I don't have line in. How about these solutions?

[Joe Sacher]

If I used something louder I run a greater risk, correct? Is there any way of determining or guesstimating what levels would be the upper limits?

Mic input is very low. I would stay under 1 V peak to peak. Error on too low and work your way up. Does the camera have a headphone jack you can use to monitor?

The hot shoe has been diagramed (sort of) and the contacts have been labeled...if I showed you the contacts would you be able to tell me a bit about them? There are probably about 12 - I am wondering if I need a ground connected or something before trying this - again if you don't know thanks for the help so far, I honestly really appreciate you taking your time to lend your 2 cents especially since you even warn against it...thank you!

I can't tell you anything about the contacts by looking at them. The idea of measuring voltage between points is to establish a ground. If that is the actual shoe housing, then you have an easier job. My guess is there is also some connection or sensing that has to happen to tell the camera to use the external mic, instead of the internal.

BTW - The only reason to do this is to learn something. In the long run, you rarely save money by hacking things together. I speak from experience. Good luck.

Now back to work. :(

[Bryan Beasleigh]

Rob If I was trying to be difficult I wouldn't have spent the time to try and find a way around this. I was unable to find an easy remedy.

The options as I see haven't changed. Hack the camera or hack a mic that has a shoe that will interface. Hacking a mic would be a no brainer for anyone with a little electronics skill. getting the mic to hack is another matter.

It would be a matter of epoxying a female jack to the mic shoe housing and securing any wiring.

Edit
I don't really want to be involved at any level at all.

Best wishes

BB

[Rob Hester]

Hacking a mic would be a no brainer for anyone with a little electronics skill.

Yeah, I was just looking for a bit of help. Thanks though.

Rob

[Bryan Beasleigh]

Rob
I wasn't taking a shot at your electronics skill. If you find a mic then anyone with a basic electronics skill could help you. Without something to work with we're all spinning our wheels. The hardest part is finding something to hack. You know the options, the rest is up to you/

[Ryan Henry]

I have a camera without a mic input, too. It has a built in stereo mic system. I'm planning on adding a mic jack to it. One thing to remeber is that your camera probably has some form of compression (sometimes called automatic gain control) which you might not be able to turn off (I can't with my camera) and can make using an external mic a little more tricky.

Ryan

[Rob Hester]

Yea, thats something I forgot to add to the original topic. I am guessing that it probably does have and use AGC from the mic...but hopefully through the info shoe it wont...I believe that the JVC mics you buy have some sort of either zoom or volume adjusters...

Ryan, what type of camera do you have?

[Rob Hester]

update
I dug up the old threads over at camcorderinfo if anyone wishing to lend a hand would like to check out the progress

All 3 have pictures

No ext. micro input for JVC GR DV3000 :(
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/bbs/sho...&threadid=5108

MZ-V3U modification
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/bbs/sho...threadid=18045

DV3000 ext mic adapter
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/bbs/sho...threadid=13649