BMPCC4K Audio Recording

Glad that's working for you! One thing to consider for the kind of natural-sounds recording it seems you're aiming to do is binaural mics, which mount on your ears rather than the camera. The Ohrwurm microphone, manufactured in a one-person shop in Germany, reportedly worked very well on the original BMPCC which has notoriously lousy preamps. See https://blog.morphmagazine.co.uk/ohrwur ... bc170f9863. Unfortunately the website for Ohrwurm is currently under construction with a message saying it'll be back up sometime this month...we shall see. There's a (pretty hilarious) video review, with sound samples, at

The main risk with these is that you'll pick up the sounds of yourself working the camera.

Binaural mics can be a very portable way to get good-quality ambient sound; Sennheiser is selling a binaural mics for iPhones with excellent sound quality; I'm actually tempted to get a refurbished iPhone and one of these mics just as an ultraportable video solution for times when I don't want to lug around my real camera and all that equipment.

Dear Ray,

what you should understand that a microphone is like a lens on the camera body. And just as there are different lens for different situations, so there are different types of microphones and levels of consumer/prosumer/pro microphones. If you have a poor lens it wont help even if you put 65mm sensor plus three metabones adapters, the picture will still be poor. So investing in a good microphone is something you wont be sorry.

Since you are from Rode country I suggest you dont go lower than Ntg-3, we have broadcasd version and it is ok. Still not highest grade. And maybe what you need is not a directional microphone, they are really poor for recording ambience, so I suggest you try with rodes xy or other ambience solutions.

Videomicro is in the league of clipon smartphone lenses.

At first I was really against buying and filming with BM cameras, but now I can see that many complaints come from misunderstanding and the times where youtubers claim some things that are actually far from truth, even though it is not all perfect.

Please dont take this personally, but I really thought xlr on P4K is totally unusable bacuse of people on this forum claiming it, but when I saw Curtis Judd, who I remember from years when I learned Audition, that showed xlr used with prosumer microphones I checked what you are using. Videomicro is a big no for what you need.

And of course a good recorder is a must, absolute lowest for remote locations is H6, better option is Mixpre, but as cine cameras, draws alot of power. For documentary a good camera input with decent microphone can be a saver. A kind of B roll.

There is almost no way to get away with a microphone so small and record what you want or it would cost a hundret times more.

In your blog post, you wrote "I intend to record natural audio of subjects often much further away, sometimes significantly so, and therefore the microphone needs to be good enough to capture such sounds."

To me, that sounds like you need a parabolic reflector, depending on how far away "much further away" really is. There is a lot of good advice on this site https://www.creativefieldrecording.com/ including some discussion of parabolics.

The biggest challenge with good-quality sound when you're a one-person show is setting up and managing all the sound recording gear while simultaneously setting up and managing all the video gear. That's not so hard in a studio or other controlled situation, but in the field--especially if you're moving--it can be tricky. The classic setup for ambient stereo recording in the field is a mid-side pair, usually the Sennheiser MKH40 cardioid and the MKH30 figure 8, protected from wind in a Rycote blimp. All that will set you back a few thousand dollars and then if you add a quality field recorder like the Sound Devices MixPre 3 or 6 it'll set you back even more. But the real issue for a one-person crew is mobility and speed. You can hand-hold the blimp with the microphones inside, or you can mount it on a tripod while you're shooting video, but you only have two hands and so much attention. Sometimes a camera-mounted microphone is the only practical solution even if there are large compromises in sound quality. Matthew Heineman used a camera-mounted Schoeps shotgun mic (very expensive, but very good) for his award-winning documentary Cartel Land, and actually got very good sound with it; most of the ambient sound in that film was recorded with that mic; I think only the studio interviews used a different microphone.

Here is a link of a guy who I kind of trust when it comes to mid entry level sound recording and he made a video test of P4K audio capabilities:

He found out, that 3.5mm jack enables easy timecode input and mini XLR with proper cable adaptor, proper microphone and proper external battery for phantom power/external SSD should work quite well. That is kind of huge for the target that this camera is meant for; a budget option for those starting with filmmaking.

And I found a few sources more that put at least half decent microphones to mini XLR and got ok results.

I checked Rode, for on camera 3.5mm input you could try Stereo Videomic X, or cheaper Stereo Videomic Pro. But you should test before buying. Maybe you have a defective unit? Mini xlr solution will be too cumbersome for you I guess? So maybe try Zoom's H3-VR, it's a separate unit, but you get that B-format that you can sculpt in post.

I know, none of those is ideal for you, but I am happy for you that you have found something that you are happy to experiment with, so that is the most important factor here.

And I suppose you are using Resolve; Fairlight is a great DAW, still in early stages but really gives you a chance to dig deep and start sound designing and all that inside a whole solution from RAW to DCP or whatever.

So I wish you have fun working with sound! (: