Shap locations

I was planning/hoping to see 6233 in her temporary Black livery over Shap in May. Being a southerner I have no knowledge of the roads around Shap and where is good for filming and photographs.

Would you guys be kind enough to share with me some locations that work for you?

 

Shap Wells would be my favourite spot, long view of the train, and you will be treading in the footsteps of the great Ivo Peters, doesn't get much better than that. Greenholme and Scout Green offer a number of opportunities too.

 

Thanks for your advice you two, I may be putting it into practice a bit sooner with Tornado over Shap in April. I'll start looking for a fairly cheap mic for my camcorder.

 

I've found this device, it's cheap enough to be worth a punt surely? http://www.warehouseexpress.com/buy-rycote-gustbuster/p1021972

 

Cheers for that Ralph, I'm not usually too fussed about audio, I mainly just want to eliminate wind noise but for £35 on Amazon it's probably worth a go if it also means overall better sound. I'll have to come up with a crafty way of mounting it to my tripod, my little Canon FS200 doesn't have any kind of shoe. There's one vague review on Amazon:

"A little disappointed as it did not work quite as well as my husband hoped. He was trying for noise reduction but it actually made it worse. Possibly OK for person to person interviews or something along those lines."

What does she mean by 'trying for noise reduction'?

 

:rip:

 

No, I was definitely thinking of Ivo Peters. According to Mac Hawkins in his excellent book 'Ivo Peter's Farewell to Northwest Steam' he made several trips to the northern fells between 1965 and 1967.
He dubbed Shap Wells a 'classic location' although in his day he would stand much closer to the track, not on the mound by the monument. Derek Cross, of course, is another of the legendary greats of photography. I would love to have filmed in their day prior to the wires.

 

Not vague at all, gents - plain common sense. Noise is any unwanted or undesirable sound so, in this case, by 'noise reduction' it means reducing the amount of wind and other sounds that are around when you're audio recording, but you don't necesarily want as a feature of that recording.

Unidirectional microphones, as the name implies, pick up the most sound from one direction - that which you're pointing them in. So if you point it in the direction of a moving train and pan the microphone as it moves, you'll get more sound of the train and significantly less of the car engine which some idiot has left running behind you. In contrast, omnidirectional mics record sound all around them, so it sounds very much like the microphone in question is an omni one.

It's a very important difference to know for any microphone purchase. And, as with anything in life, you get what you pay for.

 

Noise reduction in audio is a term used for reducing un wanted sounds created by the equipment you are using, not wind noise. In the days of analogue it was the hiss created by the tapes, hence Dolby noise reduction came about, these days with solid state recording any background noise is usualy created by the microphone/cables/connectors etc and there are some very good software programs around to deal with it. Dealing with wind noise is another matter all together.

 

Thanks for the lesson Chris. I do know what noise reduction is because, um, I work in the professional audio technology industry at quite a senior level. But don't let me stop you from explaining all about the different types of Dolby noise reduction, dbx, headroom, frequency weighting and all the rest of it... ;-)

In your anxiety to 'correct' me, you have misread the meaning of my post. I wasn't talking about noise reduction in a technical sense, I was talking about what somone - who clearly was a consumer and not an audio expert - meant when they said "A little disappointed as it did not work quite as well as my husband hoped. He was trying for noise reduction but it actually made it worse", as quoted in the posts above.

I think you'll find what this clearly non-technically-minded lady actually meant is exactly what I said, in just the same way that non-railway enthusiasts incorrectly use the wrong terminology when they call a locomotive a 'train'.

 

Sorry if I was telling you stuff that you obviously know all about, was not intended as a lecture, not used to people actualy taking a serious interest in sound on here and you prob right that I misread ya post, in middle of moving at moment so brain is not at its best.....