I have a MKE-300 Sennheise

I have a MKE-300 Sennheiser that I REALLY like, and it’s pretty good at ignoring the sound of my HDD JVC. You could also put the Senn on a cheapphoto tripod and extend the cord (no more than about 20′ or you start picking up electrical noise). I also found a chinese-made shotgun on eee-bray for about 50 bucks including shipping that really surprised me with its audio quality for the price. It sports an XLR to 1/4″ cable with a mini adapter andseems to behappy working balanced or unbalanced. The only down side so far is no phantom power, but a kit bag full of AA batteries solves that problem.

By the way that’s the other thing I like about the Zoom H4 and H2 models, they use AA batteries. I always have nightmares about a built-in Li-Ion packgoing flat at the worst possible moment and no hope of recharging for at least an hour.