I decided to purchase a shotgun mike for my Sony DCR VX2000 camera. My usage is for home/prosumer work and the posts in this forum seemed to recommend this mike as a good mid-level unit.

Can anyone recommend the best way to work with these shotgun mikes? The gain is very strong and when I tried using it with the autogain in the camera the signal was loud and it appeared to accentuate a lot of noise during silent moments. Does one use it with manual gain controls instead?
Or does one use autogain and try to reduce the noise in Vegas or SF?

Also, I tried looking at some of the minimounts....they're more expensive than the $170 microphone. Any suggestions or recommendations.

Thanks. I understand audio is a very untamed beast and that I'm asking novice questions. I also acknowledge that it's best to mike things up close. In practice though my family already is tortured by my video work and adding more devices off camera would be a source of extra pain for them and me.

Thanks,

MarcS
www.clayeyecenter.com