I am looking to upgrade my field audio kit. I already have a decent UHF wireless system that is meeting my wireless needs just fine. However, I am in a period of transition in the types of productions that I do. I am moving more awayfrom wedding videos towards more creative and scripted productions. The need for a fishpole mounted shotgun microphone has presented itself to me now on numerous shoots. So far my solution has been to take a small, old, on camera shotgun mic, stick it on the end of a telescopeing micstand extended all the way, and have a boom operator get that as close as he can to the actors.

This system has worked sort of OK, but I am searching for a more elegant solution. Does anyone out there have any products they would like to recomend for a shotgun mic/boompole/windscreen system? Any links to these products would be appreciated, and of course I would greatly prefer low cost :-)

What kind of budget are you looking at? Do you anticipate the majority of your work to be in normal interiors (ie, reflective spaces) or exteriors?

There's no one size fits all and if you're shooting in a variety of situations you'll probably need at least two mics, not just one shotgun. 'Guns are good for non-reflective spaces such as outdoors, not so much for reflective interiors such as normal homes and offices. For those spaces a hypercardioid is preferred. I'm anticipating your budget is modest - you might want to consider something on the order of a Rode NTG-1 shotgun for exterior work along with a hyper such as the AKG Blueline SE300B/CK93 combination for interiors. One of Rycote's new Invision Mounts, the model INV7, fits both mics and Lightwave has a cabled 8 foot carbon-fibre boom, their "NewsPole" that's reasonably priced and looks like it would be a good performer.

Does your camera have XLR inputs and supply phantom power? If not, don't forget you'll need a mixer or adapter that does.