Best ENG Shotgun Mic but cheap enough?
- Thread starter Speedster159
- Start date
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
I'm not sure I would go with the conventional thinking on that. I think it often takes a fair amount of skill to get good results from marginal equipment. I'm with you on pricey gear, maybe with really great gear you creep down to 15%/85%, but unskilled use of pricey gear turns out just as bad as unskilled use of cheap gear.
You will hit some quality walls with cheap gear. If a mic is just plain noisy there is only so much you can do to mitigate that, or if the clock is really sloppy on the recorder and your drift is bad, or wobbly, that is hard to get around. But cheap gear in good hands will trum good gear in bad hands 99.9% of the time.
So to the OP, mounting the mic on the camera basically puts a number of big restrictions on the quality of any mic. Basically you now have a "cheap mic" so you need to be really aware of how that is going to impact the sound in any given situation.
A down side that we haven't talked about is that nobody can focus on sound and image at the same time. So if you are a OMB then one or the other is going to be compromised inherently and as the camera operator that will be sound almost always.
You will hit some quality walls with cheap gear. If a mic is just plain noisy there is only so much you can do to mitigate that, or if the clock is really sloppy on the recorder and your drift is bad, or wobbly, that is hard to get around. But cheap gear in good hands will trum good gear in bad hands 99.9% of the time.
So to the OP, mounting the mic on the camera basically puts a number of big restrictions on the quality of any mic. Basically you now have a "cheap mic" so you need to be really aware of how that is going to impact the sound in any given situation.
A down side that we haven't talked about is that nobody can focus on sound and image at the same time. So if you are a OMB then one or the other is going to be compromised inherently and as the camera operator that will be sound almost always.
onemanband-videomaker
Carbonite Member
actually I do ENG and event coverage and live stuff and I use the shotgun on the camera all the time as a mandatory backup track in case something goes wrong with the G3, or handheld . In my recent career I had to use the backup track maybe 3 or 4 times, but I know that the day that I'll turn off the shotgun THEN something will happen for sure and there will be no audio at all.
about the AT875R I agree that's a decent microphone but doesn't fit into the description of a shotgun. A good shotgun (but a real one, not the 875) should be used on a boom from the above and THEN becomes a real soundtrack (but that happens in the movies, because you need a guy holding the boom). All the microphones on the camera are just that: microphones on the camera, good as a backup track in the "better than nothing" kinda of situation. But they are necessary. Absolutely.
combatentropy
Veteran
Which to get:
How to use it, for dialog at least:
Some motivation for spending the time and effort (notice I didn't say money, since it's likely less than you spent on one of your stupid lenses):
How to use it, for dialog at least:
Some motivation for spending the time and effort (notice I didn't say money, since it's likely less than you spent on one of your stupid lenses):
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