Worth Reading?
+3 [3 votes]
Bizarrely resembling some sort of egg balancing on a brick teetering on your camcorder, the Holophone H4 SuperMINI is in fact an all-in-one 5.1 surround sound microphone, capable of bringing Dolby Pro Logic II encoding to the prosumer film-maker. The question is, though, is it any good? That’s why DV.com slapped one onto their JVC GY-HD250 and set to work testing it out.
Thankfully, for a microphone unit costing $2,495, it apparently works pretty well. According to reviewer Carl Mrozek, you need patience and some prior practise to get the best results:
“Getting clean and usable surround recordings in the field, particularly outdoors, is fraught with challenges, but with the SuperMINI it can now be done by a mini crew-one person, if necessary. With a bit of skill and under the right conditions, it enables the capture of rich three-dimensional recordings that provide unity of time and place, with high quality matching ambient audio” Carl Mrozek, DV.com
Although there are a couple of hiccups - the weight of the H4 changing the balance of the camera, for one thing - the size and durability of the SuperMINI, together with the ability to use external plug-in microphones (if the environment is suitable) seems to impress. Check out the full review to see exactly what DV.com decide.
In Review: Holophone H4 SuperMINI [DV.com]
Holo-cow!