Hands on Field Test of the Canon EOS 6D Mark II

[EduPortas]

Watched the video the day it came out and thought it misrepresented the actual pictures I saw onscreen.

Most of the indoor shots are absolutely great, thanks in part to blistering sharp 100mm F2 (or 85mm 1.8) used throughout the video.

The video part I can understand. No one expected them to give Canon a pat on the back, since you know, they are a store that sells cameras. Gotta move those potential buyers to 4K cams, new cards, SSDs, new lenses, etc.

Now the original 6D remains a great camera in by itself. Low light quality images are outstanding. So how much can you really expect Canon to improve an entry model FF and still offer it at the price of the original model? I owned a 6D back in 2014, so yes I can attest to its quality, a true qualitative leap forward for anyone who has shot only APS-C models.

Finally, the issue about the DR. After the TCS review other YT outlets have started to pop up with various examples that show the exact opposite: the camera does have a broad range to correct terribly exposed shots and recuperate the shadows. Here's a clear example by the Fro:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Po4Ct8B2Oo

 

[meho1a]

Ok...not to disparage the Camera Store, as I really do like their reviews, but they are tech guys and love new stuff. They put an emphasis on bells and whistles that might only be used by a few and de-emphasize common things that will be used by all.

I find it mildly disappointing that the 6DII did not receive a sensor upgrade. But there are real world factors that come into play in decisions like this that are beyond intentional nerfing a product. Such as cost and availability of the new sensors. Could be that the new sensor line is projected to be maxed out or is significantly more expensive so Canon turned to the old sensor line.

Are we really going to get too bent out of shape? The original 6D sensor has been claimed to be better than the 5DIII sensor (which I still shoot). In 6 months this camera will be available for $1,500-$1,600, half that of the 5DIV. At a point, it isn't "nerfing" it is building a camera to hit a certain market at a certain price point. You can't put all high end materials into your entry level product. Then it wouldn't be entry level.

True. It is entry level or some say FF rebel. However, the price is 2100$. Dont you think that 500$-600$ rebel shouldnt have better image in any categories?
There is nothing wrong with this camera. It is probably excellent but it is way overpriced for what it offers. For this reason i think canon made a mistake. The price can not be higher that pro level crop camera (7d) or 500$ higher than the same Nikon camera. It is just absurde.
The same thing happened with some lenses like 24 and 28 f2.8 is usm. Good lenses but nothing special for much to high price. Only when the price droped they became interesting. However, we are talking about lenses that dont get obsolete if made correctly.
Canon 6d ii was in relation to price obsolete before even released.

 

[scyrene]

Seems more like a FF Rebel than anything else.

It IS a FF Rebel.... This is the entry level FF camera....

Precisely!

 

[rfdesigner]

What I was really hoping for was a 5DIII in a 6DII box with a modern era sensor, wait 12 months and hope to pick it up for £1500.

What canon has offered is a 6D mk1 sensor in a rebel.

How about a 5DIII?.. Point is I do love the image quality of the 6D.. and getting a little more would have been great, but I know the 5DIII is a step back on the 6D (slight banding).. unlike some I'm happy to show grain in images.. but not banding.. so with the 6D I feel I can push shadows, so it gets a bit grainy.. that's part of the feel, but banding means I just can't push it anything like as much (been there with the 30D)

A 5DIV, more than ticks all my boxes (I even get 120fps! woo hoo), and with it being more petit than the 5DIII I'm willing to "lug" the extra few grams.. but grey I'm still looking at £2500 and that's a LOT of money (to me)

So, what I really want is the 5DIV, I'll just have to save for it, the longer I wait the more I'll save and the cheaper it'll get too. or maybe I'll get tempted by the dark-side.

In the mean time the 6D is still a great camera.

 

[scyrene]

I would say this convinces me more than ever that Canon has too many camera models. At least because they appear to have a strong desire to differentiate them for various reasons, such that certain models get certain handicaps. Presumably they opted to hamstring the 6D II in some ways so as not to cannibalize 5D IV sales. I'm a 5DsR owner, so I hope this worse than usual choice results in them learning a lesson for the II version there, and in general.

They have four full frame lines: 5Ds(R) for high resolution; 1Dx2 for ultimate speed/robustness; 5D4 as an all-purpose/middle of the line model; and the 6D2 as an entry-level. That's too many, huh? Which would you cull?

What this seems to boil down to is, people want 5D4 features but they are forgetting the 6D2's much lower price. "Nerfing" (ugh!), "handicapping" and "crippling" (yuck!) just means 'I want more features but I don't want to spend more'. I have very little time for that attitude. ALL models from ALL producers of pretty much every type of product or service offer them at different price points with different qualities to match.

The DR thing is minor, and I'm surprised anyone expected 4K when Canon has been lukewarm with it in the more expensive current models. Even if they'd included 4K, it wouldn't have been better than the 5D4's which all the usual naysayers claimed was unusable for various reasons. So people would STILL have moaned about the 6D2!

 

[MaxFoto]

Why do people give a crap what some click baiting, internet hack, have to say about anything?

 

[the.unkle.george]

So I guess I'm in a holding position for the next 5 years...

Yup. 6D owner here. I see no reason to fork out +$1k for such a minor upgrade, or $2k to move to a 5DIV. If the 5d had IBIS and 4k I'd feel like I was actually getting something for my money. I expected the 6DmII value to at least match the d750 or K1.

I'm directly in the middle of the 'enthusiast' market segment. This is just a toy for me and I want the latest specs. I actually use it occasionally to take pictures. Laugh if you must, but the 'enthusiast' market is not small.
- Pros will just keep using their 5dII until the shutter dies, tape it up and keep going.
- Soccer moms will forever use the lens that came in the kit with their rebel, or their cell phone.

Sony, coming from the PC / Cell phone manufacturing side, understands this.

 

[CanonGuy]

The af point spread is so awful! Practically, it's the same as the 9 point af system of original 6D! And this was supposed to be the main selling point of the 6d2 since it's lagging 5 years behind competition in almost every other aspect.

Keeps me thinking if canon just hired a bunch of incapable drunk engineers at the office and bunch of blind fan boys out of the office lol. It's really funny to see those fan boys defending this crap 6d2 when a 3 year old d750 outperforms it in most department! Yes some d750 have shutter issue and yes, nikon fixes that for free.

Btw, I bought my first non canon mount lens today. A nikon mount 50 Art. Keeping an eye for a second hard d810/d750. Probably it's a new era for me after being loyal to canon for 7 years and frustrating last 3 years.

 

[raptor3x]

The af point spread is so awful!

Just for reference, the 6D2 AF point spread is almost identical to the D750; a bit better spread in the vertical direction and a bit worse in the horizontal direction. The way the review presented it was a bit misleading.

 

[Mikehit]

Yup. 6D owner here. I see no reason to fork out +$1k for such a minor upgrade, or $2k to move to a 5DIV. If the 5d had IBIS and 4k I'd feel like I was actually getting something for my money. I expected the 6DmII value to at least match the d750 or K1.

Have you considered that the market for this camera is not people upgrading from the 6D to 6D2 but people upgrading from xxD or xxxD?

 

[CanonGuy]

Yup. 6D owner here. I see no reason to fork out +$1k for such a minor upgrade, or $2k to move to a 5DIV. If the 5d had IBIS and 4k I'd feel like I was actually getting something for my money. I expected the 6DmII value to at least match the d750 or K1.

Have you considered that the market for this camera is not people upgrading from the 6D to 6D2 but people upgrading from xxD or xxxD?

Why 6d2 was needed for xxD or xxxD owners to upgrade?! They could very well upgrade to 6d if you want to put it that way! What's the point of this 6d2???!! In which other lame way you need to try to justify this awful mk ii version of a camera? How badly canon needs to poop to get people open their eyes? How far behind canon need to fall before they realize it's late?

 

[BillB]

Yup. 6D owner here. I see no reason to fork out +$1k for such a minor upgrade, or $2k to move to a 5DIV. If the 5d had IBIS and 4k I'd feel like I was actually getting something for my money. I expected the 6DmII value to at least match the d750 or K1.

Have you considered that the market for this camera is not people upgrading from the 6D to 6D2 but people upgrading from xxD or xxxD?

Why 6d2 was needed for xxD or xxxD owners to upgrade?! They could very well upgrade to 6d if you want to put it that way! What's the point of this 6d2???!! In which other lame way you need to try to justify this awful mk ii version of a camera? How badly canon needs to poop to get people open their eyes? How far behind canon need to fall before they realize it's late?

Latest rant noted. No need to repeat. Either you are right or Canon is. We shall find out.

 

[Isaacheus]

Looks like this review has sparked a bit more debate; personally, I have to agree with most of what is said in it. Everyone will have different wants and needs obviously, but I can't see the appeal coming from the original 6d, at least not for the cost. It has been said a few times that it is the entry level ff, or the ff revel, which to be fair, is where it sits in the overall line up, its just the cost that seems out of place. I'd think that given the feature list, it would seem better at closer to the 80d cost, yes it's full frame, so there will be a cost premium vs the other rebels, but it is missing the low Dr boost that the other rebel sensors have seen, and has been downgraded in video quality too.

I'd love to see an in-between model, sitting closer to this price point where the sensor is that of the 5d mk4, with decent 1080 video and the flip screen. As it is, Canon have a fairly big gap here in the line up, at least for my purposes. I had really hoped the 6d was going upmarket as had been reported rather than the small evolution of the line

 

[Don Haines]

Devils advocate here....

Nobody is going to argue that they don't want more DR, but how significant of a problem is this loss of DR at low ISOs?

If you are shooting action, you are at higher ISOs and it won't matter.....

If it is stationary objects, then you can use base ISO and you will get a bit better DR, but honestly, it is a very narrow range where that extra stop of DR is enough.... most of the time, by the time you realize that you need more DR, you should have already switched to HDR photography.....

 

[snappy604]

Yup. 6D owner here. I see no reason to fork out +$1k for such a minor upgrade, or $2k to move to a 5DIV. If the 5d had IBIS and 4k I'd feel like I was actually getting something for my money. I expected the 6DmII value to at least match the d750 or K1.

Have you considered that the market for this camera is not people upgrading from the 6D to 6D2 but people upgrading from xxD or xxxD?

Why 6d2 was needed for xxD or xxxD owners to upgrade?! They could very well upgrade to 6d if you want to put it that way! What's the point of this 6d2???!! In which other lame way you need to try to justify this awful mk ii version of a camera? How badly canon needs to poop to get people open their eyes? How far behind canon need to fall before they realize it's late?

Latest rant noted. No need to repeat. Either you are right or Canon is. We shall find out.

Many of us feel same way and want to rant.

I went Canon when I went SLR because they were innovative.. first to bring video to an SLR, many other features etc. It was a leader.

I loved it and invested into their ecosystem and had hoped to work towards full frame, more pro bodies. But I don't make money from it and I can't afford to keep changing glass on each whim, so it's painful watching luke warm release after luke warm release while you see some really good innovation elsewhere.

Still watching the reviews, but looking more and more like I'll be still waiting.. again.

 

[Isaacheus]

Devils advocate here....

Nobody is going to argue that they don't want more DR, but how significant of a problem is this loss of DR at low ISOs?

If you are shooting action, you are at higher ISOs and it won't matter.....

If it is stationary objects, then you can use base ISO and you will get a bit better DR, but honestly, it is a very narrow range where that extra stop of DR is enough.... most of the time, by the time you realize that you need more DR, you should have already switched to HDR photography.....

Great point, and for a number of situations, yes, hdr and merged images is going to be better.
Having said that, I've found the 6d lacking just often enough to be limiting, where my friends d750 with the extra 2 or stops has been able to recover much cleaner in the same shot. Tested this the other day and unfortunately the 6d is really very outclassed at the low isos.
A lot of the time I'm shooting timelapse or with moving objects (clouds, waves etc) and I can't use blending without other problems. Higher iso and the 6d keeps up, but only after about iso 800. So, for my uses, the new 6d isn't a goer, it just doesn't fit the bill for my needs.

I think the biggest disappointment isn't that it has lower dr than say the d750, but that we know canon can do better, and they don't look to have tried to improve this, over 5 years

 

[slclick]

Meanwhile my 5D3 keeps on ticking without one single issue from early adopter times. Most of the time I see most shooters have fine to great bodies already, if you want GAS have glass GAS. It's tens times more fulfilling.

 

[Gnocchi]

Interesting comparison of the focus point overlay withe the d750.
also the fro review is worth a watch.

 

[Jack Douglas]

Interesting, " the D750 ...gives you basic better everything". Is he more of a Nikon guy?

Strikes me as more like, "I really like you, you're human and walk well and are a really good person, but ... your face is pretty ugly, so actually you're not worthy of my time".

I've a reputation for controversial analogies, so maybe I'm off base here.

Jack

 

[LonelyBoy]

Just for reference, the 6D2 AF point spread is almost identical to the D750; a bit better spread in the vertical direction and a bit worse in the horizontal direction. The way the review presented it was a bit misleading.

It's really interesting to see how many people keep harping on this fake issue after it's been proven to be a fake issue.