Shooting with these DSLR cameras is cutting edge, but sometimes it feels like the bleeding edge.

I’ve been dying to try out the Beachtek DXA-SLR because the 5Da is downright unusable. Beachtek promises that, by sending an inaudible tone of 20kHz to the left channel of the camera, the 7D’s AGC will be disabled. During my tests, I could clearly hear a high-pitched tone on playback, but the tone disappeared when I ingested and transcoded the footage in Final Cut.

BUT, there were tiny clicks and pops between signal and silence. For example, if I was recording a conversation, there would be a click every time one of the people stopped talking- right at the point between the signal and the silence. It happened every time somebody paused or finished saying something, causing the audio track to be riddled with clicks and pops. And, unfortunately, these artifacts stayed with the footage throughout…they were truly recorded to the card.

Bummer.

This is my setup in the broadcast truck. Again, I was shooting segments with the 7D, running back to the truck and ingesting and transcoding the footage in Final Cut to DVCPRO HD, laying off to tape and handing off to the truck’s engineer to ingest into their Elvis system for playback in the live show. I delivered one piece within 90 seconds of it airing.

TNA put up a poster from the A&E show that I DP’d. That show, by the way, is nearing a fine cut and is looking amazing.