Here are the microphones I currently own and use with some commentary…
These are a German-designed and Chinese made clone of the Shure SM-58, which is a classic hand-held dynamic mic used for a lot of live vocal performances by singers. These things have a very similar frequency response, but are a lot more susceptible to handling noise. You don’t want to hand-hold them. They are very directional and only really pick up what’s right in front of them, which is good when you live in a noisy flat like I do. Dirt cheap and the quality is amazing for the price. You’ll want to put them in a cheap boom arm and use a shock mount to eliminate handling noise:
You’ll also want foam windscreen covers:
The above help cut down on sibilance (s sounds), plosives (p sounds), breathing noises, and keep your mic more hygenic.
This mic is similar to the above, but slightly higher quality with no off switch. I would just go with the cheaper ones:
I have this Shure SM-57 and I like it in situations where I need hand-held without the handling noise. I bought a foam cover to go with:
All of the above mics are microphone level input and need to go through some sort of interface to be used with a computer, they cannot be direct connected. None of them require 48V phantom voltage from a mixer or input device to power them.
This is my current Squirrel FM studio mic connected to my broadcast board:
It’s an updated version of the classic Electrovoice RE-20, which is a legendary broadcast mic. This one is more for home use, picks up less surrounding noise. Very high quality ribbon mic, needs 48V phantom power to work.
The Blue mic below is one of my expensive mistakes, but it can either be used as a standard microphone on a mixer powered by 48V phantom voltage or you can use a USB cable to power it and direct connect to a computer. It picks up too much from your environment so unless you’re in a “treated” room with no noise, you’ll hate it:
Finally, when we had the community station, we had people doing sports. They used these headsets, which I still have in a tub somewhere:
Hope this is useful.