Attention, Camera Developers

Oh Lord, when oh when will you camera manufacturers realize that SOUND is just as important as the picture?

Puh-Leeze, do yourself a favour and implement either one of these two policies immediately:
(a) commit to having sound on your camera and make it good. Consult with real, actual, working soundmen in the field who will tell you that you need balanced (can you hear me Canon makers of the 5D, 7D, a myriad of others), full-size XLR inputs (hello Red?), volume pots (hello Red again?), Lin/Mic switches with audio not permanently set on AGC (again with the 5D and 7D monstrosities) and good quality pre-amps. I will VOLUNTEER to consult.

or

(b) If you think your new camera is the shizzle, fine. Commit to having NO SOUND INPUT AT ALL and allow us soundmen to do our jobs with double-system which gives our clients better sound anyway. Have TC in and out on BNC connectors (not lemo, RED) OK I will be reasonable and suggest that you have both a camera mic for those productions that want to sync to a scratch mix with pluraleyes http://www.singularsoftware.com/pluraleyes.html or similar and one sound input for a scratch feed as long as it was only in mono and had a line/mic switch. It should only record MP3 quality as well! Hey, it's only 'scratch' right? Why only MP3? So that the bean-counters would reign in their tendency to get cute and say "Well, if it has a sound input then we really don't need double system after all..." Any producer that would use MP3 for their broadcast audio deserves everything they get! (They could still use it for transcription and picture edit!)

I'm insisting on double-system now for all shoots involving Red or 5-7D cameras and am sticking to my guns even if it means losing gigs. I'm not putting MY day-rate on the line for someone else's camera's inferior sound quality!

Even still, I sometimes get caught by showing up and, oops, there's a Red. That's why I always carry an H4 recorder with me and roll even if I'm tethered to a Red. Not too long ago I got a call that the sound was missing on some files shot on a Red (!) Luckily, I had the backup. (turns out it was an issue in the transfer, my sound was there, but it just goes to show you... unreliable)

Thank you.