SONY HX1 - Silence, I kill you

The words from Achmed the Dead Terrorist are perfect for this project.
Visit Achmed and Jeff at jeffdunham.com


Every time I am at the coast and want to shoot a nice wave video, the wind ruins the sound completely.Since we have no way of connecting an external micro, I have to find a solution to keep the sound but kill the wind noise.On my first blog post here I showed you a little furry thing to stick on top of a camera what eliminates the wind. It looks like a baby hedgehog on top of the camera and is quite expensive.
I remembered that in the olden days before people running around with microphones who looked like an animal on a stick there were foam balls on top of the micro to keep the wind out.
So I took a bit of foam and held it in place with a crossed rubber band to do a test.

The result was astonishing.
There was silence where the awful wind noise was before, so with this little piece of foam and a rubber band  I killed the wind noise. All other sounds came in clear through the foam.
It cost nothing and had a tremendous impact on the quality of the video.
My Canon S2 already had an electronic wind filter (same as SX10 and SX1) but this was just for a very slight breeze. Anything like I encountered on the coast here the Canon is not able to eliminate even partial.

The next days I will find out how thick the foam actually has to be to be effective and how to make it look a bit more eye pleasing. I will keep you posted.

Update 2009.09.05
To make it look nicer until I find some black foam, I shaped the foam down to fit the camera and made it slimmer. With the help of a blue marker (no black was at home) the yellow foam got a  more pleasing looking color. Now I need to find black rubber bands.
The wind test with the fan showed some slight wind noise at setting 3.
I will cut a couple different ones and then do the test at the next high wind on the coast.





Just came home from the beach and there was little wind but it picket up a bit once a while. So this is definitely a bit too small to to a perfect job.