Microphone on Nikon D5000 just about useless

kevinpw

I took my D5000 to the LovEvolution Festival in San Francisco this weekend. It was an outdoor rave during the day, so lots of (naked) people, many stages with loud electronic music.

I took some videos with the camera, and when I watched it on my computer the audio is more or less useless. All I hear is BZZZZ BZZZZ BZZZZ BZZZZ from the bass, could not hear any treble at all.

I know some of you guys are gonna say "well you don't buy a D5000 for recording video, dummy," but really I wasn't expecting something great, not even good, just decent. Instead, I can't find any other word to describe it except useless. I have a Lumix TZ5, and my friend took vids with an old Olympus, and both have better audio than my D5000.

I expected better quality all around when I paid hundreds of dollars more. Did I expect too much? Or is there some kind of setting I can use? I looked around in the menu and did not find any audio setting.

Thanks

ziggy53

I suspect that the D5000 microphone was being overdriven, meaning that it is not designed for the pressure decibels the speakers were putting out. With cheap microphones at close proximity to the source you might have to dampen the sound by whatever means you have. Some folks suggest using a piece of tape over the microphone hole(s), and that might work. Others might suggest a tuned tube if you want to preserve the middle tones and treble, but you would have to experiment to find the right shape and length and composition for the tube.

If you're really serious about audio you should investigate the addition of an external microphone. Adding an input probably wouldn't be too difficult but it would void your warranty. Consult with an audio electronics person for the actual circuit design and then you might have to take it to a shop for the physical alterations.

You would also need an external microphone and that would be chosen based on the required impedance of the circuit and the acoustic audio properties you need. Sennheiser makes some rather nice microphones designed to handle the sound levels you describe. Then you should also get some sort of "muff" to protect against wind noise, possibly even a couple of devices, depending on the specific microphone chosen.

Some microphones might also require a "phantom power supply", so keep that in mind to make your selection. External phantom power supplies are available if need be.

kevinpw

yes overdriven, i agree. i'm quite disappointed.

all these words you threw around, circuit, impedance, power supply, takes me back to my EE classes in college

i'd rather not void any warranty. I am not qualified in any Electrical work beyond soldering a few resistors and capacitors here and there, and I'm not even very good at that.

I guess I'll just not stand so close to the speakers next time. Thanks for the tip

divamum

Hate to tell you this, but even dedicated fairly decent microphones can get blown out by music recording, especially at rock concert levels; the preamp may also not be up to coping with the high dynamic range of louder sounds.

Rock concert decibels are the aural equivalent of shooting in a dark room (or in blasting sunlight): you get "noise" (or blow it out until all detail is lost) unless the gear is pretty darned sophisticated.

Does the camera have a "mic in" or "line in" socket? If so, you're golden - add some external mics and/or an external preamp. Otherwise... I suspect you'll find it's not so good for recording *music*, although it probably will cope just fine with speech adn more "normal" dynamic range sounds.

If you pursue the sound aspect of this, check out taperssection.com. Kind of the audio equivalent of dgrin, in that it's a very friendly and helpful board (but read the archives first in case your question has already been answered!)

kevinpw

Thanks for the suggestions. After reading this article, looks like the D5000's movies are simply crummy. http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d5000.htm

Tim Kamppinen

kevinpw wrote:

Thanks for the suggestions. After reading this article, looks like the D5000's movies are simply crummy. http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d5000.htm

Take anything on Ken Rockwell's site with a grain of salt, and certainly don't accept his three line evaluation of the D5000 video as the final word.

There is a lot of cool things that you can do with the D5000 that are impossible with the other cameras you mentioned, but they're all visual, and mostly related to the ability to use interchangeable lenses. For example, you can shoot in very low light and get extremely shallow DOF by shooting with a fast prime lens, something a cheap P&S (or a dedicated consumer video camera, for that matter) is not capable of. However audio is indeed a week link, being mono and having no external mic jack. If you're serious about doing video with great audio you can try recording with a different device and then syncing the sound with the video in an editing program.

I have a D90 and the video is pretty much the same as the D5000. I haven't done much with it yet, and yes there are a lot of limitations, but I still want to experiment and see what IS possible instead of focusing on what isn't. At the end of the day, however, these are primarily still cameras and the video is just an added feature that hasn't yet reached its full potential.

Zing

I ran into this issue before. I was hired to record video for a local band, and no matter what I tried the audio was completely distorted. My camera didn't have and input for an external microphone, so what I ended up doing was recording the sound separately with a sound recorder. What I used was a Sanyo digital sound recorder. This worked out great, because you can adjust the input level so that you don't get distortion. Then all I had to do was replace the audio on the video with the recorded audio with video editing software. Does anyone know anything about Klipsch? I think they sell speakers and stuff, am wondering if they might also sell audio recorders.

BradfordBenn

Something else to consider is that the microphones on most cameras are tuned to pickup human voice well, not music. I know that sounds like splitting hairs but they are designed for taking video & audio of someone blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. The microphone element is very tiny and cannot handle the full frequency ranges of music. I worked with another friend of mine on a similar problem and the solution we came up with was to purchase an external recorder and then sync it up in post production. However that might be more than you want to do.

insanefred

D5000 does not have a mic input.
D5000 should have a mic input volume control of some sort. Look through menus. It might have an "AUTO" for it's microphone. Try it.
D5000's microphone is like ANY consumer mic, you STILL need to adjust the input gain. or it can get over loaded.
Like others said, if you're serious about audio, get a external recording device. Even some IEM's, so you can hear what's being recorded.

I recently got the D5100 over the D5000, one big reason is it has a external mic jack.

Pupator

D7000 microphone is basically useless too, but at least it has a plug-in for an external. D7000 + Rode shotgun mic is excellent.

LoneWolf1

d5000 inernal mic sucks and no external port
I agree with you, the d5000 mic sucks and there is no external mic input. I shoot a lot of shows in clubs and my simple flip camera gets better video and sound quality than does the d5000. Sorry Nikon you blew it with this function.

kevinpw wrote: »

I took my D5000 to the LovEvolution Festival in San Francisco this weekend. It was an outdoor rave during the day, so lots of (naked) people, many stages with loud electronic music.

I took some videos with the camera, and when I watched it on my computer the audio is more or less useless. All I hear is BZZZZ BZZZZ BZZZZ BZZZZ from the bass, could not hear any treble at all.

I know some of you guys are gonna say "well you don't buy a D5000 for recording video, dummy," but really I wasn't expecting something great, not even good, just decent. Instead, I can't find any other word to describe it except useless. I have a Lumix TZ5, and my friend took vids with an old Olympus, and both have better audio than my D5000.

I expected better quality all around when I paid hundreds of dollars more. Did I expect too much? Or is there some kind of setting I can use? I looked around in the menu and did not find any audio setting.

Thanks