FieldLog

Fieldcraft is the Definition of a Craft

May 8, 2026 By houstin 0 Comments

Drop Rigs, Organization, Failure, and Wildlife Recording in Romania

My first drop rig in Romania failed because I forgot to use the hold switch.

I would love to say the problem was more complicated, that there was some great systematic technical failure, something that I could engineer out. A marginal battery issue from the cold, a rollover bug in the firmware, a boar using the paracord as floss for its tusks.

But nope, in my haste and stress, I wired the mics to the scrub, made sure the wind protection was mounted, started the recording, slated it, and then put everything into the dry bag, hitting the stop button somehow in the process.… Keep reading

FieldLog.net is now on iOS

April 9, 2026 By houstin 0 Comments

FieldLog.net is now available on the iOS App Store!

This has been a long time coming.

For a while, FieldLog.net has lived on Android and the web. That worked, but it turns out a lot of creative professionals prefer Apple products, so who was I to argue!

What FieldLog.net is (and isn’t)

FieldLog.net is a logging tool.

It’s not a recorder. It doesn’t try to replace your Zoom, Sony, or Tascam. The goal is simpler than that: make it easy to keep track of what you recorded, where you recorded it, and how you recorded it.… Keep reading

Zoom M4 MicTrak Mic Delete Modification

March 23, 2026 By houstin 0 Comments

A Small Mod for a Slightly Weird (and Very Good) Recorder

The Zoom M4 is a strange recorder.

And I mean that in a good way.

It sits in this interesting space between something like the Zoom F3, which is almost aggressively minimal, and a more traditional handheld recorder with built-in microphones and an almost forced way of using it. The M4 tries to do both. It gives you the flexibility of onboard mics, but also the capability of a serious conventional recorder using (the same as the F3) XLR preamps and decent (but a bit low voltage) PiP capability.… Keep reading

FieldLog.net is Coming to iOS!

March 2, 2026 By houstin 0 Comments

Ever since I started sharing the android version of the app, people have asked if I had an iOS version. After finding some Apple hardware, and porting the Kotlin app to Kotlin Multi Platform, I can now says that FieldLog.net is coming to iOS! The app likely won’t be on the store until mid-April due to the rigorous review process, and me wanting to have feature parity before I apply. It is available now for beta testing on iOS through Apple’s TestFlight program.… Keep reading

Android FieldLog 1.5.3 Release | Drop Rigs

February 20, 2026 By houstin 0 Comments

Release Date: February 19, 2025
Version: 1.5.3

Drop Rig Tracking

The headline feature of this release is support for unattended drop rig recordings. Field recordists can now track equipment deployed in remote locations with specific extra toggles and visual indicators.

Two-Stage Toggle System

Drop rig tracking uses a simple two-toggle approach:

Drop Rig toggle marks a take as associated with drop rig equipment
Currently Dropped toggle (appears when Drop Rig is enabled) indicates the rig is actively deployed in the field

When you mark a rig as “Currently Dropped,” the start time represents deployment, and toggling it off automatically sets the stop time to mark retrieval.… Keep reading

Field Recording, Ambience, and Soundscape: What Do Words Actually Mean?

January 27, 2026 By houstin 0 Comments

The vocabulary around environmental audio can be surprisingly broad. I’ve briefly discussed the take/recording dilemma before, and today I’d like to touch on field recording, ambience, and soundscape. These terms are often used interchangeably in casual conversation (well, mostly reddit and youtube, normal people don’t really use them at all,) yet each carries a distinct history, lineage, and theoretical set of expectations.

Field Recording

Field recording is the simplest of the three terms, because it describes a practice: going out into the world and capturing sound with a microphone and a recorder.… Keep reading

Android FieldLog v1.5.2 – Take Creation Speedups

January 20, 2026 By houstin 0 Comments

Release Date: January 19, 2025
Version: 1.5.2

Take Creation Memory/Speed Ups

It was always the intention to make the number of tracks/sample rate/bit depth save between takes, so the last used one would be the default when creating a new take. This broke somewhere along the line, but I have it fixed now.

There have been a number of dependency and gradle components updated as well.

As always, please reach out if you have feature requests or find bugs!… Keep reading

Android FieldLog v1.5.1 – Map Improvements

December 22, 2025 By houstin 0 Comments

Release Date: December 22, 2025
Version: 1.5.1

Enhanced Map Experience

The maps have been a bit subpar, since I’ve mostly been using them on the web app. So here are a bunch of changes for the android version….

Maps now use the entire screen in landscape orientation, providing significantly more viewable area.
The map preserves your position and zoom level when rotating the device, and all controls adapt automatically to your screen size (buttons resize from 40-48dp, padding adjusts from 8-24dp).

… Keep reading

Fulfilling the original intention: FieldLog goes abroad!

December 9, 2025 By houstin 0 Comments

I started writing FieldLog after frustrations from how poorly I handled organization after a trip to England in April. Well, I’ve been using the Android app (and syncing online) since around the start of September, and I took it on a recent trip to Japan for two weeks in November. I generated about 600GB of /stuff/ a mix of video, audio, and photos.

Particularly when it comes to audio I generated 21 ambiances, and another dozen plus longer form takes.

As I get through processing things, I’ll upload them to my YouTube channel you can find at https://www.youtube.com/@houstinwehaveaproblem… Keep reading

FieldLog Android Update – Version 1.5.0

December 3, 2025 By houstin 0 Comments

Smoother, Faster: Text Input Fixes and Under-the-Hood Improvements

Version 1.5.0 might not look different on the surface, but it feels dramatically better. I fixed the text input lag that made typing feel sluggish, and updated a ton of dependencies. It’s amazing how much the mobile ecosystem moves on even in a few months.

A lot of these problems I found while using the app out in the field on a Japan trip. So it was a lot of small problems that didn’t come up sitting at my desk.… Keep reading