If you are a photographer wanting to do multimedia slideshow you are probably going to need to know how to get good sound and here is a simple 3 step video on how to do just that
And further for those who dablle with journalism the International Journalists.net have a Youtube site with training videos
OK, sometimes it can be really useful to be able to record a conversation without other people knowing you are doing it, especially when you are being hassled by the police or jobs worth for taking pictures when you are in the right doing so and the situation looks like going from bad to worse. On the other hand you might have a set of photos and need to do a write up of all the details or interview a person in the pictures and you can use the audio feature on the Canon G9.
You could of course use the video feature, but when the lens extends out it might arouse suspicion, but there is a neat way to switch on the audio without opening up the lens and is a quicker way than going through the menu.
From the camera being switched off press the Play/review > button right of the optical viewfinder, press and hold the Microphone button * top right of the LCD (you should see the recorder display come up on the LCD) press Func/Set in the middle of the command dial to record.
That’s it 3 buttons to press and you are recording… a short press of the Mic.* button brings up the audio recorder for tagging the image on display (normally the last photograph you took) when you press the Func/Set
Another little trick of the Mic.* button is if you have the camera sounds on (beep for focus, shutter sounds etc.) pressing this while turning the camera on mutes all the sounds from the Canon G9 and is ideal if you want to do some candid shooting, but remember when you play back video or audio you won’t hear it, as you have muted the sounds so you need go into the menu, go to the settings (hammer and spanner) tab and set the MUTE to off
Last week I covered a student demo on ‘Free Speech’ and decided to try the G9′s video in a very noisy environment. During the demo I was shooting stills with my Nikon DSLR, shooting the odd stills with the G9 but used it more for the alternative medium of video, which I shot on the 1024 size, even though it was going to be published to web so was probably overkill as the quality is greatly reduced when converted by video upload sites. The 3 1/2 minute video kicked out at 115MB
As a Windows user I decided to use Windows Movie Maker (which comes free with Vista and XP) and saved it to PC format. I was in a hurry and wanted something quick and easy as it was going to be uploaded to Google video or You Tube for web viewing so I was not going to get the quality anyway
Now with video there are two components the visual and the audio, unfortunately I had not tweaked the audio settings for the conditions so the wind filter was off (when it was very windy) and the sound levels were on auto (which might have been better on manual due to the high noise levels) but I turned up a little late. Being a small. light camera I also found it quite hard to keep it steady as well, not normally a problem I have with a handy cam, but I dare say I will get better.
I also have on my PC Adobe’s Premier Pro, Flash CS3 pro, Flash Video Encoder and Device Central (the later, formats the flash video for mobile devices) so I have plenty to play with in the future
for the Apple Mac and Windows users (check system requirements) who want more quality and versatility there is QuickTime Pro which allows you to do similar editing and saving the format for iPod and other 3G files in the H.264 format which gives high quality at a low data rate
There is a short piece on The Digital Story on exporting to web using QuickTime Pro which sells for £20 in the UK, $30 in the USA so its not expensive 
There is a brief piece on Multimedia Shooter about the Canon G9′s use for video and as a pro photographer’s back up for HD Video. Just what the journalist needs in today’s New Media.
There is also a Video piece by San Jose Mercury News with the Canon G9 as the video tool used by all the photographers All further testimony of just how good the G9 is as well as how lovable it is
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