Farss said it well, but to add a little to it....the little Canon is cute, but that's about it. Not a good mic by any stretch. It's like the ATR55 from Audio Technica. Built for looks, built for the guy that *thinks* he needs a 'better' microphone, but definitely not a very useful tool.
Get a cheap mic, get it close to the subject. Or, get a good mic, and while you can have it further back from the subject, you still want it close. Sound is a proximate thing. Mics need to be close to do their job properly.

One mic I've been playing around with a little lately is the Sanken stereo shotgun, it does sound excellent and at $2,500 it'd want to!
I'm going to give it a whirl recording waves (the ones on the beach) along with the NT1A to get the bottom end all onto a multitrack, all I have to wait for is a big surf.
Bob.

Been ROAD testing their - RODE's - video mic and for the money it is stupendous . . . PLUS for that money you could buy 2 and setup a kinda stereo option. THEN having these, in your mic arsenal, you can go ahead and do static interviews too!

I'm playing with my "budget" Behringer Eurorack MXB 1002 mixer and this has more Inputs and faders than you could BUY for the money & it will outlive me! Oh yeah? I din't say it can be battery p[owered too! Gets outside mixing an option.

On-board mics? Experience the difference and you wont look back. Serious.

Grazie

Results from live video shoot:

The Rode video mic worked ok.. at least much better than the onboard would've... best would've been a wired mic of course.. what I found was that at 15-18 feet, the pickup was ok, but there was a lot of what sounded like "wind" ambient in the signal (even though it was in a closed large ballroom)...

eg sounded like there was wind ... not sure why ...good thing it was just a backup for audio ...

listen here for example (530k small audio file clip):

http://www.MegaSeminar.com/rodemicfrom15ft.mp3

Now it picked up sound well from "in front of the camera" video testimonials, you can here them at the bottom of the seminar page... folks just 5-8 feet in front of the camcorder..

like Spot says though, distance is critical...(the "inverse square law" and distance and all that physics/audio stuff)..

any tips/feedback on improving gain/quality at 15-18 feet from stage using a shotgun mic? or how to best clean up in post? (highpass filter/compress?)

thanks,

ken

Obviously knock out some of the bottom end.
Usually speakers stand at a lecturn which most likely has a mic on it. Use a wireless mic, hid the transmitter under the lecturn and clip a lapel mic onto the existing mic. I think even an expensive shotgun isn't going to do much better that far back and for the price of the shotgun you could buy a very good wireless mic like the Sennheiser Evolution G2 or whatever and get better results for both this and other situations.
Bob.

You gotta get the mics as NEAR as you can. There is little solution for me at the budget end of things. I've done great things with a lapel mic + Tx to Rx on my XM2 - worked VERY well indeed. Failing that hard wiring is THE option. Lotsa GAffer tape - hah!

Grazie

( this site is STILL giving me grief! )

Sorry to change subject, I think there's some gremlin in the web, our local ISP told us they were having issues with their DNSs, nothing more specific but I did find for a long period I could and then couldn't reach all manner of sites.
Bob.