Bad XL2 mic
 

Hello everyone, been lurking here for a while and have benefitted from a number of threads and the search engine. Thanks for the great resource. I picked up an XL2 in November and have used it very sparingly (just enough to get to know it). I took it on its first shoot last weekend at the Detroit Auto Show and was dismayed to discover that the onboard Canon mic was malfunctioning (it had been working perfectly when I used it previously). The left channel was barely registering any signal at all. Using the manual gain controls I was able to sort of balance it out, but i really had to crank the gain up on the left channel and dial it way back on the right channel. This is surprising and disappointing to say the least.

I like the camera a lot, particularly being able to shoot in 16:9 at 30p, but I sure hope I don't have to ship the whole thing back to get the mic fixed (I ordered online). Has anybody else had a similar problem and been able to get the component replaced rather than returning the whole camera?

rgds

Did you isolate the failure? Try another mic. If the sound is recorded correctly, then your mic is malfunctioning. Otherwise the problem is in the circuitry of your camera. In that case you obviously would have to send in the camera.

yeah, sorry, I should have mentioned that i tested it with another stereo (lav) mic and it worked fine.

<<<-- Originally posted by Rainer Hoffmann : Did you isolate the failure? Try another mic. If the sound is recorded correctly, then your mic is malfunctioning. Otherwise the problem is in the circuitry of your camera. In that case you obviously would have to send in the camera. -->>>

Keith,

A stereo lav mic in the xlr input would not reveal a problem that might lie in the Shotgun mic input up front.

Just a thought.

See if you can beg/borrow another XL2 shotgun mic and test it on camera. IF all is well, then send in the mic. If not, send in the whole rig.

Good luck.

If you can, try the suspect mic in another Canon. It may be that the audio mini- plug was not fully inserted.

Stereo lav - what make/model?

I called Canon's 800 number and they asked me to send the mic back, so I sent it in yesterday.

To clarify, the stereo lav mic I tested was an old Radio Shack I had laying around. It has two separate lav condensors that merge into an unbalanced stereo wire. It was the only other stereo mic I had handy that I could test with quickly.

I unplugged the Canon mic and plugged the stereo lav in to the front mic input. Unfortunately I didn't have access to another XL2 body or mic, so I couldn't have conclusively tested. I was reasonably satisfied with the results from testing with the stereo lav, though.