choosing from the cheapest shotgun mic

  • Thread starter Thread starter holysphinx1@hotmail.com
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thank You
i was planning to record on my cam for now after i get a mic that i can afford with a balanced extension cable
then save again to buy later a zoom h1 ,
i wasnt planing to use this audio setup in drama series or possible feature film , cas when i am doing these serious projects i do hire an experienced sound team and by then adding the cost of rent equipment make sense !
i was planning to have a small " but ok sound " to use on my little projects things that i could do for no budget !
" things like quick interview mostly for documentary and the far i can think of is a a short scene drama or any small experimental project that may cross my mind in future and that will be done in no budget "
and i understand that You as a pro can not recommend that isnt Pro enough
thank You again and if there are any other option or comment on what i said plz do let me know and learn
thanks for Your time i appreciate it
 
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For documentary and interview uses, I think a lavelier would suit your needs better for now.
I tried linking to a YouTube review of a MicJ 044, but my iPad isn't cooperating. However, Ithe MicJ 044 seems to be the best Lav mic under $80 usd. Paths review also mentioned Audio Technica and Giant Squid Lavs as good alternatives.

For that price, you might be even able to buy the mic and recorder and then add a shotgun when funds are available. The review I saw used it with a zoom recorder. The results sounded very usable. I would suggest a Tascam recorder over zoom because the preamps are quieter and will produce a quieter recording in general.

I hope that helps,
Morgan
 
Thought I would add some detail to this old thread.

I have recently started shooting some little tests and low rent docs etc. I'm a sound guy but for a lot of reasons that others have talked about when you are running around, literally, to keep up with the subject carrying dual system is not practical with out some crew. And of course the built in mic on a T2i sucks. I was thinking of the Rode VMP but hadn't bit the bullet because it's a bit pricey for something that is just going to get you above awful. So when the Takstar SGC-598 showed up for around $30 I figured it couldn't be any worse than the built in mic.

Well I have been using it for about a month now and it's OK. Since I'm using it straight into the DSLR it's never going to sound that great and I'm not likely to use it direct to a recorder (I have much better options) I'm not claiming anything about how it would be compared to a decent shotgun going in to a decent recorder. I'm pretty sure it would sound thin and "cheap", it's a very small diaphragm and probably has atrocious bass response, but for what I'm doing I don't really care. It's actually a plus probably since there is very little handling noise.

It has a bit less gain than the VMP so you are a bit more dependent on the cameras pre's but really it hasn't been bad.

Now for talking head interviews, everything you have heard about the issues of on camera mics is true. You just are not going to get close enough so unless you are in a very quiet room you will have problems.

For those situations I have another solution which is a bunch more work but...

I will bring my sound kit and use a wireless hop to the camera.

Another thing is that with out some weird adapter there is no way on the T2i to monitor levels. I have MagicLantern installed so the AGC is disabled and I probably will rig up monitoring because as sound folks have been saying forever, If you are the shooter you are looking at the shot and you really are the worst person to try and evaluate the sound quality. It's TRUE. My original aim was really only to use it for some experiments and as a higher quality scratch track. It works great for that. I got sucked into doing clips for this run and gun doc and for the shots of the machinery and general B roll kinds of stuff it has been a lot better than I expected. For interviews... Maybe a much better mic mounted on the camera would work better but I kind of doubt it would help much. You are just about never going to shoot an interview with the camera less that 24" from the subject. That is way too in their face for them to be comfortable so the mic is never going to in a place to get decent sound. It's better than the built in but no where near acceptable. I can probably "fix" the one that was done this way because I have a lot of years of turd polishing but I won't be doing that again since I don't want to be one of those people I complain about.

Long sort of review. My bottom line is I think this mic is 90% of a VMP for about 1/5th the price.
And that makes it a winner.
 
I can see some cases where a super cheap mic is desirable. I don't think twice giving my ten year old nephew a takstar for his Lego stop motion movies, now my higher end gear is another story.
 
Yes I agree Ty, but I think the problem is lack of education. When folks ask for the cheapest XYZ for sound they are not expecting to get "ultra cheap no budget sound". They think they can get really OK to great sound and not spend the time or money to go there.

Apple and everybody else trying to sell to consumers is a part of the problem. All of those ads where total crap sound gets turned into great clear sound by the miracle plugin. Hollywood is also to blame with countless BTS films that are 99% BS and make sound a magic trick. And then there are the schools who are probably the biggest part of the problem. There is next to zero decent sound education for film out there. Even in good schools the sound for film education is usually wrong, out of date or taught by folks who have no idea of what the process is. At least 75% of the really bad production sound I have gotten on low/no budget films are by folks who have film school training. THey were taught silly things like big movies redo all of the dialog with ADR, or that they should try to record all of the FX in real time on the set. Pretty much none of them have ever had it explained to them that like mixed paint if you have multiple actors talking at the same time on the same track you can not un-mix it.

It doesn't help that with the right track, the right tools, the right skills, and enough time (and a lot of luck) sometimes the impossible is now possible.

Another thing that doesn't help is that when someone asks the question about 80% of the responses are to spend $$$ on equipment or hired crew. Both of those answers are "right" but also may well not relate to the OP's actual needs or resources. So instead of explaining the trade offs and the compromises so that they can make a choice based on some new knowledge they get this everything or nothing scenario and since they can't do everything they do nothing and start to get locked into that low budget sound expectation as their only option.

What is true for big budget is also true for low budget, you need to start at where you want to end up.

There are plenty of scenarios where a VMP will do what is needed, and by being small light and there, gets you something that is not really possible otherwise.

My review is basically that the Takstar is essentially the same deal and will work for those same scenarios.

A narrative film that you are not doing essentially for yourself (training, experimenting, testing out shots, goofing around, etc) is not a scenario where a mic like this is a good choice.

For the OP's use
"for my no budget short films ,, and non paid documentary films for non profit organizations
"" i may use it on camera when i am shooting alone ,, but most of time i will mount it on a tripod near talent or on monopod as a boom"
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it might work, as those are the kinds of shoots that have a low bar and you can cheat a fair amount in.

I would also argue that it's almost an essential for anyone shooting DSLR anyway as all of the built in mics suck. So having something that will camera mount for getting a decent guide track is a must. As such a cheap mic like the Takstar is a great double duty mic.

If you are not going double system with a DSLR then putting a lot of $ in front of the camera is not going to get you much bang for the buck. IF you are going double system then you either need to run a wire, wireless hop, or stick a camera mounted mic on the DSLR so you have a decent guide track. Since the Takstar runs about the same as a decent mic cable I think it's a better deal.

In my case I'm either just using the mic direct to DSLR or I'm using a few grand to record double system and another couple of grand to hop it to the camera. Different uses different worlds, a lot more work.

IF you are going to camera mount, the difference between a $30 Takstar and a $3,000 Schoeps is a LOT less than the 100X price difference. And actually the cheaper one may give you "better" sound because the pricey one is going to pick up a lot of stuff someone is going to have to spend a lot of time removing.

My personal take after decades of dealing with low budget productions is that anyone posting about "no-budget" anything should not spend a lot of $ on tools and spend a lot of time on learning how to make those cheap tools work as best they can. Technique will get you there faster and a LOT cheaper than equipment will.

i.e. which would you rather deal with, A cheap mic 12" from the talent and properly oriented or a top of the line mic mounted to the camera 15 feet from the talent?
 
My concern here is that this starts to look and sound like the situation in which a man becomes curious about how much he needs.

In this scenario, it's about how many toes he actually needs to walk and stand properly, thinking one or two less might be OK.

He begins by shooting the little toe off first and goes from there. The story does not end well.

If you are doing pro work, (sorry, I thought this was a pro forum) or even if you're just an aspiring amateur, the "How little can I get by with" is immediately self-limiting. I prefer the, "Because I had the right gear, you didn't even notice the audio" approach that doesn't require ADR or extensive post work which, as you say, may or may not improve things.

Regards,

Ty Ford
 
Noiz2 said:
Another thing that doesn't help is that when someone asks the question about 80% of the responses are to spend $$$ on equipment or hired crew. Both of those answers are "right" but also may well not relate to the OP's actual needs or resources. So instead of explaining the trade offs and the compromises so that they can make a choice based on some new knowledge they get this everything or nothing scenario and since they can't do everything they do nothing and start to get locked into that low budget sound expectation as their only option.
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+1 - This comes from wisdom.

It is entirely unhelpful to simply suggest "get top gear" or "hire professionals". It is not an ON/OFF function. We know that, because what is considered "top gear" keeps changing, and has certainly changed over the past 20, 30, 40 years... yet, all that old gear, which today would be considered "inferior" was once upon a time "top gear"... and you can certainly anticipate that today's "top gear" will be tomorrow's "inferior gear". And the same goes for "hire professionals" - after all, not all professionals are equal... there are top professionals too - there are better and there are worse, which immediately suggests that the skill set is along a continuum.

And if gear and professionals come along a continuum, then it is entirely legitimate to enquire at which price point and skill level do we get unacceptable results. Sure, the $10K mic might be better than the $8K mic, but the $8K mic might be entirely acceptable for the use scenario - and so may a $5K, and $3K, and $2K, and $600, and... and at some point, it will no longer be so. I have a "cheap" shotgun mic, the AT-875r. I have more expensive mics. But I like the AT-875r so much, I bought two (used!), for $130. And you know what? The AT-875r is an entirely serviceable mic for my user scenarios - sure there are other mics that are more suited for other jobs, but this one does what I need, and cost me less than $200. So, if someone asked for a similar use scenario cheapest mic - I could recommend the AT-875r; now maybe there are cheaper ones that can also do the job, but I don't know them, so someone else would have to step in. Point being, is that somewhere along the price continuum, we hit the point of "unacceptable" for a given use scenario. And that's what the OP is asking for: where is that point, and which gear is it? Surely saying "only the $10K" is a stupid answer, as stupid as "top gear" - it's a continuum.

Same with skill set. Yes, there are top sound guys. But the guy who is 1% worse is just as good for most use scenarios. And the guy who is 10%, and so on, until we hit a point where it's "unacceptable". What is that point? It depends. When I started out, years ago, I had not the first clue. I was the sound guy on a short, because nobody else was available - I knew 0 about production sound. We rented gear at Coffee Sound here in LA, and the guy who rented it out, just had this advice: get the mic as close as possible to the mouth of the actor without being in the shot, angle it a bit, watch surfaces for sound bounces, pay attention to sound that might interfere (cars, airplanes, refrigerator) and try to stop, abate, or wait out. About 5 min instruction - and off I went with a boom, mixer-recorder, mic, cables. And guess what, the sound I recorded was entirely acceptable - not a single person complained, not the viewers, not the post guy (the director). Since then, I've done more shorts, read a few books, watched a few instruction videos, and I am fairly sanguine about doing sound for a small production - and have probably only about 5% of the skill that a true pro has. But it's enough for what I do - and I don't record 5 actors with wireless in challenging situations.

It's easy to answer every question with: "get a pro", but it's also unhelpful. Because, Sherlock, I think - color me crazy - but I do think that pretty much 100% filmmakers out there understand that a professional sound team is going to be better than a lone amateur. Safe bet. If they're not doing it, it's because they simply can't. Their options are therefore not "top professional sound team or go home". It's a continuum. Every moron understands that "better gear" is better than worse gear. And every moron understands that a top pro is better than not top pro. And bigger budget is better than smaller budget. So tell us something new. "Hire pros" "get top gear" are not helpfuls and actively useless - and it is LAZY, because it's much harder to pinpoint the exact place where we reach "unacceptable" - so you're skipping all the work, and haughtily "advising" to have a bigger budget... gee whiz, Einstein, you sure tole me sumptin' I had no idea "it's better to have money than not to" - who woulda thunk that, massa?

If you have ideas, knowledge, experience and willingness to share, answer the question usefully, and if you're too lazy to do anything other than expound on idiot type advice of "more is better", skip it and don't fill threads with useless noise.
 
tyreeford said:
If you are doing pro work, (sorry, I thought this was a pro forum) or even if you're just an aspiring amateur, the "How little can I get by with" is immediately self-limiting. I prefer the, "Because I had the right gear, you didn't even notice the audio" approach that doesn't require ADR or extensive post work which, as you say, may or may not improve things.

Regards,

Ty Ford
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What would make you think this is a Pro Forum? About 80% (maybe 90%) of the questions are from obviously new and or inexperienced users.

If this were posted on say JWSOUND OK That is a pro forum. The OP specifically mentioned this was for no budget projects and non paid docs, That is NOT pro work.

So while I completely agree with you RE: Pro work you are becoming guilty of what I was commenting on, not taking the poster into consideration.

Giving a "pro answer" to an amateur really does not help them at all.

And the truth is that I bet that you like every pro I know started off with what today they would consider total junk for gear. Well maybe not total junk, but nothing we would show up for a gig with today.

Your analogy was fun but it assumes the person was walking in the first place. As a "I used to have a full crew and now I want to cheap out" it would be really appropriate. That though is not how I read the OP and not the situation/ experience level of a lot of posters on this forum.
 
I would add that from time to time there have been the posts where the OP obviously had the money and spent a ton on camera gear and wants "great sound" for no money. I have close to zero sympathy for them. It was a stupid decision to not budget for sound. There are also occasionally posts that sound like Ty's scenario, someone who has a budget and is trying to cheap out. They deserve a "hire a pro" answer.

And then there are cases where hiring a pro can make a lot of sense for a low budget project. If you have A project and it's good enough to entice someone into doing work for free or a very low rate then by all means go after some pro's and try to sell your project. There have been a number of posts about projects where someone was trying to figure out what to rent and they had enough that they could probably talk a sound guy between gigs to agree to do. In those cases you get a lot more "hiring" the pro than renting and having someone with no experience try to work it.

So "hire a pro" is not always unhelpful. Again it depends on the poster and their particular situation.
 
Noiz2 said:
What would make you think this is a Pro Forum?.
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So this forum is not for pros?

Because not many amateurs I know want to spend the money on a DVX camera.

Because, while I may not have spent as much time as you in this forum, I've been here since 2004. That's only slightly more than a decade. My experience here must be different than yours.

Because people will often spend their life's savings on a RED camera and then punk out on the audio.

Like I said, if buying too cheap(ly), means you need to buy again, then you're paying more than you wanted to on gear that makes your work sound bad. My first shotgun was a used MKH416. Not the best shotgun on the market, but a very good one.

So, I guess I disagree with you and corpse. That's OK I'm good with that.

Regards,

Ty Ford
 
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Our "disagreement" seems to be that you are seeing things as black or white. This is either a "pro" forum or it's not. You either hire or buy the best or you have junk.

There are Pro's on this forum, there are also lots of non pros on this forum. It's not a "pro" forum in the sense that is not exclusively oriented toward pros.

The DVX refers to the DVX100 and I seriously doubt any pro's today are using a DVX100. But to go with you a bit the first feature I supervised was done on DVX100's. It was the first feature shot with one, they even got a bit of press over that. The director/ writer/ producer had only done a few shorts before and his co producer was in highschool. So I'm not sure where you draw the "pro" line. I would not consider a production that paid actors $10 a day and paid the location sound person by letting them keep some of the equipment after the shoot a "Professional" shoot. And yet they bought the very first DVX's.

But this forum is far from being about DVX100's, especially since they haven't been made in? a decade or so. If you look at the video sections you will realize that probably 1/2 if not more folks are using DSLR's, and I do know a few amateurs who own RED's. You can't really define pro VS amateur by what equipment they use anymore. You can kind of on the fringes, as in not many non pros are using DEVA's, or Lectrosonics, but especially on the video end people are buying what would be pro gear for their non pro films.

I have never on this forum seen a single discussion by feature sound post professionals on the ins and outs of that workflow. I have never seen a thread about current union negotiations with IA. I haven't even seen things like the correct layout for going into premixes, or say a discussion on track setups for going to XYZ mix stage. THere is close to zero discussion about Pro Tools and since it is used by about 99% of all FX editors in the US that would be a strange omission for a "Pro" forum.

The pro's on this site tend to be more in the field of event videography, a few who do ads and such, and some who are more "prosumer?" making short videos or maybe a no-budget feature and maybe have aspirations of at some point making some money from them. They may work professionally in some aspect of the industry but are doing something out of their expertise and are asking questions here.

It would actually be an interesting poll to see what users are doing and at what level. I do know that this group gets a fair number of people with no experience in sound at all asking very basic questions. And I know there are a few folks who are doing top end work. It's actually one of the things I like about this group, that it is a very mixed group and that you can ask a "stupid" question and you will usually not get too badly hammered. Try that on a "professional" group and you will get smacked.

We don't disagree on what a professional or to-be professional should buy, I just don't assume that every poster is in that category.

My first shotgun was a ME80, not quite as nice as the 416, but my first Pro Tools was a HD system so that is more along the line since I do post.

For me, I'm a sound professional. Theatre and film and ad's. As a shooter and a picture editor I consider my self an amateur. Though I did shoot stills professionally many years ago. For production sound I would be more of a not so experienced professional.

I answer questions mostly here but I ask them mostly in the other areas.
 
1. Your assessment of me is incorrect.

2. I know the origin of the DVX100

3. We are similar in the "know something about sound" and "know less about shooting, lighting and video/film" categories. I shoot, light and edit as well.

4. Back to the main point; if you're in this for the medium or long hall, based on how little (versus "how MUCH") stuff costs these days, I think buying right the first time is a better approach than not. I'm not talking about buying top of the line. I'm talking about not buying crap. As it pertains to sound gear, you can definitely not develop your sense of hearing and "make sense" out of audio recorded with cheap gear. Since that brain development is essential to your evolution, bargain basements will prevent you from evolving.

A lIttle story: Mom bought me my first reel to tell recorder when I was nine years old. I've been working in sound in some fashion all my life. About 10 years ago, the distributor for Schoeps sent me a Schoeps CMC641. It's used on many things, but it's vey often found on the end of a boom for dialog. I plugged it into my Sound Devices 442 mixer, put on the phones, said, "test one, two, three. Holy Crap. Everything I thought I knew about good sound is rubbish. This mic changes everything."

Readers of this thread may experience something similar. I've had people who fancy a ME66 or 67 in for a visit. I've let them hear the Schoeps. Their reactions have been similar. Once you hear the difference, it changes your world. It also cages the level of your work. That's one of the reasons I find the "what's the cheapest piece of c___ I can get away with" approach to be so unappealing.

Regards,

Ty Ford
 
I agree with everything but the assumption that the OP is interested in being a sound person. The Schoeps mounted on a camera would not sound very good. So while I agree with your assessment of it's quality it would not be a good recommendation for one of the many posters looking for a camera mounted run and gun mic.

The CMC641 is even more sensitive to handling noise and wind of any kind that the Oktava, and that mic which a lot of folks like at a small fraction of the cost is not recommended for beginners because of handling noise.

THe 641's are also a bit notorious for humidity issues and you are supposed to send them back to Germany every few years to have them cleaned and tuned up at about $450 a pop. If you are working full union gigs in LA or another top market it's affordable and you are going to get the return on investment. I seriously doubt that someone looking for a cheap mic to mount on their camera is going to get a worthwhile ROI from a Schoeps mic.

I got my first RtR probably close to the same age. It was a mono one surpluses from the army language school. I figured out which tube to pull to disable the erase head so I could "over dub" ;~) Fun days.

Here is I think the key difference in our recommendations. You want them to get good or better gear off the bat because you believe it will help train their ear. I mostly agree with that recommendation for people who want to be sound professionals. But my experience is if you tell folks who don't want to be sound profesionals that they need to drop three thousand or so just to get decent sound they just stop even trying. And while something like the VMP or the Takstar are not great mics they are a lot better than almost all of the built in mics these folks will use otherwise. So stepping up a bit at a time I feel also improves their ear, and improves the sound of their projects, and that leads them to want to step up a bit more.

In the case of the camera mounted mics, a better mic is not going to bump the game up much since the placement is so bad and you are recording into a camera with a rather shoty audio chain, BUT even after you get a decent mic and a proper recorder you still can use the camera mounted mic for a better scratch track.

I am with you in not recommending stuff you will need to toss, or want to toss, but there is a point between what should be the gear track of a professional and what is an acceptable gear track of a non professional.

I think we have probably explained ourselves enough so you can respond but I think we should probably drift back on topic since this is a bit of a side road.
 
I agree with everything but the assumption that the OP is interested in being a sound person. The Schoeps mounted on a camera would not sound very good. So while I agree with your assessment of it's quality it would not be a good recommendation for one of the many posters looking for a camera mounted run and gun mic.

**Assumptions may get you in trouble. I did not assume the OP was a beginner sound person


The CMC641 is even more sensitive to handling noise and wind of any kind that the Oktava, and that mic which a lot of folks like at a small fraction of the cost is not recommended for beginners because of handling noise.

** My own experience with both an MC012 and CMC641 are not the same as yours. They are both about the same for handling noise and wind.


THe 641's are also a bit notorious for humidity issues and you are supposed to send them back to Germany every few years to have them cleaned and tuned up at about $450 a pop. If you are working full union gigs in LA or another top market it's affordable and you are going to get the return on investment. I seriously doubt that someone looking for a cheap mic to mount on their camera is going to get a worthwhile ROI from a Schoeps mic.

** That's OLD DATA you're regurgitating. If you simply store the mic capsules and bodies connected instead of storing them separately, thereby allowing schmutz to accumulate on the contacts you'll be fine unless you're in the Amazon. I'm in Baltimore, MD, the mid-atlantic humidity zone here is absolutely awful in the Summer. Still both of my CMC641 do not have problems.

I got my first RtR probably close to the same age. It was a mono one surpluses from the army language school. I figured out which tube to pull to disable the erase head so I could "over dub" ;~) Fun days.

**My Lafayette 1/4" 1/4 TR had sound on sound… my friends were very impressed!.:) I used the two little crappy mics to record an upright piano for the production sound in a local production of The Fantasticks. After a show one night someone came to me and asked how they got a piano in the 1.5 ft space between the back drop and the building wall. I was very pleased. (very crappy mics). I may still have one.

**A month later I got a call from the director. He was frantic. Somehow there was a "tic" on the tape with every revolution. The tape had been stored on a shelf in the office. Above it was a water pipe. There had been a thunderstorm. I suspect the building took a hit or partial hit and as the lightning coursed through anything it could find to get to ground, it probably found the water pipe.

Here is I think the key difference in our recommendations. You want them to get good or better gear off the bat because you believe it will help train their ear. I mostly agree with that recommendation for people who want to be sound professionals. But my experience is if you tell folks who don't want to be sound profesionals that they need to drop three thousand or so just to get decent sound they just stop even trying. And while something like the VMP or the Takstar are not great mics they are a lot better than almost all of the built in mics these folks will use otherwise. So stepping up a bit at a time I feel also improves their ear, and improves the sound of their projects, and that leads them to want to step up a bit more.

**I have a client in Oregon. She's trying to get off the ground as a professional videographer/editor/producer. We call that a "Preditor." I consult with her on a couple times a month via SKYPE. She puts clips and/or audio up on dropbox and we go over how she did. This is AFTER we may have had a SKYPE session BEFORE the shoot to go over how best to handle the audio. I think she had an me66 or 67. I advised her to get an MKH50 and how best to use it. She can hear the difference, big time. She also uses a little TASCAM recorder, Her next purchase is studio monitors so she can hear what she got in the field even better than on the Sony MDR7506 headphones I speced for her. She's growing every day and as a teacher, it's wonderful for me to watch her grow.

In the case of the camera mounted mics, a better mic is not going to bump the game up much since the placement is so bad and you are recording into a camera with a rather shoty audio chain, BUT even after you get a decent mic and a proper recorder you still can use the camera mounted mic for a better scratch track.

**But….That depends ENTIRELY on the environment and how far away you are from the talent. I think camera mounted mics for EFP should be outlawed. It's time for a wired or wireless lav until you raise your game and start working with someone with a boom and mixer who actually knows how to use it…and….sorry….that may NOT be someone fresh out of film school. If they've been using the typical me 66/67, the MKH50 will be an ear opener for them. They may just not know how to keep the talent in the pattern, or use the pattern to stay away from noise.

I am with you in not recommending stuff you will need to toss, or want to toss, but there is a point between what should be the gear track of a professional and what is an acceptable gear track of a non professional.

**I agree.

I think we have probably explained ourselves enough so you can respond but I think we should probably drift back on topic since this is a bit of a side road.[/QUOTE]

** I think peripheral discourse can be very useful, but I'm pretty done.

Regards,

Ty Ford
 
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My 2 cents.

To my view, assuming what the OP is after (in any post) isn't very fruitful; while asking the OP for one's aim is much more productive.

In this thread, in the first post, the OP stated clearly what he was looking for:

"picking a best ultra cheap shotgun mic " for limited to no budget at all "
this will be used only for my no budget short films ,, and non paid documentary films for non profit organizations
"" i may use it on camera when i am shooting alone ,, but most of time i will mount it on a tripod near talent or on monopod as a boom , so i need an extension cable too ""for serious paid work i always rent Pro equipment and hire an experienced sound team to work with and i already know that for serious work nothing less than the 200$ mics and up will work " i know about the rode mics and The Audio Technica AT875 but as i said i can not afford it now ,, and also i wont use it for Pro feature film as i mentioned"

In a further post the OP said:

"what happened if You ask is that i got a lot of equipment in past much more lenses and steaddycam and jib too and 2 cameras with edirol r44 and sen me66 and rented sen g2 wireless mics to work with on my feature film and my projects , but i met a very bad luck and problems happened in my country so i didnt do much work in a couple of years with this equipment after my film and i am not rich i was already put in it all i saved from my work like in 20 years or more " and sadly i mean ALL " so i got into money trouble and i have to sell them all and what i can keep was just the camera and the basic lenses or the equipment i didnt find someone to buy here and my aim was to stay only on photography only as the 5d mark 2 is considered old for any serious video work this days , but lately i wanted to do something that help others like making non paid films for non profit organizations and also wanted to make a no budget scene or 2 to express myself in it in order not to die " mentally i mean "
so this isnt me the person who do not want to pay for proper sound brother"

To my eyes, the OP's question and intended uses are very clear.
Some speculations presented in some replies here are pointless, in the light of the OP's question and statements.

To my regret I don't have an answer to OP's initial question.
In my experience, from memory, the Taskar SGC-598 sounds horrible (to my ears), while the Rode VideoMic Pro sounds decent (in comparison and for what they can do); however the Rode VideoMic Pro is out of the OP's budget. Thus I don't have an answer; I have no idea which microphone in the price range of up to $55.24 sounds better (or less bad).
 
holysphinx1@hotmail.com said:
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i need a help picking a best ultra cheap shotgun mic
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PM me (send me here a Private Message), or send me an email to this email address:
joshua at gomeh dot com
and I'll send you, free of any charge (for no money at all, not even the shipping costs) a cheap microphone or two (as far as I remember both are Taskar).
That is if you can receive in your country mail from Israel.

holysphinx1@hotmail.com said:
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and what about the cable ?
all 3.5 cables are unbalanced as i knew and so if mic like takstar should i use an xlr cable with 2 adapters on both side " from xlr to 3.5 " will this work to avoid cable noise ?
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Depending on the length of the cable and the environment in which it will be placed, using unbalanced 3.5mm cable all the way may be okay. Should there be noise (hum), you'll need a 3.5mm to XLR adapter, XLR to XLR cable and XLR to 3.5mm adapter.

I can make for you 2 such adapters and ship them along the microphones and a not-so-good XLR to XLR cable.

holysphinx1@hotmail.com said:
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… and my aim was to stay only on photography only as the 5d mark 2 is considered old for any serious video work this days
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Very good movies (from the technical viewpoint) can be made with the Canon 5D MK II (with the free Magic Lantern).
 
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