Does anyone know of a kit, or seperate items, for a good shotgun mic and boom? I've got about $500 to spend.

You may be able to find a kit on ebay, but just go with seperate stuff, you'll need;

-Boom Pole
-Shockmount
-Microphone
-XLR Cable
-Necessary Connectors to camera (either a standard xlr to min connector, or a beachtek)

-If you want to buy everything, I would suggest the Audio Technica AT897 shotgun microphone($279 with a shockmount from B&H), a Gitzo boompole, a 50ft XLR cable, and a simple beachtek adaptor. This should run you about $500, depending on what size boompole you want.

-On the other hand, if you made a boompole, you could afford a better mic.

elephant, if you dont mind could you tell me the type of shocmount and mic i could use, i have the pole, i just need everything else.and i am goin eBay, but i need some help on the specifics. You help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You.

Well, it's all about what you want, and how much money you have. Any shotgun mic should do with a boompole. Like I suggested above, the Audio Technica AT897 is a great mic, and I have seen it one ebay throughout the past few days. If you don't want to spend that much, look at microphones by azden (sgm-1x or sgm 2x), or if you want to spend more look at sennheiser (me66). For a shockmount, any will do. The cheapest you will probably get will be an azden shockmount for about $30. For these microphones you will also need the accesories I mentioned above.

Thank you very much , that will help a lot. What about recivers? what are some good..not ouragously priced ones.

Recievers? If you are talking about what you use to recieve the sound and record, there are basically three options, DAT, MiniDisc, and your camera. You can get a DAT walkman for about $600, and I have heard they work great. MiniDiscs's I have heard good and negative things about. They will only run you a couple hundred though. Problem is, the audio is compressed. The other option, is you camera. You can either connect it with a $10 XLR to Mini adapter, or a $150-200 Beachtek adapter. Beachtek will keep your audio balanced(meaning it will keep it mono), where the adapter will just split it into stereo.

If you are talking about a mixer, I don't know much, but you should be able to get a decent analog one for $100 with XLR inputs, and some good outputs.