new wireless from Nikon

B

Bruce Watson

Veteran
Anyone care to comment on the new wireless system from Nikon? It appears to

1) be Bluetooth based
2) claim a range of 50m
3) send a stereo signal
4) send headphone monitoring to both transmitter and receiver
5) have a mic on both transmitter and receiver (to record interviewer questions as well as interviewee answers)
6) have a street price in the mid $240s USD

Sounds too good to be true. Anyone get to beta test it? If so, any comments? I would love to hear someone say that Bluetooth can work well at 50m. I would also like to hear how it does in RF hostile environments like... everywhere.
 
I do not trust Bluetooth systems. They are unstable, and all the Bluetooth wireless audio systems I have experienced also compress the foo out of the sound.

Further, the built-in mics on those little clip-on, all-in-one mic/transmitter devices are less than stellar.

Both the microphone and the receiver capture audio, allowing you to record voices of both the photographer and the subject. Headphones can be plugged into both the mic and the receiver so that both parties can hear each other when shooting at a distance.
Click to expand...

The "behind the camera" sounds are typically the last thing I would want to record, though I can certainly see where a one-man-band interviewer/shooter may want to be heard. The bigger question, then, is if these two mics are recorded as a mixed signal (which I'd be willing to bet they are).

And discrete IFB earpieces notwithstanding, it would look rather silly for the interviewee to be wearing headphones. Just sayin'...
 
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Sony have had a bluetooth system for a while but it is not a very good transmissions system and will probably put everything out of sync with the camera.
 
That Nikon product looks suspiciously identical to the Sony bluetooth microphone product. Notable by its absence was the spec for latency.
It seems quite possible this is simply a re-branding of the Sony gadget, although I would have expected better of Nikon.
 
Richard Crowley said:
That Nikon product looks suspiciously identical to the Sony bluetooth microphone product. Notable by its absence was the spec for latency.
It seems quite possible this is simply a re-branding of the Sony gadget, although I would have expected better of Nikon.
Click to expand...

From the blurbpage on the Nikon site...
---
Functionality of the ME-W1 Wireless Microphone includes:
• Mixing (mono and stereo, mono and mono)
• Sound delay suppressive function
• Eco cancellation
• Noise cancellation
• Popping sound cancellation
---

I wonder what 'Sound delay suppressive function'...

Does the word 'suppressive' suggest that it is 'less than full' suppression... as in 'well there's a little bit of delay'...
 
As I understand it bluetooth is a buffered data stream similar to USB so the delay may be variable which is worse as you can not compensate for it in post.
 
Richard Crowley said:
That Nikon product looks suspiciously identical to the Sony bluetooth microphone product. Notable by its absence was the spec for latency.
It seems quite possible this is simply a re-branding of the Sony gadget, although I would have expected better of Nikon.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't - it's a good idea, in principle.

Nikon's expertise is in cameras and lenses - Sony's expertise is in audio.

So it makes sense for Nikon to go to an audio expert for an OEM radio system.

I'm just surprised that they went for the bottom of the range stuff that is, IMHO, unusable for anything but non-serious domestic use.

I would have thought that a 2.4GHz system would have been more useful (even if those tend to fall over when the audience are all using their iPhones, iPads etc. taking photos and tweeting them).
 
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