The problem with that is that the typical consumer camera (not prosumer) will provide only plug-in power via the mini and only takes mic-in, and I also beg to differ on all decent cameras will have audio in. Many consumer cams do, but not all by a long stretch, which is why I mentioned that -- you should make sure you buy a camera that does. In fact, even one of the newer Sony HDV consumer cams doesn't have audio in (A1 or something like that), which is insane, but I digress. But the point is, it'd be great if you could run stealth mics in a hat with a battery box giving you 9v power, but the problem is that it is highly unlikely that you could run line-in with any consumer camera. Now prosumer is another story altogether, with most of them you can run mic or line-in, and if they are good, they'll have XLR inputs to and run 16-bit audio (although the Sony HDV cams run MPEG4 audio not 16-bit, which is just lame, but I digress again).