If you want good audio, don't bother with expensive mics, they are poor performers at a distance compared to any cheap electret condenser mic costing $5 if located near the sound source.
The problem with recording sound from a distance is room acoustics that our brain does a pretty good job of filtering out all the slightly time delayed reverberant components from of reflected sounds. If you every recorded sound in a room you were sitting in you would be surprised how much echo and reverb noise there is compared to the desired voices. The cause most people think is "oh, get a better mic, spend a lot" but those people are wrong.The problem is the mic was TOO good, because that mess of echo and reverb artifacts is really what the room sounds like at the location of the mic. Recording the same voices in the same room with the mic close to one of the speaking persons and you will hear the closest person to the mic sounds least impacted by room acoustics. Move the mic to within 10 inches of the speaker and lower the gain of the recorder and you will hear a much better ratio of speakers direct voice compared to a much-reduced level of room echo and reverb. You just made the recording 1000% better without spending a dime. A $10,000 mic 10 feet away would still sound really bad.
So there is a simple solution, whatever mic you have to move it very close to the desired source. If it is a church service and the priest or chaplain etc is in a fixed location, use long cable or a wireless mic to get the mic in a close in position within a couple feet and record it with the video tracking. That not only greatly improves the audio quality but also makes the sound less irritating for another reason.
That reason is our brain works overtime when trying to figure out the relation to a sound and its visual source by timing. We do not notice sound delayed over about 30ms from a visual source but our brain does and works hard to correlate the visuals and sound. When the delay is longer than about 30ms the brain gives up and does not try to sync them and you become aware of the sound and visuals are out of sync. If you are recording from 50 feet away, that is a 55 ms delay and echo and reverb becomes even more of a problem with our brains not associating the visuals with a source so reverb and echo which are always present, are not being filtered out by your brain. It is hard work to filter out millions of reflection aural artifacts and it tires your brain quickly.|
That problem is solved once again by getting the mic close. The mic at 1 foot away from the source will have only 1.1 ms delay between the visuals of lips moving and sound so the brain has much less work to do. A close in $5 mic will ALWAYS 100% slam dunk assured, outperform a $10,000 mic for the speech at 50 feet distant, or even 15 feet.
Wireless mics can be had for $20 and include a cheap low-performance Panasonic EL-2 mic element that cost $0.40 but in a lapel mic clipped to the speaker's shirt collar, will perform like a million bucks. Being a cheap little element also makes it easier in mixing or sound editing in that being omnidirectional there is much less variation in level if the speaker turns their head or tilts their head down as if reading. A highly directional mic, like a shotgun or hyper cardioid mic (mics sold as solving the problem of room reflections being stronger than the direct voice) is also more critical in angle from the source and sound level drops a great deal of axis. Turning the speaker's head 20 degrees can drop the sound level 15 dB or more meaning using some sort of leveling device or compressor which can make the signal to noise ratio worse when gain has to increase. With an Omni-directional mic close in, varies much less in frequency response and sensitivity off axis.
The audio recording performance of most newer cameras is excellent. If someone has issues with it, it is surely their technique and not the camera contrary to the frequent claims read on photography sites. Things get a little more complex when trying to balance sound from multiple sources, for example, a choir and paster
Having the audio-aligned with the visuals, and a steady level range, and high signal to noise ratio makes your job of optimizing the sound a snap.
If you have any questions about audio, ask, that was my specialty in sound recording for decades on some of the biggest selling albums of all time in my own large studio complex. You have albums I recorded.
The problem with recording sound from a distance is room acoustics that our brain does a pretty good job of filtering out all the slightly time delayed reverberant components from of reflected sounds. If you every recorded sound in a room you were sitting in you would be surprised how much echo and reverb noise there is compared to the desired voices. The cause most people think is "oh, get a better mic, spend a lot" but those people are wrong.The problem is the mic was TOO good, because that mess of echo and reverb artifacts is really what the room sounds like at the location of the mic. Recording the same voices in the same room with the mic close to one of the speaking persons and you will hear the closest person to the mic sounds least impacted by room acoustics. Move the mic to within 10 inches of the speaker and lower the gain of the recorder and you will hear a much better ratio of speakers direct voice compared to a much-reduced level of room echo and reverb. You just made the recording 1000% better without spending a dime. A $10,000 mic 10 feet away would still sound really bad.
So there is a simple solution, whatever mic you have to move it very close to the desired source. If it is a church service and the priest or chaplain etc is in a fixed location, use long cable or a wireless mic to get the mic in a close in position within a couple feet and record it with the video tracking. That not only greatly improves the audio quality but also makes the sound less irritating for another reason.
That reason is our brain works overtime when trying to figure out the relation to a sound and its visual source by timing. We do not notice sound delayed over about 30ms from a visual source but our brain does and works hard to correlate the visuals and sound. When the delay is longer than about 30ms the brain gives up and does not try to sync them and you become aware of the sound and visuals are out of sync. If you are recording from 50 feet away, that is a 55 ms delay and echo and reverb becomes even more of a problem with our brains not associating the visuals with a source so reverb and echo which are always present, are not being filtered out by your brain. It is hard work to filter out millions of reflection aural artifacts and it tires your brain quickly.|
That problem is solved once again by getting the mic close. The mic at 1 foot away from the source will have only 1.1 ms delay between the visuals of lips moving and sound so the brain has much less work to do. A close in $5 mic will ALWAYS 100% slam dunk assured, outperform a $10,000 mic for the speech at 50 feet distant, or even 15 feet.
Wireless mics can be had for $20 and include a cheap low-performance Panasonic EL-2 mic element that cost $0.40 but in a lapel mic clipped to the speaker's shirt collar, will perform like a million bucks. Being a cheap little element also makes it easier in mixing or sound editing in that being omnidirectional there is much less variation in level if the speaker turns their head or tilts their head down as if reading. A highly directional mic, like a shotgun or hyper cardioid mic (mics sold as solving the problem of room reflections being stronger than the direct voice) is also more critical in angle from the source and sound level drops a great deal of axis. Turning the speaker's head 20 degrees can drop the sound level 15 dB or more meaning using some sort of leveling device or compressor which can make the signal to noise ratio worse when gain has to increase. With an Omni-directional mic close in, varies much less in frequency response and sensitivity off axis.
The audio recording performance of most newer cameras is excellent. If someone has issues with it, it is surely their technique and not the camera contrary to the frequent claims read on photography sites. Things get a little more complex when trying to balance sound from multiple sources, for example, a choir and paster
Having the audio-aligned with the visuals, and a steady level range, and high signal to noise ratio makes your job of optimizing the sound a snap.
If you have any questions about audio, ask, that was my specialty in sound recording for decades on some of the biggest selling albums of all time in my own large studio complex. You have albums I recorded.