Thanks man.

My only fear is that I'm going to be extremely tight on cash and I need to choose my audio gear wisely. I'm selling my current consumer grade gear on Ebay, and purchasing more prosumer grade gear for weddings. I know I will be purchasing a Panasonic HMC150, 32gb SDHC card, a Litepanels Micro, and Pelican case to start off. I'm trying to keep it as close to $4,000 as possible.

Any specific recommendations as to where to start with a budget audio capture? I guess I was under the wrong impression when you guys were talking about using digital field recorders. I was hoping to be able to set the device close to where the officiator/couple were and getting clear audio.

Im all ears. Thanks.

I'd get a good wireless system like the Sennheiser Evolution G2 100 Series. It's around $500. I'd get that before I worry about any other audio device. That's going to be your bread and butter for audio capture.

Would this be a good route to go as well?
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/553681-REG/Sony_UWPV1_3032_UWP_V1_Wireless_Lavalier_ENG.html
$450 in the cart with a $40 rebate on top of that. If I went wireless Id like it camera mounted.

Brad, that mic has one absolutely necessary feature - a diversity receiver. The specs look pretty good.

I'm not a huge fan of wireless, as an RF dropout can occur just at the most inopportune moment. Having said that, our entire studio micing system is wireless, and we use wireless extensively on all of the live events. We learned our lesson one year by not rusing top quality gear for one of the "dream wedding" events, and the interference got to be pretty bad. Fortunately we had enough wireless stuff that we could calm it down by making substitutions, but for the last several times we've rented complete Lectrosonics systems with frequency co-ordinated devices to eliminate any type of co channel or spurious interference with a community antenna for all of the receivers. What a difference! I know that's beyond the scope of this topic, but it just points out that using good gear matters.

in a single mic environment, mutual interference problems should not be a factor, and if you are close enough, the rf dropout issue should not matter.

You might think about adding some type of "in the groom's pocket" minidisc or solid state recorder as a backup.

Tom

Brad:

Don't forget to search the Dvinfo.com all things audio and wedding forums. This is all discussed there almost daily.

Okay, I have the PCM-D50, it is a great recorder that will capture bands, speeches and other louder wedding situations perfectly. When you record using 24 bit resolution, you can use the Vegas compresser to make peoples speaking voice level come up from extremely low levels. So, you can place the D50 on a tripod in the middle of some rooms to capture the speeches/toasts. I also ocassionally feed a wireless directly to the D50. The D50 is a great tool, very high quality.

Besides the camera, the first tool you really need is the wireless. I would get the Sennheiser G2. You can run this to one channel of the HMC-150 and record ambient off the other HMC-150 onboard mic or XLR channel.