What is the best Electronic News Gathering microphone for my Zoom H4n on a $150 budget? Also, critique suggestions I've already received.

The Shure SM58 is one of the industry standards for music, because it sounds pretty good on almost everything, can drop 10 feet and keep working, and because it looks like what people expect a mic to look like. It may not necessarily be the best option out there solely for recording interviews, but being able to toss it around without worry of it dying is a definite bonus. I have used a few other mics that sounded better, but if you were at a stadium and it dropped onto the cement stairs, it would become a paperweight.

The SM58 is indeed a durable tank, I have SM58s that have been submerged in mud for days that I rinsed off, allowed to dry, and have worked more or less fine, but personally, I would not recommend the SM57, 58, or the Beta series equivalents for ENG, but I'm having a hard time describing why...they will not sound right. Its a weird combination of too much directional sensitivity, not enough overall sensitivity...a person talking into a SM58 held at chest height by another person, interview style, does not sound like an interview, plus this is going to tax your preamp, and with a portable rig, you don't have much pre headroom to tax.

Whatever you end up going with, make sure that not just that it sounds good on its own, but that it sounds good with the Zoom H4n. I'm sure they've improved the recorder in the move from H4 to H4n. But it's worth mentioning that at least the H4 really didn't handle external mics well, especially if they used phantom power. The internal mic sounds great for the price, but the xlr was a bust.

As far as between the MD46 and the ME66, I'd go with the MD46, for two reasons - first, it's a cardiod. While having a nice tight (hyper/shotgun) pattern can be useful for reducing background noise, it's a lot harder to hold the mic in one place, and get a consistent sound. If you're doing an interview of any length, you're going to be holding that thing out, moving it back, and mics with narrow pickup patterns are VERY sensitive to positional changes. Second, the ME-66 appears to be part of a capsule/body configuration, which while nice for flexibility (and the pocketbook, on occasion), is shit for reliability. If you're going to be working in ENG, you want something ultra-reliable, which capsule/body is not. The improved high frequencies of the condenser would be nice, but I wouldn't personally make that trade. And, as is mentioned above, the SM-58 is a tank. But it's not right for ENG. Far too susceptible to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_effect_%28audio%29 for my taste, and not quite the right sound to begin with. Do yourself a favor, and as umbú mentions, make sure it's the right mic for your recording unit - I've put hours and hours of use into the Marantz PMD-660, and the preamps on that thing are super-sensitive. They distort if you look at them the wrong way. I've run into a handful of mics that simply can't be used with it, as they will clip the input no matter what. So make sure there's a generous return policy, and do some test recordings to make sure that you're getting clean audio from whichever mic you choose. For the record, my particular organization uses http://www.coutant.org/re16/index.html for a lot of news gathering, but let's just say they wouldn't be my first choice. Also, they're ugly as hell.

Some news gathering situations I will be in. 1) College football days are really big in my town. Fans do all sorts of interesting things while tailgating. The environment is very noisy, with music, traffic, shouting and large crowds constantly roaring. I will walk around this environment with a photographer, spot people doing interesting things and interview them about it. The mic will always be handheld by me, usually while both the interviewee and I are standing. I will have control over the distance between us. I hope to achieve isolated vocals through my handheld mic, but I understand the issue of directionality with shotguns. Being absolutely precise in these cases is not feasible. 2) When local officials make interesting decisions I will visit their offices to discuss coming changes. These will be sit down situations where a stand for the mic will be doable. Of course ambient building noise could be a problem, computers, lights, air-conditioning, etc. 3) There is a musical festival coming to my town in October. There are 8 bars which will host over 200 punk bands during 3 days (or something like that). I will cover this extensively, recording song clips (not studio quality, of course, but at least listenable) along with interviews both in quite and noisy settings. Conditions will mostly be similar to those on game day. I realize that 1 mic is not best suited to do all of these things. But I am hopeful that I can get 1 mic that is capable of producing usable audio for each situation. As for the "what mics work with my recorder" question. Here are some Websites that have samples: http://www.bradlinder.net/2009/03/zoom-h4n-external-mic-tests.html http://www.homebrewedmusic.com/2009/03/07/first-look-at-the-zoom-h4n/ http://www.bradlinder.net/2009/03/zoom-h4n-audio-take-2-second-time-not.html http://beneaththecastle.wordpress.com/2009/03/21/zoom-h4n-samples/ From what I've read here, dynamic mics don't work as well in the XLR inputs in quiet situations, but I can purchase an XLR to 3.5mm converter cable which would solve that problem.