XLR or not
 

Hey everyone,

I have been shooting with my GL2 for about a month and am not happy with the quality of the audio, so i have been looking for a new mic. Im deciding between a Rode Videomic, or an AT835b and a DXA-4p or DXA-8. But being only 14 i dont know what i should do. I film short movies with some dialogue and its just not clear enough. I have enough money for just about any mic, but i dont want to spend it all. So my question is, is XLR that much better to spend an extra 1 or 2 hundred on? and plus for the AT835b i would have to get a shock mount I think, i dunno. So what do you guys think?

The right way to do movie dialog is with a hypercardioid mic on a boompole, which means you need a boompole operator as well as a camera man. There are many specific choices to make along the road to doing that, but XLR equipment would be the standard.

If you're not ready for that yet I'd strongly recommend the Rode VideoMic. It's an economical and versatile choice and will give you results as about good as any you're going to get with a camera mounted mic. You could spend many times as much and still not get much better sound because distance from mic to source is the limitation on quality. Yet I'm sure you'll be delighted with the improvement the Rode gives over the GL2's mic. But I'm also quite sure that the improvement will whet your appetite for more improvement 8>]

Thanks for the fast reply, Yeah that what i am worried about if i get a videomic, then i'll want more, so should i just start on with an on-camera XLR mic with a DXA-4p?

Yes that's what we'd recommend but as Fred says you need to have a boom handler (not as easy as it looks)

You could also look at the Audio Technica AT897 which works off a battery if needed and also can be fitted with the same size "fluffy" as the sennheiser ME mics (if you're shooting out doors a fluffy really is needed to reduce/prevent wind noise)

Jon

If you're going down that path, especially with an eye toward building your kit, don't go for less than a DXA-6. It supplies phantom power, allowing a much broader choice of pro mics, where the DXA-4p does not.