Hot Shoe Microphone - Recommendations?

There are plenty of comparison tests on youtube.

This ebay_seller sells all sorts of mikes. They used to make a lot of their own, but
it seems they just retail most stuff now.

I use one of their old DAT stereo mikes just held in my left
hand on the rare occasions that I do video.


http://stores.ebay.co.uk/micronic007

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The edit facility seems to have disappeared

I was just going to say that I use the mike on a K-5 and
that a windshield is essential outdoors.

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Thanks AndrewA, sounds really fun. I'm always excited by people giving it a go so good luck with your feature. We will look out for this at the local cinema

Depending on your location, and ability to control the ambient sound, then there may be a few options that could work well for you.

I'll let others comment on the hot shoe mic options they've used. My K-30 doesn't have a mic input, so this is not something I'm likely to do myself. As above, that approach is definitely convenient and will provide some improvements over the in camera mic/s. The biggest improvement for me comes from a windsock ability, as wind can totally wipe out an incamera/non protected mic surprisingly easily.

For me, I'd consider this sort of approach:
Rode iPhone Mic Link
Rode Lavalier microphone link

In general it's better to record audio close to the sauce , so the likes of the Lavalier clip ons could be really good, if you're in a position to mount them discretely on your actors. If not, or if that impedes the quality too much, then that idea's just not going to work

Ironically getting some recording device, or it's feed, closer to the action is probably going to produce a major improvement over in camera mics. Even an iPhone mic will sound better if placed right by the actors somehow, maybe just out of shot. Another option could be wireless mics and a receiver feeding straight into the camera's mic socket. This would remove the need for resyncing of the audio, if that's an issue for you.

Good luck

No worries.

It's a big area, so just wanted to get a feel for what you'd want to do with the gear. It's a bit like asking "What lens should I get for my new DSLR body?" to which the response should definitely include "What do you want to take photos of?" etc

Mic's have different Polar Patterns which means all those different types do different things, or more specifically they get audio from different areas around the camera at different 'volumes'.

Just like ISO noise issues in images, you have noise in audio recordings as well, so you want to capture the audio that's important to you strongly against the background noise. If there is a good separation then you can do things to remove the noise in post. Much like still image noise reduction.

Audio levels is another thing to consider, so you don't 'clip' your audio, which is the same as fully overexposing, or under exposing an area of your stills image, such that the highlights are blown out to full white/or full black and can never be recovered. Pentax cameras offer warnings of this visually as blinking colours on the rear LCD screen.
Pentax cameras (well my K-30) are very poor in this area in audio though, as they don't show realtime audio levels. You are given 5? settings for the recorded audio level, but are given no visual indication of the need to record audio at a lower or higher level. This is another reason that I'm personally keen to handle audio externally to the camera.

Exciting things to read up on with regards to post are:
Denoiser in Adobe Premiere and Low and High Pass filters.
Denoiser is a smart audio noise reduction effect, which looks for hiss/background noise to reduce, and the filters allow you to block audio above or below a certain frequency. A bandpass, or notch, filter does the same thing in one effect, but I like to handle them separately.
An example would be low rumbling or high end hiss, which you could remove from your audio/dialog track with the use of appropriate filters.

Quick hunt for audio clean up examplelink

he's rough, but beer with it

I know nothing about mics! However, I have just come across this writeup which might be of interest to you


http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/round-ups/accessory_round_ups/best-hotshoe-...