[Barry Doyle]

Probably better to let your sound recordist choose the best mics as per each situation. There’s no one mic for all occasions and the sound guy I work with has 4 or five different shotgun mics for different situations.

However, I own an NTG2 and an NTG3. NTG3 is far superior in most regards. The sound is worlds apart and the build quality of the NTG2 is pretty toy like. I’d guess that the NTG@ was designed for video conferencing situations where the robustness and quality aren’t critical. The NTG3 is more on par with lower end professional equipment and is indeed not dissimilar to the Sennheiser 416. Considering that they’re both pretty cheap, you’d be mad to go for the NTG2 for film and documentary production.

As an aside, sound guys tell me that the Zoom H4N is very clunky and unprofessional to use. Can’t ride the levels. XLR not designed for mic level input, takes ages to start up and format media etc. etc. You’d be much better of with a proper mixer and recorder setup. Nowadays you can get a pretty decent setup for around 4-5K Euro. Remember, It’s not cheap if it doesn’t do the job properly.