Difficulties with sound on Sony Z5

[Makris]

Hi all, I've now shot two films with my Sony Z5 and I have to admit I don't understand how the sound works on it.

I shot my first film using the bundled XM1 mic, and that seemed fine. I shot my second film with a Rode NTG-2 shot gun, and the sound levels seemed too low. I tried it using batteries and phantom power (not at the same time), and that didn't seem to make much difference. I tried cranking the sound up using the manual volume channel settings, but that seemed quite noisey. Same problem with noise using the trim setting for the XLR. I can't believe the XM1 has a better signal-to-noise ratio than the NTG-2. Am I doing something wrong?

Also, what are the units on the camera's noise meter? It doesn't seemed to be documented anywhere.

I film solo and use minimal equipment (I work as a visual anthropologist, so we need to be vewy vewy quiet, unobtrusive and travel very light) so I don't use a sound mixer. The mic also has to stay mounted on the camera most of the time, so some of the problem is no doubt simply that I'm too far away (over two feet). That's fine, and I can live with that, but even up close the bundled mic seems to outperform the Rode. I know the Rode is a good mic, so I'm sure it is an operator problem.

Any suggestions welcome, as I've only been making films for 12 months now and have only had this camera for six months.

Thanks!