Is there anything a can do to get the best out of this set up? I usually make tiny little horror films, such as Lights Out or Tuck Me In.
Good or crappy mic, just get it close. Period. When the audio isn't good enough, rerecord it.
If you are filming Master Scene, which is wide angle of the whole scene, followed by medium and closeup shots, then you can get your best audio with the close ups. You place your mic within a foot or two of the actor's mouth. Even an on camera mic could get good audio at that distance.
The trick comes during the editing where I will make the close up audio takes work for any shot that I want, even long shots. If the lines are identical, you can simply line up the waveform of your closeup shot with the reference audio waveform of any other shot, including long shots. Reverb (early reflection time simulating room size) can always be added.
For short subjects, I rarely have crew. I use a mic stand and an old Sennheiser ME66 plugged right into the camera. For
HAG IN THE HILLS, I used the mic stand on almost every shot, except for a couple where I held it in my hand.
Actually, I didn't have crew for my last feature, EXILE, it was just me and the actors. we recorded a lot of the audio, after the fact. Again, it's easy to line up a cleanly recorded waveform, with the crappy waveforms in those windy/noisy takes. You can see that process here: