Hahahaha, break like the wind! (remember Spinal Tap?) Could do a remake of the campfire scene in Blazing Saddles! :-)

Michael, Audio-Technica and Technics are two different and separate companies. Technics is by Panasonic, which is part of Matsushita worldwide. As for just picking up the fire, remember that a mic like the external one you were using is cardioid and will just hear what it is pointed at, whereas the camera mic is set further back and the other sounds are more likely to be within its field. Experimentation is useful.

Sony MDR 700DJ
 

Anybody have any experience with the 700DJ model from Sony? I work at a music store and can get these for a reduced price, so I am thinking of doing it. Any reason why I would want to go with the 7506's instead? Or is it only a minor difference? I want something that will be good in the field. Thanks.

Galen,
How much can you get them for? I can see that they do look different, and they are supposed to be easy to position for one-eared listening when you are DJing (not likely to be such a useful feature for videotaping). They look like they would be great for DJing. Other than that, I have no experience with the 700's.

What I can tell you, however, is that I have field tested the 7506 in a variety of situations, and it is the model headphone chosen by the majority of studios and audio engineers--a known standard, so to speak. They sound great, and are very comfortable, and fold down nice and small into their little drawstring bag so I can stuff them in my briefcase when I fly (and plug them into my computer and listen to ITunes or a DVD when in the air). Whenever I hand them to somebody to listen to a playback, they say "wow, these sound great!"

I wonder if your store can order the 7506 and how much those would cost? If it is a major chain like Sam Ash or something like that, I would think that's possible. Of course, the best scenario would be to be able to demo them side-by-side...that's how I used to sell speakers.

I use shure e2c's which work great for isolating sound and have great sound quality for under 70 bucks. It allows you to truly focus on the camera sound