Shotgun question for sound engineers.
 

May well be a not too smart question, but I really don't know about microphone designs.... The Sony ECM-XM1 that comes with the NX5U camera seems to me to do a decent job, but has a tendency to pick up unwanted noises coming from the lens operation and such. Looking at the microphone, there are openings between the tip and and the rear of the mike where the cable is. Question: what would happen if one would block these slots with some kind of tape or whatever? Would it just goes against the design (wave cancellation, etc...) and change the microphone's response for worse, or make a more directional microphone less prone to pick up 'side' sounds.
I know, I could try and tape mine and do some tests, but I thought that someone may have tried it before, and I could maybe save some time anf aggravation if I was told of what would happen by someone who actually tried.
L.

Well I'm not a sound engineer but I can tell you that taping part of the mic will not do what you expect it to. It will probably degrade you sound but won't stop the mic from picking up camera noise. To do that you need to seperate the mic from the camera with a decent shock mount and not use the mic mount that is built into the camera.

The slots are side-rejection ports. The microphone takes in sound through those, and "subtracts" it from a more panoramic sound to gain directionality. If you tape over them, the mic will not be able to hear noise from the camera, and won't be able to cancel it out. If anything, the camera noise pickup would get worse.

Thanks Don and Renny for the educative answers. I ordered a shock mount, and will leave my microphone untouched.

Luc, I had the same problem. This was my solution....
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/463089-REG/Rode_SM5_SM5_Shotgun_Microphone.html

I hope it worked, because this is what I ordered. :-)

it is a bit bulky but it certainly get's the mic a good 5 inches away rom the lens. that combined with the mic's omnidirectionalness work's well.