weirdest field recording happenings go here...

[haesslich]

while i was setting up my recording equipment today a dog showed little too much interest in my olympus ls10 and the attached rycote.  
suddenly the sausage dog opened it's mouth... snap! and away he was! with the olympus in it's mouth. fortunately i was wearing headphones, and as the dog arrived some distance, the cable pulled the recorder out of it's mouth again. luckily!

here is the recording:
http://soundcloud.com/ab-arts/dog-eats-olympus-ls10

what's your weirdest field recording happening?

[kristofferlislegaard]

hahahahaha

[Le Berger]

 

[Charlie Grant]

Brilliant. It's a shame no one was on hand with a video camera at the time. That would have been hilarious to see. Good to hear that you got it back though....some dogs will eat literally anything.

I remember standing in one of those nooks with the security doors that you find at the side of larger shops, getting ready to record a busker. An employee marched clean through the doors with several shopping trolleys sending me straight to the deck. The only person within about 100 yards who didn't seem to notice was the busker - he didn't miss a beat.

[seaworthy]

I'll have to dig out the recording but I was sure that a fish was sucking on my hydrophone once. I was recording in a muddy estuary so couldn't see more than 10cm into the water and the mic was at least 1m down. I got strange pulsing/scaping kind of sound. Even if it wasn't a fish, I kind of like the idea that it was.

[mdoudin]

Oh hearing you speak about hydrophones.. what does a a "usual" hydrophone cost? I mean a basic one down to 10m under water? Thanks

[seaworthy]

Oh hearing you speak about hydrophones.. what does a a "usual" hydrophone cost? I mean a basic one down to 10m under water? Thanks

One of the best investments I made was buying one of these hydrophones from Aquarian. http://www.aquarianaudio.com/hydrophones/stock.html Around US$150

Some other options:

http://hydrophones.blogspot.com/2009/04/hydrophones-by-jrf.html

http://www.dolphinear.com/de-intro.htm

[mdoudin]

150$? That's WAY less than I expected.. thank you very much for the links!

And do I need to know anything more? Does it work on only my Zoom H4n as portable recorder device?

[kristofferlislegaard]

http://contactmicrophones.com/

there are some 7m ones there. have to check out the other links though. beeing raised next to the sea there is something about those water sounds =)

[mdoudin]

Thanks Kristoffer.
It's been a long time. Everything going good? Hadebra.

[kristofferlislegaard]

oh yes. all good here. just sent my solo release off to mastering =)
waiting for a plugin powersupply that is in the mail wich will make me able to use my hydrophone with my preamps.
can't wait.

this was done with a little more ghetto approach

http://vimeo.com/18857675

[mdoudin]

good to hear. looking forward to listening to it. btw, do you know about those hydrophones if it's possible to just juse it with the H4n?

My weirdest field recording happening is always the same.. and it happens so often. going out for a day to record some stuff.. and I drove for a long time only to realize my portable device giving me the feedback: "no card" (mostly sundays when shops are closed)

[kristofferlislegaard]

sure do.
both gold cold mics (contactmicrophones.com), and Aquarian has three types:
minijack - theese go into the the little jack input on the back wich provides them with plugin power.
jack - passive and can be plugged into the inputs in the bottom
xlr - goes into the xlr input(duh) 


i think wichever one of these two companies you go for you will be a happy guy.
i would go with xlr or minijack though.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=JP&hl=ja&v=SQO3jF5IUAI


and you. all good?


I am not sure i have any really wierd field recording happenings. but the dog one sure made me laugh!

[mdoudin]

thanks for the explanation. that's a reason to "hooray" 

i'm fine. having a little break though.

the dog one is brutally good 

[haesslich]

here's another one!
last weekend i visited a friend in berlin. he told me his weirdest field recording story, and it's actually to good not to share.
so this is what happened to him:
he & his girlfriend were on the berlin subway when a guy entered the train, nervously looking around, holding something in his hand. this friend of mine identified it as a taser. somewhat scared, they changed to another car of that train and agreed to call for help. this guy with the taser looked too suspicious! so they dialed 110 (german equivalent for 911), and were told to stop the train in the next station using the emergency brake. they did as they have been told, and as the train stopped the driver approached them. while explaining the situation the policemen arrived.
(i'll skip the funny subplot on how the police crushed down two other people before finally getting to the guy with the taser...)

unfortunately, during the identification of the potential violent criminal, my friend was able to have a closer look to the would-be taser. it turned out to be a field recorder.
this poor guy in the train was simply trying to record urban noises, looking around nervously to identify possible unwanted noise-sources early.

however, the police told my friend that he acted absolute correct; better safe than sorry.