Abel Cine Tech offers up a great look at audio gear to go with your DSLR:

One thing is for sure, if you're shooting with the new crop of HDSLR cameras—Canon 5D Mark II,Canon 7D or the Panasonic Lumix GH1—you’ll need to put some serious thought into your audio workflow. While each of these cameras is capable of producing remarkable images with their large sensors and interchangeable lens systems, they are all pretty awful in the audio department.

Why?

Well, each camera does have built in audio capabilities, including a built in mic and a jack to plug in external microphones, but none of them give the user any real manual control over what’s being recorded. There are no meters, no trim knobs and no XLR inputs to use professional shotgun and lavalier microphones. Most importantly, all of the cameras use Automatic Gain Control (AGC) when recording, and it can’t be disabled. This is the real monkey in the wrench.

AGC works on the equality system. If Joe is talking to camera and suddenly an itty-bitty cricket makes a loud sound in the background, the AGC will kick in. It will increase the mic’s gain and try to make the cricket as loud as Joe. As you can imagine, the results can be disastrous. The audio levels will be all over the place, and unwanted noise can be introduced into the recording. It’s the equivalent of an audio roller coaster ride. Not good.

So, in order to combat these inherent HDSLR audio issues there are a number of current solutions that can be used to ensure that you’re getting the best audio on your HDSLR projects.

For the rest of this post, visit Abel Cine here.