 Hey guys welcome back to my YouTube channel Daniel Rose here I want to record another video about the XA40 professional camcorder from Canon and what I want to talk about today I just got in the post very forticiously before the end of the week my first XLR shotgun microphone and this is the Boya BYBM 6060. Now the purpose of this video is if you've just picked up the XA40 and you're looking to buy a shotgun I just want to tell you or show rather why you should probably go for a compact shotgun they do exist they're also known as short shotguns so the first thing is like this camera is really really small so it's something that's hard to judge by youtube videos or product photos exactly how small this is so you can see there from the bottom of the viewfinder to the with the lens on or the lens hood on that's 23 centimeters and just getting to the lens it's probably only actually 19 centimeters for reference here's my hand I have a normal sized hand I think and like you know it's so compact I can literally hold it top handle to bottom with my hand so Canon really don't exaggerate when they say that they put the pro camcorder look the top handle etc into a really small form factor and that's great for portability but it does present a problem when you're buying microphones because your standard shotgun microphone is built for either a boom or just a bigger or if it's you know if it's to be used for on camera stuff it's just intended for a bigger camera I mean you can just see that is not right right that is that shotgun microphone is too long so I did ask on reddit for recommendations for compact XLR shotgun microphones I did get a couple of recommendations I will put those in the description please be aware at least at the time I'm recording this I'm not putting up affiliate links I'm just kind of trying to help people in the right direction who are also interested in camcorders so measuring my shotgun this guy is 28 so that's actually longer than the camcorder and that's not by any strategy a very very long shotgun microphone it's a little longer than some of the more expensive sannheiser stuff but I just want to show you guys two things firstly here's just a little pro tip as they call it um this shotgun mount that comes with the xa40 and 50 etc it actually doesn't tighten very far this is as tight as it'll go so what I did it wouldn't fit this would not fit snugly and what I did here if you can make the distinction I wrapped around this in black insulation tape black just you know sort of keep the appearance looking good and I had to go for quite a while until it would add enough width or diameter I should say to the shotgun before it would fit snugly so that's just a quick tip for you guys and I'll just show you how this looks because the reason I bought this 60 shotgun was because I've just spent you know a lot of money on the camera and you know uh I'm going to save up a little bit before I can I can justify buying a 300 dollar um better compact sure shotgun microphone so I figured this will keep me going and then afterwards I'll have it for I guess booming or something so just want to show you what it looks like it's not the worst but it's also not the best so with the insulation tape it does fit really snugly you can see you know it's not going anywhere uh which is good and but it definitely just in proportion it just looks wrong I think um bear in mind as well that by the time you attach your XLR cable where it's the female uh you're going to be adding you know another bit here and that's it it just kind of two things it's a tracks from the portability of the camcorder this actually fits in my existing camera bag which is amazing because I didn't need to buy a new camera bag but when you add the extra length from the this shotgun microphone um it doesn't fit so that might be a concern for you and yeah it's just great to have something so portable and then to throw a big chunky mic um I think it's kind of dumb so yeah I definitely would recommend looking into portable options it does work one really really small and pedantic point but as this is kind of a pedantic point video I'll say it nevertheless this is the shortest XLR cable that I had in my uh camera bag I don't know how long it is I would guess approximately maybe it's 60 centimeters end to end yeah it's probably 60 but in any event that's already way too long you only need to go from the back of your microphone to the XLR port and as I said in my last video you want to use input one so you're talking about I mean again I'm using my hand here you're talking about a span of only this much it's really not that much ground to cover so you should also probably buy if your microphone doesn't come with an XLR cable or even if it does I would buy the shortest XLR that'll make that reach I think 30 centimeters would do it because they include the uh they usually include the attachments in the length uh you might even be able to get away with shorter so you might need to buy a couple to experiment with anyway I'm really happy to have a shotgun that I can now use with this and I can guess the advantage of using this over a 3.5 mil is that you have all your all the controls you might need on the hardware level you have your phantom power switch regular switch line-in switch automatic in control manual game control off on switch so versus using a 3.5 mil or an eighth shotgun which you can do you can attach it in here the advantage of using an XLR microphone is that if you're already using the top handle it's already there you can it can fit into your shotgun mine but more importantly that when you're out shooting and interviewing instead of fiddling around with levels on the LCD screen here you have access to all that at literally the touch of a button so I think that's a worthwhile enough advantage to go with an XLR mic over a 3.5 mil even though this guy can technically support both hope that was useful if you're looking at buying a microphone for your XA40 shotgun microphone I'll put a link in this description to the microphones the compact microphones that I found myself and was to help with reddit because there are a few on the market they're definitely more expensive than this $60 boya microphone but yeah if you have the money to go and buy one and definitely I think it's probably better to to get to get something that sites more appropriately for this camera than a big long shotgun that's just gonna look a bit a little bit OTT or whatever I hope this video is useful and if you want to get more videos from me on a whole bunch of different topics please feel free to subscribe thanks for watching