More Panasonic FZ150 Tests

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Since acquiring the camera, I decided early on, the internal microphone was its one failings. So I have been investigating buying a dedicated video microphone. The Panasonic model is £80+ pounds & the Rode a similar amount complete with an additional wind muffler. I had used my Olympus recorder as a mike direct into Audacity on a LT with some success. So I contacted Olympus UK & checked with them, they passed my query on to their technical dep't in Belgium who sent a 4 word reply "use the earphone socket. The camera has a female 2.5mm socket & the Olympus a 3.5mm, so I bought a conversion jack/socket, a short 3.5 mm lead & a flash mount fitting to fit the mike to the camera. Tonight I thought I would give them a try, but couldn't find the fitting to attach the mike to the flash socket. So I hung it from the tripod. After switching off the camera vibration detection, I switched on the recorder, pressed record, switched on the camera set on inteligent auto & pressed record. The results are in the attached zip. Please let me know what you think. No crudity please.

Yachtsman1.

mike test.zip

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Before I went to bed last night I found the fitting to attach the mike to the camera, I had put it in a safe place on an attachment bracket that allows you to mount the flash/recorder/mike off camera, I'd put it on there for safe keeping

Anyway, this morning I've taken some pictures to illustrate what I did. After a proper trial, mounting the mike/recorder to the flash socket is not the way to go, you can't use the optical viewfinder & there is a metal to metal connection between the hot shoe & the mike with no shock absorbtion, so I may try the aforementioned bracket. More later.

Yachtsman1

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Tom

I'm not suprised it was not perfect, it was within a metre of the TV & hung from the tripod at an angle of 90degrees. I didn't bother changing the Olympus settings from my last use, a voice over with the mike 300mm from my mouth. It has many settings to fine tune it to the situation it's being used in. Which may not be a good thing in this instance. However, rather than shell out for a dedicated mike, I will use this one for the time being. More later.

Regards Eric

Yachtsman1.