Help with ports for mic

bmovie hero · November 29, 2005

Hey.

I'm 17, begining to build up a portfolio for film school and am about to start shooting a short film for A-Level. My camera is a Sony DCR-HC90E.

Now I'm looking to get an external mic to improve on the stodgy sound quality you get with the standard internals. I've borrowed an okay little microphone from a relative, but I'm not sure whether I'm able to hook it up to my camera. I've been reading the manual and it's my understanding that you can only plug in a mic from the shoe port on the top of the camera (and that shotgun mics come with the stuff that alows you to do this without an extra adaptors). But my mic is just your regular joe microphone with a big fat jack - now I can get adaptors to downscale the size but I can't even see a port for a smaller jack on the camera, so is it not possible to hook it up?

Other jacks on the camera are: A/V, DC IN, USB, and "DV Interface jack".

Any help greatly appreciated - sorry if this kind of post comes up alot, but I did a search and couldn't find anything.

Cheers.

Michael Collier · November 30, 2005

The mic connects through contacts in the shoe? What will camera manufacturers think of next. Every non-standard 'solution' they come up with is riddled with problems

Can you get the shoe that mates with it and then splice the wires with a 1/4" addaptor? can you hook wires directly into the shoes electrical contacts? none of the other jacks you listed will accept audio, so tapping into the shoe sounds like the only method. If you can find a shoe to canabalize, i would try that

bmovie hero · November 30, 2005

Thanks for the reply.

That's what I feared... does anyone know if there is a shoe you can get that has your basic microphone port in? Or any other ways I can get around this?

Cheers.

bmovie hero · November 30, 2005

Ooo - I've discovered a new port! It's called a LANC jack. Can that accept a mic? It's blue if that makes any difference.

Peace.

Matt Irwin · December 1, 2005

Just so I understand your question, are you trying to connect an XLR shotgun mic to a 3.5 mini-jack on the camera? If so, a company called Beachtek makes an adapter specifically for that purpose and they can be found here.

Since this is a cinematography forum that deals mainly with lighting and camera work (etc), you may get more replies to audio questions at a production audio forum or DVInfo.

Best,

Matthew Parnell · December 1, 2005

The lanc jack cannot take a microphone. It is a control port to control zoom, focus, recordning, etc.

If there is no 3.5mm input in the camera, and you can only put a mic on using hot shoe, i cant see you succeeding in connecting an external mic. Recording to MiniDisk or DAT using a clapperboard and then syncing in post is another relatively viable and common option.

Cheers,

Matt Parnell