[Cross posted at other forums... thought I'd get opinions here too.]
Hi all,
I am planning on taping a series of "life story" interviews with my grandmother for distribution to the family. These do not need to be broadcast quality, but I would like them to be "better than home movie" quality. Given the desired quality, I decided it's time to upgrade my old Hi8 camcorder to something much better. I am also hoping to use my new equipment to record activities (plays, field trips, etc.) from my daughter's second grade class in the upcoming school year and distribute them to the parents.
I haven't figured out a firm budget number yet, but I expect it to be between $2000-3000 for all my hardware. My camera decision has come down to the PDX10 or the GL2. That would leave me $700-1100 left for purchasing all of my audio equipment.
I had originally planned on running audio into the camera's mic plug, but I can easily envision situations where I would want more than two mics and I would not be able to run a mixer while doing camera work. (Nor do I have the skill to correctly do a live mix.) I eventually came around to the idea of using a separate audio recorder to record additional channels and mixing them in post. After hunting around on the web, I found the Marantz CDR300 (~$650) and the Fostex MR-8 (~$300). Price-wise, the Fostex is very appealing, but it includes features that I'm not really interested in. (On board mix downs, effects, etc.) Are there any other solutions that would work within my budget? Portablility and digital recording are very important. Four channels would be nice, as would phantom power. I have even considered purchasing a couple small Minidisc recorders and using them, but...?
Any input is appreciated.
Dave
I've noticed the JB3 is popular among users here, but I'm less interested in stealth recording than in being able to use a variety of mics and capturing clean audio.