5 Quick Tips for Shooting with the Atomos Shogun

We’re currently putting the Atomos Shogun recorder/monitor through its paces and put together a few tips and tricks that we’ve found useful when using it.

Make sure you enable the channels you want to record.

Audio with the Atomos Shogun

If you’ve got something like a Rode Videomic Pro plugged into your camera and intend to have the Shogun record the audio off that, you need to make sure the Shogun is set to do so. On the bottom-left corner of the Shogun’s screen is a small icon representing incoming audio (framed in red above). Tap that to bring it up, then make sure that the “Rec” button is bright red next to the audio channel you want to record. If you’re not seeing any activity in your intended channel, check your camera; audio recording might be turned off.

Ensure Clean HDMI Output

Cameras like the Sony a7S can output not just the video signal to the Shogun, but also the on-screen menus – which will get recorded along with your intended footage. Make sure you turn those off!

Tapping the physical power button locks the Shogun’s screen.

Lock Your Screen

Once you start recording, you can press the power button once on the Shogun to lock the screen. This prevents any accidental touches from registering on the touch screen. You can also change a setting in the Shogun to power the screen down when you lock it and save that use for in-between shots to save battery life.

Just about everything, including the top row of icons, is an interactive control.

The Shogun’s Screen is Very Interactive

Just about every icon on the Shogun’s main screen is interactive. We puzzled over how to format connected media for several minutes before one of us touched the tiny hard drive icon near the top-right portion of the screen. Turns out, the entire set of text labels across the top (marked in red above), which we initially assumed were just status labels, are actually interactive controls for formatting media, choosing the recording codec and quality, etc.

Admittedly, this tip is more for those of us who can’t be bothered with the manual ;-).

Power the Shogun off using the on-screen controls.

Power Off Properly

Pressing and holding the physical power button on the right side of the unit to turn it off might seem like the intuitive thing to do, but that’s not how you turn the Shogun off. The proper way to do it is to tap “Menu” then tap and hold the on-screen “Power Off” (marked above in red) button for about 3 seconds. Holding the physical power button on the unit is a forced power off, to be used only if the unit’s touch screen becomes unresponsive.

So far, we’re really loving this thing. What are your thoughts? As always, questions and feedback are welcome in the comments below.