What microphone suits me best?

[Chris Conlee]

Generally speaking, what you want to do is get whatever microphone you’re using as close as humanly possible to the talent who’s speaking. That’s why every professional movie and television show has a boom operator and a production mixer. Getting the mic as close to the talent as possible increases the dialog level relative to the surrounding ambience (noise) and creates a better track.

Any mic that you put on your camera is already going to be operating from a position of compromise, because it will be further from your talent than you want.

A shotgun mic will be more directional and can sort of zero in on your talent, but if the talent is not directly in front of the camera’s lens, the audio will start to fall off quite aggressively. Conversely, an omni cardiod mic will pick up talent in a broader range, but will also pick up more surrounding noise. It’s not a simple answer.

The shock mount, however, is simply a device which seeks to minimize sounds incurred by handling the camera and mic. Since the mic is directly connected to the camera, any handling sounds get transfered directly to the mic and end up in your soundtrack. But with a proper shock mount you can reduce that.

Good luck.

Chris

[Ty Ford]

Hello Alex and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.

Maybe this will help explain more about the helpful points Chris is making.

https://tyfordaudiovideo.blogspot.com/2012/03/non-shotgun-boom-mics-for-interiors-and.html

Regards,

Ty Ford
Audio Forum Leader

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog

[Alex Vallin]

yes I understand that a shotgun mic is directional.How Can I possibly get a shotgun mic and have it record to something else(other than the camera) I think the camera does a REALLY bad job at recording audio.I have a t3i.My friend let me borrow an audio technica at875r and its a 170$ mic but it sounds really really noise and does not sound as loud as the built in camera microphone.Please recomend me a shotgun mic and an external recording device I can control/hear/record my audio to! dont want to spend anymore than 300$.
I have seen something about plugging in the Rode into an zoom H1 because the Zoom H1 has an SD card to record into but I am not sure if that will give me good quality? and I am going to build a boom pole & shock myself since I work in the CNC machining field.

[Tony Koretz]

Getting a microphone off the camera is something you really want to do if at all possible. Doing some reading on the subjects of microphones, and also general things like syncing audio with video would probably benefit you. Try to understand some of the principles of these things a bit more before you spend money on buying equipment. It takes practice, experience and a good knowledge of the subject to get proficient at getting good, professional sounding audio. Since a good link has been posted already to a tutorial on microphones, I won’t get too specific there, but I have written a tutorial on the importance of getting good audio with video, which you may also find to be helpful, and you can find that tutorial here:

https://rocksuresoundz.com/2011/10/11/the-importance-of-getting-good-audio/

Rocksure Soundz
https://rocksuresoundz.com