How loud is the Konvas?

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Konvas 2M with 400 foot magazine
Pierre Samuel Rioux's Konvas 2M
The Konvas is an MOS camera and was never created to be quiet, per se. It is rated at about 55+/- decibels. Needless to say, it's loud enough that you'll hear it purr.

Here's a small audio clip of a konvas and a director saying "Cut!" The camera was around 5 feet away from the director with a 400' magazine and roughly around 300' of film in the mag (the more film in a given magazine, the less room for sound to bounce around. btw: the smaller 200' magazines with 150' of film have even less room for sound to bounce around and are seemingly quieter than the 400' mags). The audio was recorded in a room roughly 16' x 13' (5 meters x 4 meters), with carpet on the floor. The microphone was aimed away from the camera, and aimed towards the director, when the director said "Cut".

MOS 35mm Camera
35mm Konvas 1M
If the camera seems too loud and/or you are shooting interiors, there are a few things you can do to help lower the decibel levels and cut the sound by as much as half. Wrapping a thick moving blanket around the camera often helps, but the amount of sound it cuts down is fairly limited. You can try making your own "soft" sound barney with Stransonic Foam, as did Florent Ruch in this post on October 20th, 2006 (used on a Kinor 16, but should still be able to apply to the larger Konvas). You can always buy a sound barney from Custom Upholstery Products" - very good people, who already have most of the Konvas and Kinor patterns already there.

If none of the above dampens the sound enough for you, then you can always build a sound blimp for your Konvas. You can find info on building a sound blimp on commiecam.com (under camera modifications).

35mm Konvas MOS Camera
Bruce Taylor's MOS Konvas
When shooting outside, you can often skirt around sound problems by moving the microphone in front of the camera (best to use a directional mic in this application) until the sound person can't hear the camera purring anymore.

An audio trick that Todd Terry recommends is to try a program called VocAlign - you can record audio with the camera running, then record it again with the camera off (have the talent stay in the same rhythm for best results), then seemingly "mix" the two together and out comes almost perfectly aligned, clean, crisp audio. This program is great for doing commercial spots.

Another good audio program that may help clean up audio problems from using a Konvas is Audacity. It is released under the GNU Public License, so it is free to download and use - give it a try!

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