A trip to an animal farm and petting zoo was a perfect excuse to test out how the Dead Cat wind blocker would perform on the RODE VideoMic, and the Manfrotto 561BHDV Monopod as support compared to the Zacuto pieces.

It’s a bit sad to say, but the 250€ monopod gave better results than 700€ worth of Zacuto ZFinder Pro and Target Shooter. The monopod gives so much extra stability and makes the whole trip even lighter because you can put the weight of the camera down at every shot compared to keeping the weight in your arms or hanging around your shoulder. And oddly enough, I felt the bigger black monopod would be less intrusive than the Fast Draw rigging. Mainly because I feel like a monopod can still scream “i’m taking a photo here” instead of the Fast Draw’s “I’m making a movie here”. I might get the EVF to mount onto the camera for better focusing and optional use with the ZFinder, because you don’t want to use the ZFinder on the camera because you then start to transmit shaking through a quite stable setup, but it is hard to get focusing right on a 5D using the back LCD display, even in low light situations. A sharper EVF might work there, and the Zacuto EVF with flip-up makes it possible to use it as a monitor or EVF whenever you like.

The RODE Dead Cat wind blocker was a nice and necessary addition to make the VideoMic really work well.