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Hi, I'm fairly new to field recording - I got a Zoom H6 recently and so far I've just been using the stereo X&Y; pair and the mid-side mic that was included with it. These mics are good, but they can pick up a lot of ambience, so I need to get hold of a shotgun mic. My budget is up to around £200. My question is, should I get the Zoom SGH-6 (£99) which clips onto the front of the H6, or a separate mic with a pistol grip? I was thinking something like the Rode NTG-1 (£150) but I'm open to any other suggestions (the H6 supplies phantom power).

I've heard good things about the NTG-1 but have no personal experience of any shotgun mics. My next investment will probably be to buy one. Sorry I can't be of more help. Good luck

And what is the application that you have in mind? Recording dialogue? Because that would be about 80% of what it is really good for.
Yes in some cases it helps to tame the environment and give focus to some specific sound, yet it doesn't really isolate you from the environment. So for example if you want to record some footsteps on the street and there cars passing by, you point your shotgun at the feet and get the footsteps with more distant cars than you heard with your ears. No problem for a scene where you add some layers of ambiance or where the distant sounding cars are just right (and you don't care about them being mono).
For dialogue recording, shotguns work really well in exteriors, yet (mostly the old designs) have problems in the interiors. It's because of the nature of the design - interference tube in front of the capsule. Look at this image http://media.soundonsound.com/sos/mar07/images/micsshotgunmicpat_l.jpg . It tells you that in the bass shotgun is still a cardiod and the pattern narrows as you go higher with the frequency. And the interference tube adds a lot of "lobes" which result in combfiltering like artifacts on off-axis sources. It sounds ok on things you want to isolate from (generators, traffic...), but in the case of room reflections (which arrive to the lobes very quickly after the direct sound) it can color the dialogue in a weird way and way too much, esp. in small reflective rooms. That's why most of the indoor dialogue is recorded with hypercardiods.
The newest shotguns are ok in interiors, the old ones like Sennheiser MKH416 which is the design Rode built upon (or got inspired by) are not really recommended.

If you have patience, MKH60 can be get for around 600euro on ebay and that's damn good mic. You can't do much better than that. Different yes, better? - matter of personal preference. I have no expirience with Rode. It should be usable, esp. for dialogue for youtube videos etc.

Omni lavalier on subject can sound much more appropriate than shotgun placed and rotated badly. Befor you start using your shotgun, you should know how to use it. You should for example know why 90% of time it's used from above and not horizontaly when recording dialogue for the film...

good luck with your choice