Camcorders these days are all about the vision. I mean, you’re hard pressed to find a model that isn’t High-Def on the shelves of your local Bing Lee. But what about sound quality? When you’ve got your camera at the maximum 20x zoom trying to capture what somebody’s doing 30 metres away, can you ever hear what they’re saying?
The answer is generally no, although you may be able to lip read with some of the better cameras. That’s why Sennheiser has come up with the MKE-400 add-on microphone for compact cameras. Sure, it makes your camcorder just a little less compact, and it does look a bit like a giant phallus, but if it means you can hear your nephew yell out “help!” when your videotaping his first swim in the ocean rather than just read his lips when you watch back the footage, then that’s worth the $329 asking price, wouldn’t you say?
[Syntec]