Live Performance Video

[stratmansblues]

I play as a solo acoustic act and sometimes in a duo. I am wanting to get into recording videos of my live performances. I have an iphone 5s that seems to have a great video recorder on it, but I am afraid of setting it up where someone could possibly steal it. Does anyone have any recommendation on a camera setup that I could set up on a tripod of some sort and leave unattended? I would like to get maybe a set of footage within a night. I have been looking around and it seems like most cameras have crappy mics and even worse battery life. Thanks in advance.

[Fran Guidry]

Camera technology is racing to fill every possible niche which makes for a nice range of options but a complex research process.

Zoom and Sony are duking it out in the "music camera" marketplace, I think the Olympus contender has already been shelved but is available at a bargain price from some resellers. Zoom has the Q2HD, MS mic, no audio input and the Q4 with wider angle lens, XY mics, mic and line input.

The Q4 also has an articulated viewscreen that can help with framing. You can get around the battery life issue with a USB power adapter. You can use the built in mics or feed audio from your PA system. What you can't do is get good video without plenty of light. But then this is true across the board, low light performance runs up the cost of any video shooter.

I don't have any experience with the Sony music camera. I've used a GoPro a bit for music recording and the audio in all my experiments with them has been suckerific.

As far as your concern about theft, I would think most decent cameras are approximately as attractive to thieves as an iPhone, and there are mounting systems for the iPhone that would secure it to a tripod.

Fran

[slewis]

If the venue suits it, you can position your iPhone in an appropriate spot and then after you get the recorder going, hide or cover it (except for the front!) with a chair, some guitar cases, maybe a three-sided box that let's it still see you or something like that. I've had Thames question/issue and done something like this a time or two with some success. Having a friend near it can help too, of course...