Kodak Zi8 Onboard Mic Test

One of the features that attracted me to the Kodak Zi8 in the first place was the external microphone input, that allows you to plug in a separate mic… in the test today I used a cheap stereo lavalier mic.

Video Transcript :

I’ve just come downstairs into the garage so I can do a test of the microphone that comes with the Kodak Zi8 camera. The onboard microphone I’ve found in quiet circumstances is a good microphone. If your downstairs in a garage like this, or in a room thats pretty quiet, then using the onboard microphone is a good choice because it gives a good sound.

Now if your in an area where there’s a bit of noise though, then you need to go up from there and maybe use a lavalier microphone. And a good lavalier microphone will help cancel out some of the background noise and will also give you a better overall sound.

What I’m going to do right now is, I’ve got a little stereo lavalier microphone and I’ve got that attatched to my shirt collar and I’m just going to plug that into this little camera, just to let you see (hear) the difference. I’ll jusy do that right now…

Ok, weve plugged in the lavalier microphone and you would have noticed a little bit of a difference to the audio. The advantage of using a separate microphone is that you have the oportunity to improve the quality of the sound. The lavalier microphone I’ve just plugged in does still pick up a lot of background noise but it also gives more importance to the audio from the speaker which is me.

The onboard microphone I found generally tends to blur all the audio that it records, so if there is any outside sounds, apart from the speaker, then it tends to blend them all together and gives you one great big shamozle of sound. And the speaker generally tends to get blurred into the background. With the lavalier microphone that doesn’t happen. It takes the speakers voice, in this case mine, and gives it a highlight, making it louder than the background noise, and thats what oyu want.

Anyway, thats the end of todays test. Thankyou for watching Pro Blog Tips video tutorials, and we’ll speak to you again soon.

Text link to video clip, displayed in ShadowBox…. Kodak Zi8 Onboard Mic Test