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Years ago, any camcorder you used that wasn't a consumer VHS or Betamax camcorder was a professional, shoulder-mount rig that- aside from being big and heavy- had plenty of space for Velcro'ing multiple accessories to the body of the camcorder itself.
More recently, with the dawn of prosumer camcorders that offer the features videographers need in a more compact unit, the available on-camera real estate for attaching accessories has diminished to almost nothing. Aside from adding some sort of harness that increases the entire rig size to what you had before and generally looks like a cumbersome workaround, what can be done to maintain wireless capability with tiny camcorders?
To get a sense of what solutions are available and how well they'll work for us, I'll compare five relatively inexpensive wireless systems from Azden, Samson, Sony, and Sennheiser (alongside an Audio-Technica from my own kit) to see how well they work and sound when I run-and-gun with my HDV.
THE SYSTEMS
I've used Lectrosonics systems in the past and love them. But these days, I'm hard pressed to justify putting a $2,000 wireless system on my $3,000 camcorder. It's not just the price that makes these systems seem top-heavy; the bulky size of the big wireless systems is hard to deal with as well. I don't want to add a complex external harness for the few times I need a wireless system throughout an event. I want to be able to add it and remove it without issue.
Lectrosonics does make a smaller system, the 100 Series. These go for a street price of around $1,200, with various kits in the series costing more. I also have an Audio-Technica ATW-T102x wireless I keep around because it just works. It cost only a few hundred bucks, so its value to me as a backup is worth more than I would get selling it. This system is a comfortable match for the cameras I use to shoot events, so it will be the basis for the size comparison in these tests.
For this review, I secured four systems, each with a handheld mie or plug-in transmitter, lavaliere mie with belt-pack transmitter, and the compact receiver that I would attach to my camcorder:
* Azden 100LT Combo Mie...