Does your narrative video have any
1. Interview shots.
2. Close up shots.

If yes. Get the slider + pan head.
Gimbal is great for dynamic shots but for relatively static shots, it's a bit hard.

Audio.
And get a lav mic if you do interviews/have someone talking. You can hook the lav to your zoom h1 directly. And then sync ur video separately.

It wouldn't be that expensive. As for lav. There are many expensive ones but also many affordable ones. I recommend giant squid mic on amazon.its like 40usd? .Better than sub rm150 lavs. Those 30 usd audio technically lav is bad. Cable too long. Susceptible to interference.



This post has been edited by LegendLee: Oct 2 2017, 10:44 AM

I believe your lav mic is not a wireless mic right?
So before this, you've to hook the mic directly to ur cam ?

Now you can hook it to the zoom h1

I find myself using a lav way more frequently than a shotgun. Although I'll still have a shotgun hooked on my cam to capture clearer audio to sync or in worst case scenario... as a backup.

A regular lav will always be better (if placed properly) compared to a shotgun on your camera.
Unless you've a person with a boom holding it directly above the person speaking, a shotgun will still get background noise.

I've a rode ntg2 shotgun mic and without someone actively monitoring and adjusting, the lavalier is better.

The only problem with a lav is that you're limited to capturing the audio of one person at a time. If you want to capture 2 person, you need 2 sets.
Also, unless you've a wireless lav, it's hard to monitor. Without monitoring, your lav can come detached, it can spoil or the memory can be corrupted. All of which has occurred to me before.

Solution is to get a reliable wireless lav(not cheap) or use multiple lavs on a person.(as backup).
Before I switch to wireless, i was using 3 zoom h1 connected to 3 lav Mics.

But ultimately, it depends what you're shooting for.
If I'm shooting for a blog or myself. A rode shotgun mic on my camera is far more than enough. Esp if whoever's talking is within 1m of the camera.
But if you want to offer video as a service, sound is crucial and any hissing/unwanted background sound is a huge turn off.

It depends what you're shooting. If it's vlog style, the rode shotgun mic will be more than enough. Casey netistat uses a videomic pro.

I'm primarily a canon shooter.