Comica CVM-VM10 Shotgun Microphone Review

Comica CVM-VM10 Shotgun Microphone Review

Buy it at Amazon: Comica CVM-VM10 Shotgun Microphone [Affiliate Link]

Takeaway: Improves targeted audio, moderate noise reduction/improvement, a little grainy at times.

The microphone comes in a semi-rigid clamshell case. Inside you'll find the plastic hot shoe shock mount, machined aluminum condenser shotgun mic, a foam wind screen, a wind muff or dead cat, and two coiled audio cables, one marked for camera, and one marked for smartphones that has the light gray connector. The microphone is small and compact and measures just over 3 inches long and weighs a little bit over 1 ounce. It attaches to the shock mount (which feels a bit flimsy) by snapping the two grips onto the back section of the mic. The mount attaches to you camera into the hot shoe with a screw down nut. Make sure to use the appropriate cable for your device (TRS vs TRRS for mobile devices). The cables are 2.5" long but stretch up to 20".

I've used this mic with my Canon T3i, Sony a6300, and LG G5 smartphone. When compared to the on-board camera microphones, the shotgun mic offers a nice improvement, cutting down on ambient noise from behind the mic and getting a modest volume boost from your subject without having to do any gain adjustment in post. The noise reduction isn't perfect and if you've got stuff going on behind your subject, you'll still hear a fair bit of that too. The mic seems to drop out a lot of lower decibel ranges in order to reduce the amount of noise. This makes the microphone sound somewhat muffled at times. The dead cat did alright with reducing wind noise when used outdoors, but it's not necessary indoors as the extra layer tends to mute the sound a bit heavily. The only issue I had was that the dead cat can't be used with my Sony a6300 mirrorless because the hot shoe isn't high enough and the hairs from the dead cat drift over the lens and get in the shot. With my smartphone, the audio was louder from the subject, but not necessarily clearer. It actually sounded a bit grainy/staticky, which I didn't notice in the DSLR footage.

Overall, the shotgun mic does a nice job capturing the sound that's directly in front of it and eliminating some of the sounds coming from other directions. This results in better targeted and cleaner sounding audio that's good for interviews and capturing audio from a specific source. It's not laser pinpoint focused for sure, but it's a lot better than the built-in mic and more focused than my omnidirectional mic with less ambient noise.

Buy it at Amazon: Comica CVM-VM10 Shotgun Microphone [Affiliate Link]