Are there mic settings in Rebel SL2 / 200D?

[CharlieNS]

Hey all

I have a brand new EOS Rebel SL2 and an external mic (Rode). The mic works fine (tested it on my phone voice recorder). The camera's internal mic works fine, too. But when I plug the external mic into the Rebel, I get no sound recorded at all. Are there microphone settings somewhere in the phone where I have to enable it or something?

I have tried looking around the menus with the camera in M mode and P mode. When I look at the shooting screen, there's a little symbol down the bottom that comes on when I plug in the mic - it looks like three little nested U's alongside a mic symbol and it has "OFF" in small letters next to it. This symbol disappears when I pull the mic out, so I'm assuming this is showing that the exernal mic is plugged in, but is "OFF". If this is correct, where are the options to enable it? I've been into Menu and can only find Auto/Manual/Disable options, and it's set to Auto. The levels on this same screen confirm sound is being picked up with the internal mic, but nothing moves (no sound) when the external is plugged in. Any help please?

[kvbarkley]

You are doing everything correctly. Does the Rode require phantom power?

[CharlieNS]

Thanks for your reply. You might be onto something here. It's a lapel style mic (Rode smartLav+), and it worked fine on my phone, which would provide phantom power. I found an old headset with a separate headphone and mic jack, and plugged the mic one into the camera. With that, the camera picked up the sound from the external feed with no problem. Could it be that the lapel style mic I purchased needs phantom power (which I'm assuming the SL2 doesn't provide) but my old headset doesn't?

Reading the box for the smartLav+ it suspiciously talks about pluggint it into phones and mobile devices, but not cameras. I was sold this mic specifically for the camera, though, so it sounds like I'll be going back to the store to ask more questions. Thanks again for your reply.

[CharlieNS]

Ok, just for closure, I took the Rode SmartLav lapel mic back to the store, and swapped it for an audio technica lapel mike (which actually said it was for phones and cameras). Suddenly, no problems with it working. Seems the one I was sold originally is only compatible with smart phones, so poor choice on the part of the sales person who recommended it.

Ultimately after a lot of testing, however, I wasn't happy with the sound quality that the lapel mike produced on the camera. It sounded great on the smartphone, but produced a very hollow sound on the camera, no matter how I played with settings (it was better with lower manual recording volume, but still not crisp as I would expect). So I purchased a Rode Videomicro mic that mounts on the 200D shoe, and plugs in to the external port. Very happy with this. So now I'm using that for audio on the camera, and recording a back-up audio track on my phone with the lapel mic.

Problem solved.