It’s arguable that audio is more important than picture quality in any filmmaking project, so finding the best mic for your purposes is a key decision when choosing kit for your shoot but where do you start? This will depend on many factors such as crew size, environment, camera choice and so on. For many, a camera mounted mic will be best, as it allows for single shooters to capture sound and picture together. In these scenarios a shotgun mic, mounted on the camera is a great option and there are many available. Audio Technica has released the new ATV-SG1 and SG1LE with this in mind and they promise to deliver just what is needed for a range of tasks from vlogging to documentary and more. Both mics share a lot of the same build and features, with the LE version skipping a few to bring the price point. I’ll treat this review as one of the non-LE version but will be sure to mention any differences as they come up.
I studied commercial sound production, as well as film and photography, at university and have used countless mics over the years, so I was really keen to see if the SG1 could fit my needs and I was very pleasantly surprised by what I found.
