where there’s smoke there’s fire

While we are entering the slow summer months (Nikon seldom announces major products during that time), I have prepared several guest posts to keep us entertained. Today’s article by Otto Peter is on the audio levels of the Nikon D4 and D800 DSLR cameras (check also Otto’s previous guest post on how to modify the Yongnuo RF603N wireless remote flash trigger to fit non-Nikon flash trigger sources). If you have an interesting idea for a guest post, you can contact me here.

Nikon says nothing about audio parameters of the D800, so I measured some of them. I have my own D800, and I was permitted to record some test signals with a D4 at a local dealer. I did not care about the built in microphone, and used only the external audio input. I also did not concern myself with auto sensitivity. Signals were generated by an Audio Precision System One audio analyzer, recorded on a memory card, extracted from the video stream on a PC, and the digital audio data was either fed back into the System One, or viewed in time and frequency domain in Adobe Audition. While I took reasonable care to provide correct results, I am known to have erred at times – so I beg pardon, should I have got something wrong.

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