Hi all,

Could someone confirm whether you NEED to use a hard drive recorder type device to record audio when using the 5D mkII or does it have any kind of input for an external mic? I thought the hard drive was the only way forward but have seen quite a few pictures of a 5D with a mic on top and no hard drive unit in sight.

Camera has a mic on board, and a miniplug for mic input.

With firmware 2.04 and up, you have the ability to adjust input levels. However, in order to get best sound in camera, you should probably be running a preamp into the camera. The Juiced Link XLR adapaters have preamps that seen to work decently.

There is a hack called Magic Lantern that gives you more control over sound, but that is another story.

chris, thanks for that. I have read about this magic lantern but wasnt sure what it was...

ok so thats good news, in theory you should be able to get audio thats just as good as my my FX1/Sennheisser ME66 combo as long as i run it through the juiced box...

I have been filming with the 5DII for about a year now and have only, on occasion, used the audio from the camera, as my main audio.
I mostly use the audio from the camera only as a reference audio, for post to sync (with Pluraleyes) with my source audio (Zoom H4N), attached to the top of the camera, cold shoe, with other mics (lavs, boom pole, etc.).
I know that you can use 3rd party items like JuiceLink, etc. to give you better audio from the camera but I like the audio I get from the Zoom.
I am also big on the saying "2 is 1 and 1 is NONE" (backup backup backup). Better to have two audio sources to "pull" from than just one. Just my 2 cents.

totally agree with the 2 audio sources point. The XLR box I have has 2 inputs so I could use a shotgun into one and a lav into the other, but of course they both go into the same camera and if that fails, my one becomes none as you say!

I use a dual-setup with a Tascam. I set the Tascam's headphone out line to about a 3 on the volume and run this into the 5DII. If you disable the AGC on the 5D and set an appropriate level, the in-camera audio is generally clean enough for most quick and dirty uses like an interview for the web. If I need to bump the quality, I can easily sync the clean track from the Tascam in Final Cut since I have an identical reference track. It works well. I monitor with headphones through the line out of the Tascam.

I wouldn't really suggest using a passive XLR adapter as mic levels seem to be too for the low-quality preamps in the 5D to work with well.

I thought the hard drive was the only way forward but have seen quite a few pictures of a 5D with a mic on top and no hard drive unit in sight.

I assume when you refer to a "hard drive" recorder we are talking about a SSD device..? If so, yes, I always use one when audio is crucial. I also use a small shotgun mic (permanently on my rig) and a lavalier, both straight into the camera. Although the camera has a hi-pass filter that I'm not too fond of, the Lav and the shotgun yield fairly good results. But when audio is really important, I go with a dual system SSD setup -- those are the ones I'm using: Sony PCM-D50 Professional Portable Stereo Digital PCM-D50 - B&H (http://tinyurl.com/2ejbmhh) and Sony PCM-D1 2-Channel Portable Flash Memory Audio PCM-D1 - B&H (http://tinyurl.com/26lnb43)

-- peer