Anyone know anything about micrphones?

[slackerinabox]

Quick summary: what's a good brand of moderately priced ($100-300, max - used ok) microphones?

I'm looking to start filming some short films for fun and have a canon digital SLR and tascam audio recorder ready to go (xlr jacks, phantom power supplied). I need a shotgun microphone that's fairly flexible with a focused pick up (we'll be filming in mixed environments, including indoors and outdoors in loud NYC). The brands I grew up respecting have gone from prosumer to price ranges that are prohibitive (the senheisser shotgun and module that many recommend reaching $800). Since this is hobby level with some perhaps online or local film festival aspirations, I'd like something solid but not mortgage the house expensive (I have a lot of other gear left to purchase).

Brand recommendations would be great, specific models would be fantastic 🙂

 

[Kaido]

Check out our Digital & Video Camera forum:

http://forums.anandtech.com/forumdisplay.php?f=36

 

[Kaido]

Ken Stone has a nice review of low-cost boom mics here:

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/review_shotgun_mics.html

I would highly recommend reading this short book:

http://www.tyford.com/Ty_Ford_Audio_Bootcamp_Field_Guide.html

Basically, there is no such thing as "focused pickup" in audio recording. Shotgun mics are just a shape that create a pattern, but it's not like a zoom lens on a camera. The only real trick is to get the microphone to within 12" of the person's mouth, if you're doing vocal recording.

Pretty much you need to decide how you are going to record audio. Most films use a ton of ADR these days (after dialogue replacement, where the actors redo their lines in a studio and replace what was originally recorded, so they get a nice, clean sound). If you can't use ADR (which is typically expensive and really annoying to do, and can't really be done in a lot of situations like documentary filming where you only talk to a subject once), then you need to capture good on-set sound. Mainly vocals, if it involves people. Otherwise you'll end up picking up noise from everywhere and it will sound really amateurish.

If you are going to be doing vocals, then I'd recommend investing in a good lav mic (clip-on). You can hide it pretty much anywhere and it sounds almost as good as a boom/shotgun mic, but you don't have to have someone hold it, you don't need the extra (expensive) equipment (good-quality boom arm, dead cat windmuff, etc.), and you don't risk it getting into the shot visually (lavs are easy to hide). The standard mic is a bit out of your pricerange, but the one they use on a lot of TV shows & movies is the Sanken COS-11D, which goes for $470 with an XLR plug:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc..._Lavalier.html

I'm not a fan of wireless because even a cheap $10 XLR cable is better than the most expensive wireless system, so I just have a couple lengths of XLR cable. Canare Star-Quad (the blue cable) is what I like to use, for an idea of pricing, a 25-foot length is about $30. So if you can get away with running a long XLR cable and using a good-quality lav mic, you can really make your video look professional because it will sound professional.

btw, which Tascam recorder do you have?

 

[artvscommerce]

I would check out Rode mics. I use their large diaphragm condenser in my studio and I am really impressed with the price/performance ratio. Many of my friends that are in your field use Rode shotgun mics with their camera setups.

 

[Kaido]

I would check out Rode mics. I use their large diaphragm condenser in my studio and I am really impressed with the price/performance ratio. Many of my friends that are in your field use Rode shotgun mics with their camera setups.

Their new ones are pretty awesome. I used a Rode VideoMic for a long time when I first started out. I've heard a lot of good things about the NTG series too:

http://www.rodemic.com/mics

 

[Puppies04]

I know there is an "o" in there somewhere.

 

[Krazy4Real]

I don't know anything about micrphones.

 

[slackerinabox]

Sorry for the radio silence on this and thanks all for your suggestions! I settled on the tascam dr40 + senheisser ME66 and k6 module ($250 for the mic and module, yay craigslist!).