choosing from the cheapest shotgun mic

  • Thread starter Thread starter holysphinx1@hotmail.com
  • Start date Start date
H

holysphinx1@hotmail.com

Guest
hi all
i need a help 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
SO

i found some options and here are they with a few of youtube tests
i have an xlr to 3.5 adapter so also i want to know the best way to connect this mic to balanced cable to get rid of cable interfere ??


1- TAKSTAR SGC-598
" this is the only one that come with Shock mount ,, and a lot of reviews recomended it "
Price:$33.22
http://www.amazon.com/TAKSTAR-Photography-Interview-Microphone-Camcorder/dp/B00E1D2LTA/ref=pd_cp_p_1



i found a review and a test on Youtube "and there are hundreds of tests for this mic"
Rode VideoMic Pro VS Takstar SGC-598

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Dwrd3mMX0




2 - Generic EM-320E Professional $27.00
http://www.amazon.com/Generic-Profe...03383&sr=8-1&keywords=ShotGun+Microphone+320E

Cheap Shotgun Microphone Face-off with EM-320e and Azden SGM-X :


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT_5ddyqqOc


another test is
Microphone Comparison: Cheap "EM-320E" vs. Not so Cheap" Audio-Technica 897" Shotgun Microphones


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sougk7NjMec


3 - Audio-Technica ATR-6550
Price:$55.24
http://www.amazon.com/Audio-Technic...d_sim_p_7?ie=UTF8&refRID=0FPQTSJFWMPRY42WGTNY
there is others like Nady SGM-12 Shotgun Condenser Microphone

or the neewer 14.37 but i think they may be the same !!
thank in You in advance for Your time and sorry for my bad english as it is not my main language ..

 
Last edited:
In all examples the more expensive one sounded better, fuller, more detailed to my ears. In your case I`d go with the smaller/lighter mic, easier to boom or clamp somewhere when working as a one man army.
On camera a longer sized shotgun gets you closer to the action of course and you might not have to go too wideangle-ish when interviewing on the run.
 
@Spartacus
thank You very much for Your help
i think the lighter and the one have shock mount too is the takstar
not sure if the EM-320E is the tallest one or not
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 ?
 
The audio technics and the EM320 are the same mic inside - and frankly, horrible. It is a very old design that uses two mic capsules to produce the directional characteristics. The sound is thin and weak, handling noise pretty poor and I have a few here, that are really not usable compared to many others available.
 
Most if not all of these cheap shotgun mic's sound dreadful and the stereo ones even worse, I would still spend a little more and get a rode NTG1 or if you have phantom power my all time favorite budget mic the AT875R.

A longer shotgun will never get you closer to the action as the capsule is actually at the rear or the mic, the only way to get closer to the action is to take the mic off the camera which is what you should be doing anyway as using an on camera mic will generally get you all of the camera servo and creaking noises as well.

I do have a few Takstar mics myself but they are cardioid and omni condensor mics but they actually sound very good and at a push I would use one for general sound capture and they were less than $60 each, they are the CM60 and 61. You will still need phantom power though.

http://www.amazon.com/TAKSTAR-Takstar-CM-60-Recoding-Microphone/dp/B00G1Y0518
 
Last edited:
Well, some people swear by the Boya BY-PVM1000 and BY-PVM1000L. Looking at the spec sheet, they seem pretty decent, with SNR of better than 80dB and decent sensitivity -33dB. You can find the PVM1000 for about $50 and the PVM1000L for $75 on ebay with free shipping. They come with shock mounts, fuzz pockets an on-cam mounts and adapters. I have no personal experience with them, but some people claim to have good experience with them. Another poster on this board, who is a sound pro, recommended the very cheap VidPro XM-55 Shotgun Microphone Kit which is $99 at B&H (free shipping) and comes with everything you can think of, including shock mount, various xlr cables, pistol grip etc., etc., etc., and has pretty decent reviews on B&H. Also on B&H I see the Polsen SCL-1075 for $55 (free shipping) which seems to have decent reviews (on B&H).

Ultimately, you probably get what you pay for, but in a pinch, these suggestions at least seem to have decent feedback from users. Of course YMMV. And as always, technique is going to be much more important to the final effect.
 
Gary above recommended a cardioid and omni, for like $60. Speaking of cardioid, another respected poster here, Scott, wrote the following:

"An ugly duckling that I have a number of is the CAD CM217. These were designed for drum over heads and they are not full spectrum. They are also cardioid. But that could be a plus in your situation. They roll off the bottom a bunch so very little handling noise, cardioid so you have to get closer but they are much more forgiving with off axis placement and they will give you more "room", which if you are not doing a real sound post could also be a plus. They are very small and very light, and they go for about $50 a pair. Sometimes a lot less. I just got a pair for $35.

Are they great production sound mics?, no. But their "flaws" may actually mitigate some of your inexperienced sound guy flaws, and you get a spare or a plant mic for free. I probably wouldn't use them for music recording, except maybe for the overheads they were designed for, but you are trying to record dialog so you don't want the lows, mostly, and many folks will stick a rolloff at 80 anyway. I have done shows with a cardioid and depending on what you are doing they are fine.

The biggest plus is they are not a lot of money and they are decent."

So that's another option, and if you hunt around, as Scott suggests, you can pick these up for pretty cheap.
 
To be honest having a cardioid condensor mic will probably get you better sound in most situations than a cheap shotgun, even the behringers are pretty good and put a decent foam windshield on them and get them closer to the sound source and they will be OK.

If you can get them with a high pass filter fitted even better and those Takstars are fine for inside and outside recording so long as it is not too windy.
 
thank You very much really for all that options You gave to me
and i liked the VidPro XM-55 Shotgun Microphone Kit seems very promising
but about the condenser mics i am less than ignorant in this issue
all i know from my past film experience is the shotgun is the way to record dialogue
but it seems there are another option
so will it works ? and do i need to place the mic more nearer than where the shotgun could be ?
actually does this mean it must be very near as a hand mic ?
i am sorry for my ignorance but ill dig and search more on this solution
thank You again
 
Cardioids and omnis will need to be closer to the sound source to increase SNR simply because they will record everything around them (omni), or everything around them except directly in the back of them (cardioid). The shotgun advantage is just that if you know the polar pattern of the mic, you can choose to place it in such a way that it rejects noise from other directions and preferences the sound source you want. But correspondingly it can be much harder to handle a shotgun mic - it's a good idea to examine the polar pattern in the spec sheet of the mic, so you get a good idea of how to place the mic. Again, however, a shotgun mic is going to be harder to handle indoor because of echo effects, handling sounds and so on. If you are interested in just recording dialogue indoor, I'd be more inclined to use an cardioid or omni and try to get as close to the source as possible - it's easier to use than a shotgun and more forgiving.

The other question you should consider is how are you recording what the mic outputs. Are you going to try to go direct to camera? What? If you are going to use some kind of mixer-recorder, then better preamps will get you better sound even with a cheap mic. And speaking of recorders it is important, because that might make the selection of mics you choose much wider. For example, if you have access to a couple of Zoom H1 recorders, you might look into cheap wired lavaliers that might work a lot better in a small setting with no crew, if you are recording just a couple of actors. How you choose to record the output of your mics will determine a whole bunch of things including the cables you mentioned - you said you'll need extension cables for the mics, but that becomes important because the longer your cable the more chance of interference so it's best to use balanced cables and to do that you must then make sure your mic can take a balanced cable with, say, xlr connector, and then in turn your recorder needs to be able to take an xlr connector, meanwhile if you're recording to the camera, it's unlikely your cam has xlr connectors, so then you get involved in adapters and on and on and on. That's why you can't just think about mics, but you need to think about the entire audio stack for your projects of which mics are just one part: mics, recorders (+/- mixer), cables, placement (boom-stand-lav-cam), and even into post, because what you do during production will have impact on your post if you are doing sound post yourself.
 
A cardioid can be better simply because it doesn't need the same degree of aiming. Shotguns, even quite short ones really need pointing properly, because the sound goes weak and thin so quickly if it drifts off centre.
 
A shotgun is basically a cardioid mic with a piece of plastic or metal with slots in it to phase cancel certain frequencies, a good shotgun will do this well but a bad one inc the NTG1 will give all sorts of strange phasing problems.

Inverse square law also comes into place and a well placed cardioid mic will always outperform a cheap shotgun regardless of how well you place the mic.

As most of out american friends also state a shogun is virtually useless inside and you need a hyper cardioid for that so if you are on a tight budget then just buy some low cost cardioids and learn how to shoot around their limitations in the same way you would with your $3k worth of DSLR and shallow DOF lenses.

As for me I find as stated the AT875 a good compromise between a full low cost shotgun and a cardioid or hyper mic and have done numerous broadcast productions using that one mic in preference to a sennheiser 416.

You could even stick one of these on the end of a boom or pole and get excellent recordings straight to your laptop or i-pad and I think it sounds far better than the sennheiser Me66 mic they compare it to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st0RFt8miuA

It would ingest straight onto your edit timeline and even has headphone monitoring too!
 
Last edited:
GaryNattrass said:
A shotgun is basically a cardioid mic with a piece of plastic or metal with slots in it to phase cancel certain frequencies, a good shotgun will do this well but a bad one inc the NTG1 will give all sorts of strange phasing problems.

Inverse square law also comes into place and a well placed cardioid mic will always outperform a cheap shotgun regardless of how well you place the mic.

As most of out american friends also state a shogun is virtually useless inside and you need a hyper cardioid for that so if you are on a tight budget then just buy some low cost cardioids and learn how to shoot around their limitations in the same way you would with your $3k worth of DSLR and shallow DOF lenses.

As for me I find as stated the AT875 a good compromise between a full low cost shotgun and a cardioid or hyper mic and have done numerous broadcast productions using that one mic in preference to a sennheiser 416.

You could even stick one of these on the end of a boom or pole and get excellent recordings straight to your laptop or i-pad and I think it sounds far better than the sennheiser Me66 mic they compare it to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st0RFt8miuA

It would ingest straight onto your edit timeline and even has headphone monitoring too!
Click to expand...

Having not used the AT875, I'd still agree lol. The 416 is too harsh for most interiors and most hypers don't reject enough for exteriors, but if the AT875 is somewhere in-between and sounds ok GET IT!

Good sound matters way more than good picture. If you have spent a dime more than $500 on your camera kit, lights, etc. you'd be insane to cheap out on sound. I was going to recommend something more expensive as I do think the cheap Audio Technica mice and ME66 are pretty much garbage, but if this is a winner BUY IT!!!! DO NOT CEAP OUT you will just buy this after whatever you have sucks and everything you shoot with it is terrible.
 
thank You all , You are all very helpful
i just have some thoughts
1- keeping the mic as near as possible , but this is not specially for shotgun it is the target for each mic as far as i know
so with the shotgun boom operator always aim it just out the edge of the frame , so my point is using condenser mic or whatever mic this means i will use them all from same distance ! unless You do not mean to use those condenser mics as a hand mics inside the frame which i do not do at all !
so the chance is it will be in the same place the shotgun will be in !
but the difference here as i understand from Your words is that the shotgun will isolate the voice more and so will not pick the location noise as much as the condenser since it will collect voices from wider angle , and this is not what i want , to not make You lost with my bad english i mean both shotgun user and condenser mic user will place there mic as much near as possible , no one will say i have a good brand of shotgun i will take the mic and step back !! but obviously the shotgun will get more isolated sound from talent !!

2- let us go to the situations where You can not go much near to the talent like when You work alone or just record some one a lil bit far from the camera for any reason , so how will the condenser mics preform here against the shotgun mic on camera ??
i think it will be worse!!
3- if it is better in interior why no one mentioned or used it in high budget films i worked in all that time and why films stick with shotguns mics
i do not want to capture a sound of talent outdoor with a lot of sounds from street everywhere as i can not make every one silent for shooting in streets , neither i want to make it like a hand mic it is less used this days in documentary and of course no use in any dramatic scene
i already missed a good project since members here in this forum said to me that i do not have the sound equipment needed
and now i found my camera and other equipment is useless i can not shoot any thing from my last feature 3 years ago and i really need to do something or just sell all of them and stop this headache ,
4- please note that there is a difference between some one preference and what really is bad
as an example some people here said about some equipment that they are not enough like the me66 , but the fact that my last feature film the sound guy have picked this me66 for it and in my country this is the most used mic for even high budget top films
so from the last point i just now recognized something i didnt recognize b4 when i was sadly about to stop filming and sell my equipment cas i cant get the decent audio gear as people mentioned for me , here is the fact i discovered " people advice You from there experience and from the level of equipment they use regularly not from the point of is thing usable or not ,, so as an example if You asked shane hulburt as i did to what lenses to use for feature with 5d he pointed to panavision lenses and he was less forgiving for others and gave me only other few options , but the fact i used a lenses for like 1% cost of the lenses he mentioned for me and i got people around me happy with the results ! , but that happened cas i am photographer from long time as a hobby also so i have some experience in this area too !!
i can not do that sadly with sound because in all my 20 years in the field i didnt record sound by myself and never knew about sound equipment , so i can not do what i did with lenses to my choice with mics ..
i see how much You are helpful and i really appreciate it very much , really guys thank Your for Your time and Your effort , so if You please can You be more specific like when You advice an ignorant :)
point me to just 1 or 2 mics and ill search about them too and hope it will be in my cost range to get it
thank You again and again
 
I have used the 875r and it's really pretty good, and the current price (before shipping) is $158. Policar, I'm glad you brought it up. If the OP's sig line is correct, he has a 5D Mark 2, a few lenses, 2 monitors, a tripod, monopod, and a slider, etc. --- but now there's no budget for a microphone over $60. There may be a lot more to this story, but on the surface this sounds like a textbook case of audio being a literal afterthought.
 
@ddixon
thank You
"" this sounds like a textbook case of audio being a literal afterthought. "
but the answer is no this is not the real situation here
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
 
Sorry, I'm on a mobile, so can't write a lot; maybe tomorrow I can add more when I'm on my computer. But in any case, you are not quite right - yes both type of mics do best when close to the talent, and the shotgun will be better from a longer distance in noisy places. BUT - read again my previous answer CAREFULLY - everything is explained there. Briefly, the issue is that it is much more difficult to operate the shotgun mic especially indoor - are you a REALLY good sound guy? If not, a cardioiod or omni will be easier indoor.
 
Even if you can't get the mic close, I'd still go with a hypercardiod rather than a shotgun inside. For extreme circumstances or in a really dead room and for foley (sound effects, no dialogue), a shotgun would be the right choice for interiors, but the difficulty is that you need to aim a shotgun perfectly or the sound off-axis will be bad. It's a little rude asking for advice and then dismissing it. If you want to throw your money away, there are plenty of ways to and you don't need our permission.

The ME66 is the very low end of acceptable, but it's usable. I only work on the very lowest budget indie features at best (1 million range) and the cheapest mic I've seen is an NTG3 and usually it's the 416 for a shotgun. I don't know what you're talking about regarding higher end features not using hypercardiods; I see the MKH50 or the Schoeps get way more use than the shotgun, usually.

Sell something if you need to, but spending $150 is a lot less bad than wasting $50. All the mics you'e listed are garbage. (I'm not convinced the AT875 isn't, but it sounds like it's at least good enough!) To be fair I've never tried the Boya stuff and I haven't tried all those listed, but I've used enough cheap mics to see a pattern emerge.
 
i am sorry that You take it that way , i didnt mean at all to be rude sorry for that
and i am no expert regarding sound so my comment was meant to be an asking comment like when You say isnt that right thought or not ? ,, i just wanted to see if those mic will work or not
it was not as if i am an expert saying no this is wrong !! i didnt mean that
how could i do that if i am asking to get help i am not here to dismiss on things
i am here to learn so again iam sorry and may be my bad english had made this miss understanding
 
No, I'm sorry. I'm sure I went overboard.

It's possible there's a good <$100 microphone out there, but I really doubt it. Anything sounds better than the built-in mic, but the rule of depreciating returns isn't really is true with microphones. That said, the sound on the Mark 2 is so bad that you really need a pre-amp, anyway. What do you plan to run these to? Most mics require phantom power.

The inexpensive ones really are just bad. I have yet to use anything half decent under $300 or $400, but the AT875 looks really decent. Well, I have an Oktava that sounds ok and is cheap, but it sounds like you want more of a shotgun.

If there's anywhere worth spending money it's on a decent microphone. If you don't have a pre-amp, you may be limiting yourself to options that simply aren't worth the money. And if you're short on money, I can't recommend it. The Takstar looks like it doesn't require a pre-amp and can be used on a boom. Maybe try it, but it's difficult to recommend if money is short and the samples I've heard on youtube sound bad, just not as bad as the others. :/ Not sure what to say!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top