I really hate to admit it, but I am not all that knowledgable on sound equipment..

But, we're about to shoot a feature and I should know some things before we get started.

We're using the Canon XL2, and it's been praised for its sound pick-up, so I guess my real question would be:

Should I record dialogue and sound through a mic, plugged into the XL2, or should I record it seperately?

Either or, can you reccomend a mic that I should use? Also any other equipment I would benifit from.

Keep in mind, our budget isn't what you would call large..

thanks,

Lon

Lon,
A little more info would be very helpful in order to best answer your question.
Where are you shooting? Indoor? Outdoor?
Noisy environment? Controlled environment?
Dialog for one, dialog for two?
Is wireless a bonus for your production style?

I'm not sure what you mean by the XL2 being praised for it's "pickup" as the on-camera mic is effectively useless except for very unique situations. It does have decent sound processing and pre's in it though.

We will be shooting in a variety of locations, both indoor and outdoor. For the outdoor stuff we have a couple of parking lots and a couple of parks. Weird indoor stuff might include a resauraunt scene and a wal mart scene.

We'll be needing dialog for 2, and wireless mics are almost mandatory, seeing that we're shooting some car scenes, with the camera on a hood-mount.

The XL2 has a four channel audio system, which seems pretty nice to us, although we haven't shot much 'noisy envirmoent footage' yet.

would it benifit us to go directly to the XL or record sudio seperately?