How I Pimped My Canon HV30 (Part 1) By Gadget Trish

I wanted to share with you the Rig that I designed for my Canon HV30 (This could be used for the HV20 and HV40 model as well.) Before making this purchase I went to a few forums and youtube reviews and found a great deal of wonderful feedback. On a side note, when making a gadget purchase, do as much research as possible. Ideally I wanted the Canon XH-A1, but due to financial limitation, I thought this camera be the way to go.

The rig consist of a BeachTek DXA-2S for XLR microphone inputs, a Rode NTG-2 Condenser Shotgun Microphone Kit, a Sennheiser EW100 wireless mic, the Irv manual focus ring, a Pearstone DVP wide angle lens, Canon extended battery, standard cold shoe video bracket to mount the microphone and lights, and a cam caddie. Out the box the Canon HV30 produces fair sound and picture, but the additions provides better focus control, cleaner sound, extended power, and stability while shooting.

If you are on a lower budget and cannot afford every item, I would suggest a wide-angle lens, an extended battery, and the Irv ring. The ring gives you the ability to manual focus quickly. Another must have item is a wide-angle lens. There are different lens for other companies in all sorts of price ranges. I encourage researching and checking out youTube videos.

With the exception of the Irv manual ring, all items can be purchased at the B&H store or website. If you only need to use one microphone at a time and don’t care to use XLR microphones, then the purchase of a BeachTek will not be necessary. When it comes to microphones, they drive up the price quite a bit, from my own personal experience, start with an on camera, or shotgun microphone kit. There are better microphones available then the two I purchased, but based on my budget, I went for these models because of feedback from other friends. Another advantage of the microphones that I purchased is that they could be used for future cameras both with XLR and line-in inputs.


This is my rig for shooting a moving subject for generally documentaries, but I have another rig for interviews and studio projects. I will have that on a future episode of G.T. media, but until then, I’m out.