Night vision spy camera $10 high gain microphone test

Sony's nightshot can do amazing things for filming video in complete darkness. But especially for recording video outdoors in the dark, you want to hear what's going on outside at night, as well as see it. I found a $10 GE microphone that is nothing special when hooked up to a computer, but when connected to the "Plug-In Power" mic input of a Sony camcorder, it becomes extremely sensitive, to the point that it can pick up the sound of footsteps over 80 feet away! In fact, you don't want it too close to the camcorder or else it will pick up the tape motor or hard drive noise very strongly (unless you have a flash memory camcorder or are doing direct firewire capture to a computer or external DVD recorder). Also you need to use a well shielded extension cable or else will you hear a high pitched whine in the audio. The extension cable and stand that comes with the GE mic has that problem due to its very thin cable, so I made my own setup, as I show in the video. I cannot guarantee equally good results with other brands of camcorders. Like I said, I tried the GE mic with my computer's mic input and its sensitivity was nothing special in that case. Also it requires a powered mic jack, so it will not work with audio tape recorders or Canon camcorders. It does work fine with the Aiptek GVS and Kodak Zi8 camcorders, though, as youtuber "fishycomics" has demonstrated on his channel.