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Tired of the omnidirectional microphone on your fancy DSLR camera or video recorder? What you need is a directional cardioid "shotgun" microphone, like the affordable MXL FR-310 Shotgun Microphone.
Tech expert and YouTuber Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ puts the MXL FR-310 Shotgun Mic through its paces with some demos and commentary on what's good and not so good about this unit. Oh, and then there's the case...
Check it at Amazon: https://amzn.to/2IAcaNL
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A shotgun mic that sounds as good as a wired microphone
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Let's check it out
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Dave Taylor here and I'm looking at this. This is the MXL FR-310 shotgun microphone
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Well, it's the box because the microphone itself is actually on top of my camera
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What I wanted to do is I wanted to have you be able to hear how this works indoors versus
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my normal wired microphone. So now I'm going to switch, get back to my wired microphone so I can show you the shotgun mic
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So hang on just a sec. I've taken the microphone off the camera as you can see here and now I'm using a wired
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mic that's just clipped to my shirt. So you can hear the sound difference
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But here's the thing, this sounds really good. Now let me tell you a little bit more about it then we're going to do a fun little demo
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So this is, as I said, the MXL FR-310 shotgun microphone and what I really like about it
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is it fits on a standard hot shoe mount. So that means you can use it for cameras and you can use it for video cameras or prosumer
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level gear like I'm using. So it has a super cardioid polar pattern which means that it's listening really just in the front
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There's some side but very little in the back. We'll demonstrate that momentarily
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It's a 10mm electric condenser with 40-20,000 Hz response and a 250 ohm output impedance
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And as you can see it's just your regular 3.5mm jack. So you mount this on the hot shoe
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It doesn't get any data from the camera or video camera. It's just a handy mount point
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You plug this in and then all the controls are on the side
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Now the first control on the side is the gain switch. And this gives you minus 5 decibels or 0 or plus 5 decibels for gain
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And then you have the off, on and bass roll off filter
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So if you're getting a lot of rumbly sounds you can deal with that right there on the microphone
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Super handy. It has a foam windscreen built into it, you can see here, which is pretty handy as we'll
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find out in the demo momentarily. And it works off of a single AAA battery which gives you up to 500 hours of microphone usage
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It's pretty darn good. But enough talk, let's go outside and I'm going to give you a quick demo of how directional
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the microphone is. So I thought it would be a good demo to actually walk around the microphone so you can see
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how directional it is. Now if you listen there's a lot of ambient environmental noise that's also being picked
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up and it's a little breezy. So let me walk around and I'll just keep talking as I walk around
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So now I'm about 90 degrees off and now I'm directly behind the microphone so I should
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have the least volume. And I'm coming around, I know this is super exciting, and here I am back on camera
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So that's how that works directionally. Let's go back in and talk about it some more
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So I was pretty impressed when I did that demo. You really can only barely hear me when I'm behind the microphone
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This is super important because regular microphones on good DSLR cameras or video cameras or anything
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like that generally seem to be omnidirectional. Which means if you're say at a kids ball game and you're taking video of your daughter going
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at bat or something, then you're getting all the background noise. You're getting your own voice, you're getting everything
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You don't want any of that. You really want the audio from what's in front of your camera
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That's why directional is so nice and that's what this does. Now a little bit more specs here is it's 1 third, about 1 third of a pound and it's 8
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inches long by somewhere around 3 inches tall. So pretty easy to carry and frankly you put it on the hot shoe, you spin this part and
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then it actually gets it nice and tight and then just leave it on your camera. Leave it on your video camera
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There's no reason to actually take it on and off in my opinion. So it's super easy
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But if you do want to take it off, they do have this sort of slightly wacky carrying
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case right. It looks like it's one of these mini deal or no deal cases where you open it up and
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then there's all the cut out foam for all the different pieces which is to say one piece
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and a battery. But I just think this is just a cute little case
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Not that I'm ever going to use it but I suppose if you have lots and lots of gear, this might
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be how you want to actually carry your shotgun mic. So there's not much else to talk about but before we go any further, let me ask if you
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can subscribe to my channel. It's seriously one click or one tap away and then we can stay in touch
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Super appreciate it. Do that click. Thank you. Oh and while you're at it, leave me a comment
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If you're using a shotgun mic, tell me what you're using it and what you're using it for
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Really interested in hearing how people use these. Now this, this is the MXL FR310 shotgun microphone and it's $101 at Amazon.com and if you're
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trying to get really good sound and you want to have it be something that's directional
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so you don't pick up all the ambient noise that's off camera, this is a really interesting
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and really worthwhile choice. So I say check it out and with that, I will hope to catch you in my next video
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