On Fri, 16 Aug 2002 03:17:56 GMT, "frankmcma" wrote:

>I would like to get a camera, around $2000 - $3000, that has a great shotgun
>mic on it. Something that could actually be used for productions, since I
>have some single person shoots coming up.
>
>Any opinions? Sony VX-2000? Canon XL-1s? These are the two I am looking at.

The best mics I've heard that come with a camera: the omni
stereo mic on the XL1, and the more "shotgun" mono mic that
comes with the PD150.

>How are these mics?

The VX2000 mic has a good "presence peaked" omni mic.

>Ideally it would be nice to have a mic that was good enough to pick up
>dialog and not a lot of external sounds. Do these cameras have different
>settings/patterns for their mics?

This isn't going to happen - you must get the mic off the
camera and closer to the speaker (though at 4' or so, in a
quiet room, with angles chosen to minimize reflections, you
might get away with an on-camera mic for a speaker...).

>I heard the VX-2000 initially had some
>audio problems...are these fixed?

There is a lot of hooey about this. See:
www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/sony_dcr-vx2000.htm for more
info. I get nice, quiet recordings with my two VX2000s,
so I have a hard time with this recurring myth...
Used with knowledge about how to optimize s/n, the
VX2000 audio is good enough, if not up to the format
potential (but, then, no other camera in its class is
either...).

>Any help would be great...thanks!

Good luck. Getting a good audio track is about as
hard/easy as getting a good picture - both require a bit
of experience (and sometimes correction in post...).