto gain by plugging a mic in to one side, and download some white noise to an ipod, and plug that in to the other side. Then in post, just remove the channel that had the white noise, and you have yourself some pretty clean audio.

Hope this helps!

EDIT: I found an incredibly cheap workaround for suggestion #2. Not sure if you have an external recorder or not, but this link shows a great way to eliminate the hiss without any external recorder, just a splitter and an ipod. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91xw_NX0Qm8 I'm going to Radio Shack tonight to hook this up. Just thought I'd let you know.

Your $100 dollar option arrived this week... the new Zoom H1. No XLR inputs, though...

http://www.samsontech.com/products/productpage.cfm?prodID=2053

Thanks for the heads up on the h1.

Thats exactly what im looking for to go with my 550d.

Check out the literature too, its amazing just how much of an impact video on Dslrs has made. They even include it as a use in the sales blurb.

I can live without the XLR for that price.

James

Its not so different from other suggestions, but my new workflow is

----
Cameraman yells Cameras rolling!
(sound person yells) "Audio track XX!" and claps a clapper (or hands) off camera. It gets recorded in the sound recorder AND the on-camera audio.
-----

Even if i have an AD logging takes, i dont need them to note down the audio sync if its on the audio track, and the sound person is reading right off the recorder, so its never wrong... even if they did a false start or something and got file numbers off from where they were.

If you aren't using pluralize, it makes post so easy. Rough together the takes you like using the camera audio, then when you go to edit, play the video and within a few seconds it tells you exactly what audio file to grab. Mark in points on the clap on the video and audio and you have sync.

I'm looking forward to dualeyes, but honestly, its not the sync that was the problem with me, it was the file management. As long as I can put my hands directly on the audio track for a take, i'm good.

7 more days until my dr680 arrives! I'm stoked!