Loud hissing in on-camera mic

Tyrant Lizard

Tyrant Lizard

Active member
Is this a standard problem with the AF-100? I'm finding it has a very audible hiss in the microphone. With a little searching I've seen some other people complain.

I was worried I might have blown up my microphone when I brought the camera into an indoor gun range. But now that I've seen a few more posts like it, I don't know.

Any thoughts or knowledge on this issue?

Thanks guys.
 
Hi,

Why not give us a few details. Like how far away was your audio source and how high did you have to ride the gain. And I am assuming you are talking about the internal microphone? If not, please supply the microphone model that you are using and which gain setting you have chosen in the menu, along with where you have manually set the audio levels on the outside of the camera.

Best,

jan
 
Jan,

Thank you for your reply.

Details:

On-Camera Microphone.
Gain is pretty much factory set, I haven't messed with that at all. The levels on the left and right channel were both placed in the "medium" setting, straight up.

The subject was several feet from the camera (not the gunshot, the actor in the scene which took place days after).

I honestly think my problem is I've turned the levels up in editing so much that I'm hearing the hiss. I mean, if I did punch out my mic with the gunshot, would it even still function?

Here's the thing: I have been shooting for a while but I am still learning. It's a bit embarrassing to tell these stories of failure on here with all of you seasoned pros, but I look at this place as a learning ground where we can share our experiences to gain knowledge from them. I am the kind of kid who will ask a question in front of the class even if it makes me look stupid, so please bear with me.

I was going to share this story before but didn't out of embarrassment. It seems like now is the appropriate time (this is a different story from the gun range episode).

I had my AF100 rolling and I plugged in an XLR mic into input one, I then flipped the input switches to activate it, then realized I should plug it into input two and toggled the switches. Well, it totally froze up my camera. I mean none of the buttons worked. I tried turning it off but it wouldn't (it would stay on, even though the power switch was set to "off") so I just had to remove the battery. When I put the battery back in it was fine.

Later, I had the Shotgun mic plugged back into the XLR and it was recording fine, but when I turned the levels down to record loud audio at close range (guy yelling into the microphone) it seemed to just crap-out on me and not pick up anything.

So, what does this seem like to you guys? Am I just a complete green horn who fried his camera or what?

Here is a link to a video shot with both the on camera mic and the XLR, both of which took place after these occurances: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4FUirtzi4g

The song was recorded using the on-camera mic with a blanket thrown over my head and the camera, the rest of it was all shotgun. I think it sounds pretty good, but now I'm getting this crazy hissing noise. I think I just need to learn more about audio or get myself an audio guy.

Thank you
 
The first part (where they guy is drawing the logo) .. there's a very strange mechanical tone to it... I'm not sure what's going on
with that.

IMHO, I would never use the on camera mics on the AF100 unless for audio sync. They're not so good.

The rest of it .. I don't think that is that bad (hiss wise). You just need somebody who knows how to do post audio.

I would just re-record the first part with a field recorder and be done with it.

jeff
ps: What was your shotgun mic .. your levels .. and were use using phantom power from the AF100?
 
Thanks.

Shotgun was the Audio Technica At4073a running off of phantom power. Levels I think were about middle range (it depended because sometimes we had to have it attached to camera and other times on a boom).

I am editing something else that was shot recording only the af100 camera mic, it has a lot of hissing in it. When that is done I will post it here. I am going to buy some good headphones so I can properly listen to what the hell I am doing.

Thanks again for the response.

So you don't think I blew up my mic when I took it into that gun range?

T-Rex
 
Tyrant Lizard said:
Thanks.

Shotgun was the Audio Technica At4073a running off of phantom power. Levels I think were about middle range (it depended because sometimes we had to have it attached to camera and other times on a boom).

I am editing something else that was shot recording only the af100 camera mic, it has a lot of hissing in it. When that is done I will post it here. I am going to buy some good headphones so I can properly listen to what the hell I am doing.

Thanks again for the response.

So you don't think I blew up my mic when I took it into that gun range?

T-Rex
Click to expand...

A typical handgun shot is like 160db .. which will definitely clip the 4073 (max SPL 126db) .. but .. it won't hurt
it either. Water on the other hand ... :-) I use a dynamic mic for high SPL and put as much of a pad on it
as I can.

I wouldn't waste your time trying to diagnose the on-camera mics on the AF100 .. they sound bad .. don't use 'em :-)

jeff
 
Thanks, man. I guess I learned that the hard way. I'm editing something shot entirely with it now in Vegas and am actually doing a decent job cleaning up the audio. I'll post it here when I'm done with it. Hopefully will be within the next few days. It is a beast (which is funny because it is such a simple movie).
 
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