(static crackling) (peaceful music)
(electronic whirring) (static crackling)
(light bulb buzzing)
- Hey guys, my name is Matt Johnson
and today I'm gonna be reviewing
this tiny little fella, the Instamic Pro.
And I'm gonna be telling you why I think this
is a great back-up mic to use at a wedding
if you need an extra source of audio for your wedding films.
And to be clear,
this is not a paid review by Instamic.
I backed two of these recorders on IndieGoGo,
and then I waited over two years
for them to be manufactured and delivered.
The good news is that the IndieGoGo campaign
is long over, and you can now purchase these recorders
directly from Instamic's website.
No need to wait two years like I did
for them to be delivered.
The other good news is that this video
is sponsored by MusicBed, one of my favorite sites
for licensing music for my wedding films.
And I'll have more to tell you about them
at the end of the video.
Onto the review.
Let's start off with the title, 'Instamic'.
I feel like that title sums up this device pretty well.
It's just that, a quick to set up microphone and recorder.
And if I had to pick a comparable product,
I would probably say that it's most similar
in philosophy to a Go-Pro camera.
At its best, a Go-Pro is a compact camera
with a variety of mounts that is meant to be stuck
into a weird location; on your head,
on a stick, underwater, a place that you wouldn't
normally put a camera, so you can record a new perspective.
With the Instamic, that same philosophy
of sticking something anywhere has
been applied to a microphone.
It's a tiny audio recorder with a variety of mounts
that's meant to be stuck in a weird location;
on a guitar, attached to a speaker,
in a laundry washing machine?
Okay, that last one's a weird one,
but you can see my point.
This is a mic that you put in a place
that you normally wouldn't put a microphone,
so you can record sound from a new perspective.
And for a wedding, where you don't have control
over things, like the location, or what your characters
are wearing, or the weather, a microphone like
the Instamic starts to make a lot of sense.
Before we go more in depth about the device itself,
I want you to know that I have some free, unedited
audio clips that I recorded with the Instamic
that you can download for free.
You can download them at the link
down in the video description.
Now let's talk about the Instamic itself.
First off, you have color choices;
you can have any color that you want
as long as it's black or white.
They also make Windshields for it, as well as covers
in a variety of colors so you can camouflage it
against your talent's clothing.
I like that.
Here's where things get funky, though,
going back to that Go-Pro analogy, you get a variety
of quick-release mounts to use with the Instamic.
There's a 3M sticker option if you want to
attach your mount more permanently,
you've got velcro with a 3M sticker on the back
if you need to attach and reattach the mic often,
and my personal favorite, you have magnets
that are quiet strong.
Without the mounts, you can really tell how small
the Instamic is and how simply it was designed.
There's no memory card slot, the Instamic records audio
to 8 Gigabytes of internal storage, which will give
you about 16 hours of recording time if you record
in 48 Kilohertz at 24 Bits in mono.
Those are the settings that I use.
16 hours sounds pretty great, right?
Easily enough to get through a whole wedding day.
Well, hold on just one second.
The Instamic's battery life is only rated between
3.5 to 4 hours, depending on if
you have Bluetooth turned on or not.
This, unfortunately, isn't like the Tascam DR 10L,
which you can put a lithium triple A battery inside,
and record for 10 hours straight.
The Instamic battery should be great for a ceremony,
or a toast, or another smaller wedding moment,
but it is definitely not a
set it and forget it all day device.
The Pro model has 6 microphones, four on top,
and two on the sides for recording stereo sound.
And if you're like me when I first got it,
you may be wondering how it actually turns on.
There isn't a clearly labeled power button anywhere.
The secret is that you actually press the O here,
and the Instamic will come to life.
This is the only button on the Instamic.
You press it once to turn it on,
you press it again to start recording,
you press it again to stop recording,
you press it and hold it for a bit, and it will turn off.
Is that it? Is that the entire Instamic?
Of course not, this thing has an IOS and Android App.
Everything has an app these days, you silly goose.
You can connect up to 10 Instamics
to your phone via Bluetooth.
And using the app, you can start and stop recording
remotely, adjust the gain manually, or set it to auto,
change the sample rate, choose if you want to record
stereo or mono, change the name of your Instamic
if you have multiple.
In my case, I have one black and one white;
black of course to match a tuxedo,
white to match a wedding dress.
The last feature of the Instamic app is the one
that gets the most attention.
You can remotely monitor your audio
from the Instamic using your phone and a pair of headphones.
Those of you that own a Tascam DR 10L
that I made a review about just sat up and took notice.
What? Remote monitoring? Tell me more.
There's a catch though, as great as it sounds,
you cannot monitor your audio and record at the same time.
It's my understanding that this is a
limitation of Bluetooth, not an intentional
crippling by Instamic.
This wireless monitoring feature will work great
if you've just put the mic on a groom, for example,
and you wanna test it to make sure it sounds good.
But if the ceremony's happening, and the groom's already
up at the front, and you've already hit record
on the Instamic, you've just gotta trust the app
that says it's recording.
To be clear, you can still adjust the audio levels
while the Instamic is recording,
you just can't listen to them.
You also can't playback anything you recorded using the app.
You will need to copy your audio files to a computer
before you can listen to them.
Sorry to burst your bubble there,
but if you were like me and you were hoping
for an audio recorder that lets you record
internally, while also transmitting that audio
wirelessly, unfortunately you cannot do that
with the Instamic.
With the technical stuff out of the way,
let's talk about ways that you can
creatively use the Instamic to
record audio on a wedding day.
Starting off more tame, one of my go to's is
to use my favorite mount for the Instamic,
the magnet mount, to affix it to a bride's dress,
or a groom's jacket when they're reading a letter.
It's quick, it's discrete, and it's small enough
that you can get it pretty close to their mouth
without it being distracting.
If you've watched my wedding films,
you'll know that I'm a huge fan of mic-ing
the bride's dress to record super clear
and crispy audio of her vows.
I usually use a Tascam DR 10L for this,
with a thigh strap, and I run a
LAV mic up the bride's dress.
It works well, but there are some situations
where the bride's dress is sheer
and the LAV mic chord will be visible through it.
While I haven't had to do it yet,
the white Instamic could be a great option
for mic-ing the bride because
it's such a small self-contained unit.
Getting a bit more weird here,
you could use the Instamic to mic the groom
during the wedding ceremony.
Matt, that-that doesn't sound weird at all,
what if it's raining though?
Yes, the Instamic Pro is waterproof up to 5 feet,
and I've used it to mic a groom when the couple
wanted to have their ceremony outdoors
even though it was pouring rain.
If you have a super wet wedding ceremony,
and you're worried about you traditional mics,
the Instamic may be a great option that
will survive the water.
In the Instamic IndieGoGo campaign,
they semi-jokingly used the example
of putting one in a closed washing machine
to record the audio.
Well, I have a friend, and I promise you,
I'm not telling you a story
about myself to save embarrassment.
He told me that he accidentally left his Instamic
in his pants and ran it through the washing machine,
and it survived, and is still working great.
Let's get more creative with mounting now.
With the magnetic mount on the Instamic,
you can easily stick this recorder
directly to the front metal mesh
of a DJ or band's speakers to record audio of the toasts.
Don't worry, speakers use magnets too,
but they are significantly larger
than these tiny little magnets that you're using
on the Instamic, so you shouldn't have to worry
about interference or causing any damage
or anything like that.
If you are worried, though, or the DJ is worried,
you could easily just use some gaff tape
and gaff tape the Instamic to the front
of the speaker if you wanted to.
An Instamic on a speaker is completely
usable as a backup audio recording.
Speaking of backups, one of my favorite backup
audio recording methods is to use a neoprene mic sleeve
and a voice recorder to attach a backup recorder
to the mic that people are giving toasts into.
With the Instamic, you can make your recorder
footprint significantly smaller than
the Sony voice recorder I currently recommend.
I'm a big fan of making my recorders
looking as discrete as possible.
Those are just some examples of
how you can use the Instamic.
I'm sure I'm missing a ton of other ways.
Like putting it on a mic stand near the string quartet,
to record them playing music during the wedding ceremony.
Or putting it on a podium for a scripts reading.
Or running up and using the magnet mount
to quickly affix it to someone who began
to give an improptu speech at the reception.
You have a lot of options, and really the
only limit is your creativity.
The last thing that we need to talk about is the price.
How much is the Instamic going to cost you?
And should you buy one?
At the time of making this review,
the Instamic Pro with stereo recording
is currently on sale for 169 dollars.
They also sell a mono version for 149 dollars,
but I would spend the extra 20 dollars
for the versatility of stereo recordings.
Even if the Instamic wasn't on sale,
I think the regular price is still great
for what you're getting.
Should you buy the Instamic, though,
if you film weddings?
That decision is really gonna come down
to how much audio equipment you already own.
I think that the Instamic is a
great backup audio recording device,
but I would not use it as my
primary audio recording device for a wedding.
In your audio kit, you should ideally
have a Zoom H4N, or Tascam DR 40X with audio cables,
so you can plug into house audio at any venue.
You should also have at least 2
Tascam DR 10L voice recorders that you can put
onto the officiant, and the bride, or the groom.
These devices are my first choices
for recording high quality audio at weddings.
Why isn't the Instamic one of my first choices
for recording audio at a wedding then?
Four quick reasons for you:
First, the single button setup makes it
arguably to simple of a recorder.
While the power button is hard to press,
I have had it accidentally get pressed
when it was in my bag on the way to a shoot.
And then when I got there, the battery
had been partially drained because it was turned on.
The single button press to start and stop recording
also makes me nervous.
My Tascam DR 10L has a hold function,
which will prevent the buttons from working
if they're pressed while the recorder's working.
The Instamic doesn't have that feature,
so let's say a groom is wearing it,
and he accidentally pushes the button,
it will stop recording.
The second reason that the Instamic isn't one of my
primary choices for audio recording is the battery life.
With it's four hours of battery life,
the Instamic's rechargeable battery isn't enough
to get it through a full wedding day.
With my Tascam DR 10L, on the other hand,
I can use a lithium battery and record
from the first look, through even
the longest ceremony without worrying.
The third reason I don't reach for the Instamic first
is its size; while it is quite small,
it is still significantly larger than a LAV mic.
Because I prefer my equipment to be as discrete
as possible, I'm gonna default to using a recorder
with a LAV mic before the Instamic every time.
The fourth and final reason why I don't
fully trust the Instamic is the app.
Unlike the Tascam DR 10L, which has a
screen to tell you if it's turned on and recording,
the Instamic only has three lights, and it can
be difficult to confirm it's recording
without opening the app.
I personally ran into an issue where I was at an event,
and my app was out of date and kept crashing
when I opened it.
I couldn't trust the Instamic to be my primary
recording device because I couldn't even tell
if it was recording.
So if you are just getting started filming weddings,
I think that's four pretty compelling reasons
to not make the Instamic your
first audio recording investment.
But, if you already own a Tascam DR 40X and
a Tascam DR 10L, and you've already made some investments
in audio recording, I think that the Instamic
is a fantastic option as backup recording device.
With its near infinite level of flexibility
in the event that the DJ decides they hate you
and won't let you plug into their soundboard,
or one of your audio recorders fries,
having this as a backup where you can put it
basically anywhere to record good quality audio,
I think it's really awesome.
Please keep in mind there are links down in the description
of this video to purchase the Instamic and all of
the accessories that I talked about.
There's also a link down there to download
those free unedited Instamic audio clips.
So, if you wanna test them out,
and see how they sound, you can do that as well.
There's also a third link down there, what's that?
To this video's sponsor, MusicBed.
I don't know when wedding season started for you,
but here in Texas, temperatures finally dropped
last week below 90 degrees.
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which means everybody needs a wedding film.
And you as a filmmaker need music that you can
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I've been using MusicBed basically since
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wedding filmmakers mind and make songs that
are perfect for wedding films.
(inspirational upbeat music)
Newer bands, that I literally found a few days ago
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(folky pop music)
There's just so much good music that isn't
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Plus, they have curated playlists
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and over the years, I've spent
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But, in 2018, they came out with a subscription
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Oh, and they created a system called SyncID,
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These songs I've been using, no copyright claims.
You and your wedding couples do not need
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Sound cool? You can use the link down in the description
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if a subscription isn't your style.
Either way, you're winning.
And with that, thank you so much for watching.
I hope you enjoyed watching this review of the Instamic.
It would be a huge help to me, significantly larger than
the size of the Instamic here, if you would consider
liking this video, giving it a thumbs up, and subscribing
and hitting the bell icon and doing all that
if you want to see more videos like this in the future.
If you could also let me know what other
gear and equipment you would like to see me
review next, that'd be great as well.
Thanks so much for watching, and have a great day.
(tranquil, relaxed music)