Several popular mike manufacturers make high-quality stereo mikes which you connect to your camcorder's external stereo mike jack. These will almost always give you better performance than your built-in mike.

Stereo mikes come in as many different designs as other mikes, but most are condenser types. They will provide very high quality sound and give you the great advantage of positioning your camcorder and mike at separate locations.

A stereo mike is nothing more than two separate cardioid mike elements built into a single case. Cardioid means that the elements are most sensitive to sound coming from a specific direction, rather than equally from all directions. The pickup pattern is in the shape of a heart, with the bottom of the heart shape pointed out--hence the term cardioid.

Cheaper stereo mikes have their elements fixed into position and are not adjustable, but better versions have one element capable of up to 270 degrees of rotation mounted over a second fixed element. This allows you to choose from several different coincident miking patterns.

Coincident miking means that one element of the mike sits directly above the other and the two pickup patterns are aimed to roughly cover the left and right sides of a sound source. Note that coincident miking refers not only to one-piece stereo mikes, but to separate mikes as well, when their elements are placed as described above.

Quality stereo mikes, when used properly, are capable of reproducing excellent stereo sound, but their major drawback is their high…