Summary: This microphone is a wonderful compact addition to your video camera’s accessory bag. The sound quality is very good, but then again so is the internal microphone on my Optura Xi; there is a noticeable difference though. Comes with windshields and slips right into your camera’s hot shoe; simple. I would highly recommend this unit for video sound quality aficionados.

Summary: I love this mic. In preparing for a documentary that I am filming by myself, I was looking for an easy-to-use, high-quality mic that I could attach to my Canon HV20 and still get good audio. I was thinking about models from Sennheiser and Audio Technica, but these all involved mic jack cords, etc. This mic is perfect because it plugs right into the hot shoe. No hassle! It's small and portable, and the sound is great.

Summary: Got this around the hoidays to help me better use my Canon HG-10 (whose video and options I love, but whose audio was inconsnstent). The DM-50 helps a lot towards ths end, especially in stereo mode 1 (the one that's semi-directional facing forward). Mode 2 onidirectional) seems to capture more from behind than in front, although that's probably just observation bias. And the mono directional mode is pretty inconsistent, you never know when you'll be doing a lot fo post-processing of the sound (or frankly -- but rarely -- having sound that's not even good enough to post-process).

It fits onto canon's advanced hot shoe, which is great for convenince (so long as you don't need anything else on that shoe). It's almost as big as the HG-10 I use it on, so the small carrying case I had gotten with the camcorder became quickly obsolete.

A good accessory if you want to get forward semi-directional sound that will be of higher quality than the integrated micrphone, but for other purposes doesn't always seem to be a very big improvement (especially considering the incremental cost).