Zoom F1 Compact Field Recorder

Sometimes we discover the existence of products which are so brilliant that it’s hard to contain the excitement. Whether its genius comes from hitting a certain niche, a simple but yet problem solving solution, or even just ticking all the geeky boxes at once and turning our pupils into dollar signs. Sometimes there are products out there which can go by un-noticed and might deliver on more than one of these reasons above.

My latest find that does this is Zoom’s F1 portable field recorder. This little guy is designed primarily as a compact field recorder for your video rig and due to its modular approach to Mic attachments, can serve as either a Shotgun mic, studio mic, wide angle mic or even a convenient belt mounted lapel recorder pack. Largely being marketed as a shotgun mic solution for your DSLR video rig with the bundled pack including the shotgun mic attachment and a shock mount bracket. It’s not new at all either, as been on the market for about two years. So once again as much as my peers think of me as a front runner in the tech world, I am very late to the party a lot.

So this caught my interests, as I am indeed looking at a new camera for my YouTube rig and need a high quality mic. But I was actually browsing for a decent desktop USB microphone at the time I found this. I am no stranger to the Zoom products, as I already own the H6 field recorder, which came with two Mic attachments that also are compatible with this more compact F1 field recorder too. I got the H6 for when I used to do night club events and either recorder the DJ sets themselves or filming the events. The F1 is basically a baby version of this. See below for a size comparison and you’ll see why I am so enthused but a more compact solution.

Coming back to looking at cameras, this is where the Zoom F1 can fix a huge flaw of the camera I have decided to go with. The Sony A6400 does not have a headphone socket for monitoring the audio before recording. So even if I buy a dedicated shotgun mic for this camera, I won’t be able to check the sound levels or quality before recording. Well, the F1 allows me to do this by having the line out, meaning I can use headphones to check levels and then plug in to the camera. Or, keep separate and have both the camera audio and F1 recorded audio to use in editing stage. Here’s what it looks like with my current camera set up, GoPro HERO8 Black + MediaMod, which itself is a decent and promising set up.

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Then, when I want to do VoiceOver re-records or use for podcasting level audio, I’ll just unclip the shotgun style Mic attachment and add the MSH-6 “mid-side” mic and turn it into a studio quality microphone set up. I can do all this just using the inbuilt recording to micro SD card, or if I need to feed the audio straight to my PC for streaming, then plugging it in via USB turns it into an audio device and will work like any other USB microphone. Hopefully I will do a video on this product at some point.

Zoom F1 Winning Features:

• Modular Mic attachment set up (including dual XLR inputs)
• Convenient lapel pack design
• Gain adjustment dial built in to mic attachments
• Record straight to Micro SD & to camera simultaneously
• Line in & Line out
• Connect via USB to PC/MAC as Audio Interface device
• Backlit display showing Audio levels
• Includes Shock Mount for cameras

Final Thoughts

The Zoom F1 solves a lot of my tech needs in one compact solution. This will serve as a high quality USB microphone (that can record itself without being tethered to a machine or software interface) and It will serve as a decent camera shotgun mic and fixes one of the major flaws of the Sony A6400 missing a headphone jack to monitor the sound in your set up before hitting record. Perhaps someone who isn’t lucky enough to already have the other Zoom mic attachments, this might be a big risk investing into a new ecosystem of microphones from scratch.