Perhaps just a cheap hand held mic, if you're doing this alone lapels can be a real problem when the talent walks off. Plus there's the effort involved in fitting the thing to the talent.
Nothing that you can put on the camera is going to help much, well there might be, some of the Sanken mics seem able to perform miracles but they cost around as much as an FX1.

If possible I would prefer to stick with an on-camera mounted solution, since I don't really want to have to wire up the talent... even if it involves sacrifices in the end result. I don't mind picking up the general din, since that's simply the environment and goes with the overall theme of the video, as long as the speaker is loud and clear enough to be understood.

Knowing nothing about such things, my initial research has me leaning towards a shotgun mic (I'm willing to spend maybe up to 400), but I'm concerned over comments that they don't work well in indoor environments.

Edit for farss' comment: I don't think a handheld will work well either, as I am doing this alone without a tripod and the speakers will otherwise have their hands occupied demonstrating/using products.

Where's that third hand evolution should have provided me by now? :-)

SunFlux you are demonstrating exactly the same realisations I had some 4 years back.

Looong story short I know have: 1xSenni M66; 1xSenni reporter's mic; 1x Rode Video mic; 1x Rode Stereo Mic (love it!); Tx+Rx Senni with lapel Omni and a truly valuable Senni Tx ButtPlug.

Now, this should tell you something? There ain't no mic for all occasions and not all occasions are good for one mic. The only real cure is to get the mic as close to the talent's mouth as soon and as often as possible - period! Now working outwards from this state of GRACE, yes, I/you/we can do some good by employing a mic that at best will "assist" a situation you speak of. But eventually even you will say, huh this ain't good enough for me and you will want to employ a boomer, have the talent HOLD a report mic, tripod-up your camera, lapel 'em or . . move the talent TO a better environment. Now I've had great results employing some or all of the above. But to date, and waiting for that 3rd hand, the nearest I've come to this is to "float" my camera and kit on a DVRigPro and wave a reporter OR Rode or Senni mic - sometimes out of shot - at the talent. The actual problem with ANY on camera mic, shottioe or not, is that as soon as the talent is off centre of the camera lens then the same reasons as to WHY a shottie WORKS make it awful for off-centre audio capture. You either have to be very close to the talent and/or nail their feet to the convention floor. Forget about allow them to wander about and being natural, the audio will suffer. I know, I've done EXACTLY the same. So, having the talent relaxed and moving while you shoot is fraught with audio drop.

Executing a successful Single-handed interview is a real craft. What you are realizing that maybe, just maybe there ain't no simple mic fix: - "I was sorely disappointed in the vocal pickup of the FX1's built-in mic.". this is not just to do with an on-camera mic. Join the club. BUT, conversely your comment about not getting a studio result within the environment is too extreme - it is possible to achieve very acceptable audio results, capture plenty of a talent's "speech" and place the person amongst the general hub-bub and excitement of a convention.

"What kind of microphone is ideal for this kind of noisy environment?" - well, from my short entree into this type of work it is a spread of approaches and weapons that do it for me. It isn't JUST the mic - yeah?

I recently completed a job where I had the organiser interview the talent using my reporter's mic while on the other channel I had my senni sometimes fixed and sometimes hand held by me while using my DVRigPro. Bleedin' ugly as sin to look at me - I don;t care, but it DID work. And the audio was deliciously audible WITH enough of the ambient to mix within Vegas.

I'd also, now that I've tried it out, is the Rode Stereo Video Mic. It does have fall off outside of the area I wouldn't want, and I will use it on my next "noisy" job and have a reporter mic as back-up for the mix.

Hope this helps and not hinders?

I'd go with Grazie's suggestion, either the mono or stereo Rode video mic is hard to beat and it was really designed to work as an on camera mic and you don't need to worry about phantom power and needing balanced inputs.
Rode also make a longer shotgum mic that I hear is excellent value for money but these kinds of mics are really not designed to be on a camera, sound doesn't work like light.
Of course almost anything will be better than the inbuilt mic in the FX1.

I would get an Audio Technica AT822 stereo microphone. I have lots of mikes, but that one is the most versatile one I have and it sounds great!

It comes with a bunch of adapters for nearly any purpose and a camera mount to boot. Takes a single AA battery that lasts for months. It has been a popular mike for years with good reason.

John

"I would prefer to stick with an on-camera mounted solution, since I don't really want to have to wire up the talent"

The closer the mic is to the talent's mouth, the easier it is for you to turn down the gain on your camera (which is the easiest and best way to get rid of the loud background noise in a convention hall).

Therefore, you want a camera-mounted boom, with a mic at the end, and attached to your (soon to be described) mic-holder.

If you have a DVRigPro, you could mount the mic boom to the DVRig cross-bars.

If you ask this question on the Audio section what you'll learn is that the cheapest tool you have available for good sound is the Inverse Square Law. Good sound diminishes (or gains) on the inverse ratio of distance squared. Source is one foot away from the mic and you move the mic two feet away? 1/4th the amount of sound can be captured. It makes *that* much difference.

We recently shot a movie in which we had 4,000 square feet of moving talent, any one of which needed to be mic'd at any one time, but we had no way of knowing the order, nor could we call "CUT CUT" and get things sorted out. What we needed was a boom man running around like a jackrabbit, and with three cameras rolling at the same time we KNEW he'd get into the frame all the time. So we invented WRGR-TV, got a Miss MA to be the anchorwoman, and all of us on the shooting team were "live camera TV crew covering the event" which then gave motivation for our sound guy to be visible booming the dialog. Easiest thing to do, then, is get a pretty girl to boom your talent, let her be in the picture.

But any way you do it, with the camera mic on a boom closer to your talent, or about eqi-distance between you and the talent, you can do the interview from behind the camera and the result will not be a booming-voice from you and a mousy-voice from the talent.

Where to get an on-camera boom for the FX1? Buy an 18" aluminum bar-bell tube from a sporting shop, drill a hole through the tube (one side all the way to the other) that will exactly fit a 1.25in long bolt that will thread into the hole on top of your FX1 mic, run your mic wire down the tube, gaffers-tape the mic to the "boom" (could be the side, could be shoved up into the tube, depending on mic body size). Your mic (if you don't tape it to the bottom of the boom) will stay just out of the picture.

It helps even more if you can find a telescopic pole that goes from 1ft to 2ft. That way you can pull in your mic when you are not in shooting mode. But disassembly works just as well.

I'd be shy of bolting a boom to the FX microphone. Not designed for that load and working in a crowd the boom is very likely to get knocked. Having an assistant is the best answer for a whole variety of reasons (apart from holding a boom), but the specification is "one man show".
The venues described are very noisy and often it's difficult to even have a conversation without shouting. So no ordinary miking is going to get anything resembling good audio. Hence my thoughts on noise cancelling. Recently noticed docos shot in helicopters with open doors where the conversation (not shouted) was very cleanly recorded using noise cancellation systems. So I would be looking for a neat wireless system with noise cancellation mic (cheap headset systems are available everywhere) that can be quickly clipped to the talent. Wide frequency response isn't needed -- it's voice only. I'm assuming that the video is being shot in a co-interested situation, rather than wild documentary. Surely someone has already explored such options?

EDIT: although TV news isn't usually done "one-person" these days they get very clean audio in noisy environments. I've presumed they use noise cancellation mic systems.

Yep, any boom can be a problem, as can be any mic with a wire to the camera. People do walk between camera and subject - the wire too is at risk.

A boom and mic attached to cam is the lowest possible cost for one-man-show acceptable sound. If there is a strength concern mounting about 6 ozs of aluminum pipe and mic to the pretty rugged threaded socket on the FX1 (where everybody else is mounting batteries and wireless receivers and lights all at the same time), the cam could be tripod-mounted, a boom lashed betwen legs, mic'ing from below, getting the mic up as close to the talent's mouth as is acceptable for visual sake. To this extent, a $20 stage mic boom (not stand, boom) could be put into service, it coming with its own tripod legs and being easily adjustable.

Still, anything other than low-gain super-close mic'ing is going to get lots of ambient sound.

"Noise cancelling" trims sounds outside the vocal range. Otherwise it trims out the voice of the talent as well. Unfortunately, in a convention hall *most* of the ambient noise is made up of voice-ranged, well, voices. That's why news reporters report from *outside* a convention hall where only lower-level traffic noise has to be cancelled out (or moderated). Again, the trick there is to set the mic gain to the very lowest possible and get the mic as close as possible. We recently got great dialog at a pretty hectic zoo using the free inverse-square law.

Not too long ago, on this site, was a recommendation for a Countryman E6i earset mic. ~$300 bucks
This puts the mic right at the mouth (corner, to be more specific) thus the signal-to-noise is as superior as possible. The person who posted claims it was as if he were recording in a sound box, not out in the open.

Still, the gentleman has to also purchase a way to connect the mic to the camera. Wire? - but then there's the problem of the surging crowd taking shortcuts between camera and talent. Wireless? - but then there's the problem of additional purchases, mounting a pack on a belt (not many women wear belts at conventions, so they'll be holding the transmitter, gesticulating with it, trying to hold coffee in the same hand, giving the transmitter back and turning to walk away while the mic is still connected to the transmitter, etc), and finally the remaining need to purchase and mount a receiver to the FX1.

The gentleman could always break the rule "Never Let The Talent Hold The Mic" (they do the dangdest things with them, the worst of which is constantly pulling the mic away from their mouth). This is the second-cheapest way to get a mic close to the talent. Wireless? - put a transmitter butt plug on an XLR mic and a receiver on the camera op's belt, the 3mm plug mono cable from the receiver to the FX1. Or mount the receiver on the supplied threaded hole at the FX1 on-cam mics.

Again, the proper place to vet this question is the audio group. This is an age-old problem that has yet to find a proper solution. Audio group will point to many specific solutions and prices. Audio is clearly a place where you get to pick two: Quality Sound, Inexpensive, Convienient.

Well, I'm not sure exactly how "advanced" or complex I want to go here. I mean I was able to massage the audio I got from the FX1 into a workable state, although it took a lot of playing around with filters and levels.

Basically, at this point, I'm looking for "convenient, not too expensive, and better than the built-in mic". I'm not expecting the world, just an improvement. Although I understand that it would be best to have an audio guy or a boom mic or wire up the talent or have them hold the mic, those really aren't options at this particular time.

Realizing that everything will be a compromise and that no single mic will excel at what I'm trying to do, I'm just looking for an "okay" product to jump in and wet my feet with. A shotgun like the Sony ECM-674, a stereo mic like the AT822, a Rode SVM... I certainly don't expect that this will be my *last* mic solution, I just need to begin with something. :-)

(Actually I had forgotten that there *was* a Vegas audio group, and don't think double-posting at this point would be good...)

noise cancellation isn't a filtering process.
Also note that there is a vast difference between mounting a wireless unit, light, or what-have-you on the FX attachment socket and a mass on the end of a lever. Simple engineering concept.

A merely "OK", cheap microphone close to the source will ALWAYS sound better than even the most expensive mic a distance away from the source.

John

Basically, at this point, I'm looking for "convenient, not too expensive, and better than the built-in mic". I'm not expecting the world, just an improvement. Although I understand that it would be best to have an audio guy or a boom mic or wire up the talent or have them hold the mic, those really aren't options at this particular time.
=======
Understood. That is why I recommended the Audio Technica AT822. You will NOT be disappointed. It is perfect for your application and all you have to do is stick a battery into it and plug it straight into your camera. And it sounds fantastic.

John

Looking at the price I think the Rode videomic would be a better proposition, plus it comes with a shock mount. There's a choice of either the mono or the new stereo version. For what Sunflux is doing I'd be kind of inclined to stick with a mono mic.

Bob.

I use the Electrovoice with the FX1. More importantly for you as you want a cheap mic is to NOT mount the mic on the camera. The FX1 motor and controls are quite noisy. Have the mic on a stand. Beside you just a few feet away is fine and you will get good results.

Don't forget the FX1 has the 1/8th pin mic sockets so you will need a transformer, as any mic worth buying (even cheap ones) is XLR.

Like John, I often use the Audio Technica AT-822 (actually, I use the AT-825, but it's just an 822 with balanced conections.) Anyway, it sounds GREAT and it is full mono compatible. You can mix both channels together to make a mono soundtrack with no problems.

John

FWIW, I did a shoot a number of years ago in a downtown bar that was extremely loud. With speakers all over the place, you had to yell in the ear of the person you were talking to for them to hear you. The talent had my trusty Sennheiser ME-80 shotgun (since replaced by the ME-66, IMO not as good). The only way I could set levels was to trust the VU meters of the record deck as the noise level was too loud to allow me to hear through my headset. Wehn I got back to the edit suite, I was astounded to discover that she came through loud and clear with the music being far in the background.
On another shoot (with this same shotgun), I was picking up B-reel footage with cops and firefighters standing right next to a (high revving) fire truck. I was about 3 feet (1 metre) away from them and their conversation was very intelligble.
In the OP's circumstance, I would highly recommend a decent shotgun, primarily for it's off-axis rejection of unwanted noise.

Mike