Thursday, 20 June 2013

Shure's on-camera video shotgun microphones: Meet the VP83 and VP83F "LensHoppers mics"

At NAB this year Shure announced two new on camera mics. These mics are direct competition to the very popular Rode ProVideo Mic and the equally popular Sennheiser MKE400 on-camera shotgun mic.






Shure's throwing their hat in the ring in a big way with these two great little mics. Both are very light, feel well built and sound great with good off-axis rejection of surrounding noise. After recently testing both of these mics I was quite impressed with them and feel they will offer a nice alternative to the shooter who is looking for a good camera mic at reasonable price point. These mics are directly targeted at the DSLR shooter looking to get better audio with a simple on-camera solution.

The main difference between the two mics is that the VP83F mic comes with a built in micro SD card flash recorder using WAV codec the VP83 still uses the camera to record its audio.

 


Both mics included the following Specs:

-Electret Condenser

-Supercardoid pickup pattern.

-Frequency Response is 50Hz to kHz

-Have a Low Frequency Cut

-Rycote shock mount

The VP83 has a battery life of 125 hours using one AA battery.

The VP83F has a battery of life of 10 hours using two AA batteries.

The VP83F also contains a 3.5mm headphone output jack and a 3.5mm  mic input jack.    

                     
                    
                    



After using both of these mics the off axis rejection is what really won me over. Having a built-in recorder on the VP83F will appeal to many DSLR shooters looking to by-pass the audio in their DSLR and achieve a higher quality recording.

Both units are competitively priced:

Shure VP83: $230.00 U.S. List

Shure VP83F: $350.00 U.S. List

They will be available later this summer.

Here is a video from Shure giving a in-depth tutorial of these two microphones:

  

No comments:

Post a Comment