When the rumors of an entry-level full frame from Canon started, I was excited to hear more about it. I had tried a 5d mark ii, but it really did not fit the bill. The bulk of my shooting revolves around my daughters dance competitions. Really bad stage lighting and a lot of moving around. Finding a camera with a fast and accurate AF system was where I started and for the past few years I’ve used a 1D series camera. The AF system is awesome, but with shooting fast enough shutter speeds to freeze motion required shooting wide open on my 70-200 and really pushing the ISO. I just figured as long as I got the shot, I could fix whatever in Lightroom. Last year, after reading how good the high ISO was on the 5d Mark II, I figured I would give it a shot. I could always use a smaller body camera for my Disney trips and it was a full frame. I shot 2 competitions with it and was completely disappointed. The ISO was nice, but the camera struggled with focusing in low light so much. Ultimately it got traded away. Now this new camera, I was convinced it had to better, right? Well, after the announcement and seeing the specs, I was the same as many others scratching my head and saying "huh". This sounded like an AF system that really wasn’t much better than the Mark ii. After reading the forums and listening to folks talk about the camera, the more disappointed I became. There was one thing I noticed in the specs that really wasn’t talked about much, the -3ev center point. If this thing could really focus in that low of light, it really filled the spot for me. So two weeks ago, I bought the 6D and it was the main camera for my daughter’s competition this past weekend. I figured this would be a good test, as this is the same competition the Mark ii struggled with so much last year. So how did it do…………
This camera is awesome. The “crippled” AF system was quick to lock and focused very well in low light. It buries the mark ii AF. Out of over 600 pictures of all the dances, I counted 3 that were out of focus. The high ISO capability is very impressive. I figured I would kinda swing for the fence with it to see what it would do and shot 1/500th with the ISO set to 5000 in order to get my f-stop to 5.6 for better depth of field. When I sat to post process expecting to have spend a lot of time with noise, the images straight out of the camera were surprisingly great.
I apologize for the length of this one and if you made it all the way to this point, “thanks” for letting me babble. I wanted to let anyone who thought, maybe on this camera, that it is way better than folks have been saying for the past couple of months. Will it make a great Disney camera……….. absolutely.
This camera is awesome. The “crippled” AF system was quick to lock and focused very well in low light. It buries the mark ii AF. Out of over 600 pictures of all the dances, I counted 3 that were out of focus. The high ISO capability is very impressive. I figured I would kinda swing for the fence with it to see what it would do and shot 1/500th with the ISO set to 5000 in order to get my f-stop to 5.6 for better depth of field. When I sat to post process expecting to have spend a lot of time with noise, the images straight out of the camera were surprisingly great.
I apologize for the length of this one and if you made it all the way to this point, “thanks” for letting me babble. I wanted to let anyone who thought, maybe on this camera, that it is way better than folks have been saying for the past couple of months. Will it make a great Disney camera……….. absolutely.
