Problems with built in microphon on R5 - which external mic?

That's a great microphone, but you'll probably need phantom power for it.

I use a Rode NTG shotgun that's battery powered(battery lasts forever) for the R5 for quick run and gun. I didn't care about quality when I bought mine, I use it to help sync with an additional microphone (usually a lav that's paired to a different camera, or a field recorder). But I recently used it in a multicam broadcast for an event, the sound engineer complimented it on how well it sounded.

Similar to OP, but maybe something in the $150 or less range.

Can someone recommend a hotshoe mic for canon (preferably with no batteries and powered with cam 3.5mm jack) that eliminates background noise and focuses maybe in the direction the speaker is coming from. I did a conference a few weeks ago and so there were multiple speakers so lapelles were a no no. The mic used was just crap and people talking in the background while speaker was speaking didn't exactly help. I don't usually do video, I was doing mainly photos, but they wanted video coverage anyways. But I definitely don't want to present any videos like that again with crap 6dii sound. Thanks in advance.

PS, like OP, I too was far away using 70-200 and podium was about 25 feet away

Unfortunately, that's a no win situation. Generally speaking, a mic that isn't powered won't perform well, and even a phantom powered XLR shot gun will struggle at that distance.

There's a few ways I handle this. If I'm the only one filming, I'll attach a microphone to the podium and use an XLR cable or a Sennheiser pack if there's a lot of people in the room. I'll still have a shotgun mic on a 2nd channel on the off chance people leave the podium. The budget or discreet way of handling this is to use a small field recorder, then sync audio in post.

If the event coordinator is for some reason not letting me use those methods, I then ask if I can get a feed from their room audio. Usually if I'm the one setting up for the event I'll wire up one microphone to the podium and attach it to a multbox for the different media outlets to plug in. This is usually pretty standard for most AV setups. And for events without a multbox, the media won't ask for permission, they'll all go up there and attach their microphones to the podium.

I've always loved the Rode mics. They have been super cheap but so high quality! I personally use the Rode Micro I believe it's called.
-Cody McCracken
West Virginia Wedding Photographer

The Shure VP83F LensHopper merges all the functionality of the VP83 camera-mount shotgun mic with a self-contained recorder and a dedicated headphone jack. $299