Will I hear it?

[inkjunkie]

Used my 7Ti with the 18-135mm lens to record video at the dragstrip strip during the last event of the season. Was the first time doing this...very impressed with the video. Wishing I had the ability to zoom in tighter and reach further down the track. Unless I am missing something I have only seen one other STM lens with more reach...it is a 55-250. Being curious I took my very old 75-300mm lens and headed out to the highway near our place. This little experiment taught me that I definitely need a lens with Image Stabilization...granted the cars I was filming were quiet...but the sounds of the lens auto focusing were very audible. Wondering if I were to replace my old lens with one from this century, a USM style lens with IS if the auto focus would still be audible...keeping in mind that I will be filming race cars with no exhaust. 

[Peter]

Extern mic.

[inkjunkie]

Thanks for the suggestion. What should I be looking for in an external microphone? 

[TCampbell]

You probably want a Rode VideoMic or VideoMic Pro line.  You probably want to avoid the less expensive VideoMic Go.  These are the most popular external mics (by far).  There have even been some Canon video kits that included the Rode mic.

The mic slides into the hot-shoe (flash socket on the top of the camera) and has a short wire to plug into the mic input port on the side of the camera (there's no electronic interface through the hot-shoe - it just uses it as a convenient mount point.

The difference is that the low-end "Go" mic is not powered or amplified and this means all amplification has to be done either in camera or in post processing.  When you try to boost audio, you'll likely find an unpleasant hiss.

The powered/amplified mics can boost audio in the mic itself and it does a much better/cleaner job.  You will not have to crank up the audio gain level in the camera.  When you play back the audio, it's much cleaner.

Basically you want a powered mic (one that takes batteries) -- they do a better job than non-powered mics.

Some of these mics have a high-pass filter option that you can enable (but you don't have to enable it).  A "high pass" filter means that higher frequency sounds will "pass" and lower frequency sounds will be filtered.  The purpose of this is meant to allow cleaner audio recording in environments where you want to eliminate background noise from things like fans, AC systems, and even engine/motor noises.  Low rumbly sounds would be filtered out.  As you might actually want those sounds for your purposes, test the mic with the switch both on & off and decide for yourself.  My guess is that you'll probably want to leave the filter off.

[inkjunkie]

Thank you for the information. My camera shopping (wish?) list is getting lengthy. 

[Stephen]

Hi inkjunkie!

What you're looking for are STM lenses, or nanoUSM lenses. These guys were engineered specifically to be silent (or as close to silent as possible) in video mode. Non-STM lenses (IS and normal USM) lenses can be heard, and we recommend using manual focus or an external microphone as was suggested by Peter. 

We hope this helps! 

[Waddizzle]

If your camera has an external mic input, then I would suggest getting an external microphone.  It’s cheaper than a lens, and it will give you MUCH better audio than the built-in microphone, which is right NEXT to the lens.