Tony Northrup: I Made a Mistake: The Canon EOS 6D Mark II is the BEST Vlogging Camera. Seriously.

I ordered 6d II few days ago. It was nice to read all the positive comments here. I was initially planned to upgrade to 6d II. My glass and flash were ready to make the jump for FF photography. DR reviews postponed my jump. I finally made it with great discount. Shallow DOF, better IQ and better AF than my all loved 600d here I come:)

I will still be interested about mirrorless FF camera from Canon. I am sure Canon will have good solution for the new mount. Hope the mount will be compatible EF glass and new glass if there will be any.
 
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Talys

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I ordered 6d II few days ago. It was nice to read all the positive comments here. I was initially planned to upgrade to 6d II. My glass and flash were ready to make the jump for FF photography. DR reviews postponed my jump. I finally made it with great discount. Shallow DOF, better IQ and better AF than my all loved 600d here I come:)

I will still be interested about mirrorless FF camera from Canon. I am sure Canon will have good solution for the new mount. Hope the mount will be compatible EF glass and new glass if there will be any.

It's a wonderful camera. I absolutely love mine. The pictures I get from it make me very happy, and I have a lot of fun using it; at the end of the day, I think that's what it's all about. :)
 
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I have owned the 6D2 for about 10 months, and I really like it. My only gripe is that it is a bit small, and my right hand little finger can’t find a good place to be. I don’t like using the battery grip for daily use, so that isn’t a solution.
I’m very happy with the IQ, and low light capabilities. I came from a 5D2 and 6D setup, and I will probably pair the 6D2with an 80D in the near future.
I do like the articulated screen. One thing that few people talk about is the ability to turn the screen towards the camera for protection. It’s a feature I really like, since I walk a lot with the camera slung, and bump into thing and people a lot.
 
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Don Haines

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If you are going to talk about Vlogging, you have to talk about interfacing your camera and portable device. The 6D2 is super easy to pair to a phone and transfer over photos while on the road.

Image shot a few minutes ago, in the car, on a road trip, in a covered bridge...... transferred wirelessly to the phone and uploaded....3677C179-A300-425C-97AF-E1DDCCBA99A7.jpegFAEB9F04-6D98-4537-9DFD-6E234C093542.jpeg
 
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I ordered 6d II few days ago. It was nice to read all the positive comments here. I was initially planned to upgrade to 6d II. My glass and flash were ready to make the jump for FF photography. DR reviews postponed my jump. I finally made it with great discount. Shallow DOF, better IQ and better AF than my all loved 600d here I come:)

I will still be interested about mirrorless FF camera from Canon. I am sure Canon will have good solution for the new mount. Hope the mount will be compatible EF glass and new glass if there will be any.

You'll be impressed and enjoy the 6D2, I've been shooting with it for almost a year now and love it.
 
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Michael Clark

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Apr 5, 2016
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The 6d mark II specification sheet was very good. Maybe for video the lack of 4k was a step back, but in others specifications, it was excellent.
The problem started when the first files were analyzed, and they showed that the sensor was not better than the 6d sensor. That was why it was so much noise about the 6d mark II.

It was a mixed bag in the lab. The 6D has slightly better DR, the 6D Mark II has slightly better S/N ratio and color sensitivity.

For most competent photographers, the S/N ratio and color sensitivity gains are worth the slight loss in DR.

So what if you can "only" underexpose by four stops instead of five stops and still be able to pull out the detail on the underside of that leaf in the shadows in the corner of the frame?

Not to mention all of the other improvements: PDAF accuracy/consistency, flicker reduction (very useful for what I do), DPAF, etc.
 
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Tony was just another poor soul that succumbed to all the trolls negativity about this camera (and he also spent the last year going through camera after camera having constant focusing issues due to not having DPAF)......

Live and learn! ;)

---

The 6D2 is perfectly fine for any general sports, wedding and portraiture photography. DPAF pretty much changes everything and for video, Canon has got this aspect DOWN PAT on all of the higher end cameras from the M5, 7D, 6D, 5D and 1D series to all their Cinema EOS video cameras. Sony, Nikon, Fuji, Olympus, Pentax, etc just haven't got anything like DPAF at all. I of course prefer using our company 1Dc's, 1DxMk2's or the C700's but in a pinch I have no problem using a 6Dmk2 or a 7D series or even an M5 for pro work! The key is making sure you LIGHT your subjects properly in controllable situations and in uncontrolled settings, use the fastest lens you've got at it's sharpest aperture say F2.8 or F4-F5.6 with a continuously ON booster light (i.e. a 6500K sun-gun) Any colour or brightness corrections for video OR stills you can always do in BM Resolve or Photoshop anyways!

REMEMBER: Light The Night !!! to get good video/stills in low light situations!

AND....for those of you who are on the fence between choosing a 6D mk2 vs a 5Dmk4 --- I say if you can do it on a mental-acceptance basis, you SHOULD GET a low-shutter-count used Canon 5D Mk4 over a new 6D Mk2 --- The 5D mk4 is a TRULY a PROFESSIONAL CAMERA and deserves every accolade given to it! It has great video, great (i.. low) noise stills and video imagery, has incredible autofocus and of course can take every lens in Canon's inventory. ONLY the 1DxMk2 and C700 cameras are better! The hand-grip comfort-level over the 6Dmk2 makes the 5Dmk4 a much better buy even when used!

AFTER that try and find yourself the BEST F1.2 or F1.4 16mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm and/or 135mm prime lenses you can afford and you will be ECSTATIC with your results!
 
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It was a mixed bag in the lab. The 6D has slightly better DR, the 6D Mark II has slightly better S/N ratio and color sensitivity.

For most competent photographers, the S/N ratio and color sensitivity gains are worth the slight loss in DR.

So what if you can "only" underexpose by four stops instead of five stops and still be able to pull out the detail on the underside of that leaf in the shadows in the corner of the frame?

Not to mention all of the other improvements: PDAF accuracy/consistency, flicker reduction (very useful for what I do), DPAF, etc.

Is it really a case of only one stop difference though? A number of the comparisons to other modern cameras (5dmk4 etc) show that the difference is larger than that. More like up to 3 stops at base iso?
 
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stevelee

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If it were a 3-stop difference, wouldn't that be enough for me to be able to observe it? Over the ten months I've been shooting with the 6D2, I haven't seen any pictures that seemed to have problems with dynamic range. Admittedly, I don't shoot at ISO 100 all that often, and I never set the camera to underexpose by four stops.
 
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If it were a 3-stop difference, wouldn't that be enough for me to be able to observe it? Over the ten months I've been shooting with the 6D2, I haven't seen any pictures that seemed to have problems with dynamic range. Admittedly, I don't shoot at ISO 100 all that often, and I never set the camera to underexpose by four stops.

That's totally fair - if you don't shoot at base iso, there's a decent chance that you may not notice it.

For the photography I do, timelapse, landscape and widefield astro, I notice a massive difference between my Canon 6d and my Sony (I know, I know). Easily 2 - 3 stops of extra latitude for landscapes at base iso (expose for highlights, bring up deep shadows), and I notice maybe a stop or so at high iso (3200 plus).

It's not a true comparison as it's the older 6d yes, but from the little difference between the 6d models, I feel it's reasonably close.

The 5dmk4 is far closer, and I don't think I'd notice the small difference there if I used that in comparison more often.

Out of interest, what camera are you comparing the 6dmk2 against? I've seen a number of comments that people enjoy using it, so it sounds like it's a fun camera to use.
 
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justaCanonuser

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Canon's DPAF is still the best for Vlogging- as soon if they update their next round of DSLRs and new MILCs with serious 4K video specs and proper codecs, they'll have the potential to again have the cache with video makers that Sony and Panasonic currently enjoy with their lineup. But we already knew that ;)

Most Vloggers don't need 4K, but more advanced low-budget filmmakers / social media / content creators / influencers want the best specced cameras and that word of mouth spreads down to the Vlogging masses and guides opinion, creating buzz and excitement.

I think the never ending blah blah of many vloggers deserves 8k video quality as a minimum. Let's flood the internet and raise its CO2 emissions with as big as possible video files! :p
 
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stevelee

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Out of interest, what camera are you comparing the 6dmk2 against? I've seen a number of comments that people enjoy using it, so it sounds like it's a fun camera to use.
I'm not really comparing it with anything else, and certainly not running tests, just taking pictures. I have yet to make a picture with the 6D2 that I felt need for more dynamic range. Everything so far has worked fine with a bit of tweaking the Highlights (recovery) and Shadows sliders, certainly nothing like three stops either way. I don't think I've ever shot a JPEG with it, so I can't speak for that.

My first outing with the camera I went with a neighbor and her family to a garden that was having a Chinese lantern display. I used auto exposure and auto focus with default parameters for both stills and video. I started in daylight, went through twilight, and into the dark. I could be wrong, but it seemed to be just about a worst case scenario for exposure. I didn't try to recover insignificant (to me anyway) detail off in the dark background. I don't like a phony HDR look, and strive more to suggest how things looked to me then and there. Maybe it is just that my style is not very demanding in terms of DR. Still, I'm surprised that I apparently can't tell a three-stop deficiency.
 
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I'm not really comparing it with anything else, and certainly not running tests, just taking pictures. I have yet to make a picture with the 6D2 that I felt need for more dynamic range. Everything so far has worked fine with a bit of tweaking the Highlights (recovery) and Shadows sliders, certainly nothing like three stops either way. I don't think I've ever shot a JPEG with it, so I can't speak for that.

My first outing with the camera I went with a neighbor and her family to a garden that was having a Chinese lantern display. I used auto exposure and auto focus with default parameters for both stills and video. I started in daylight, went through twilight, and into the dark. I could be wrong, but it seemed to be just about a worst case scenario for exposure. I didn't try to recover insignificant (to me anyway) detail off in the dark background. I don't like a phony HDR look, and strive more to suggest how things looked to me then and there. Maybe it is just that my style is not very demanding in terms of DR. Still, I'm surprised that I apparently can't tell a three-stop deficiency.

Yeah, if your not adjusting shadows and/or highlights that much, then I don't think you'd really see any difference in effective dynamic range vs say the 5dmk4. I guess in the same way that it's hard to tell the difference between a crop sensor and ff shot in good light, from an iso noise perspective

Twilight and dark situations are going to be fairly even for dynamic range from most ff cameras, as you'll be above base iso (I'm assuming your not using a tripod for long exposure at iso 100).

If your style doesn't tend to push dynamic range, then other factors are easily going to be more important, af in low light, ef mount etc. I know I was struggling with banding on the 6d (and still do) in many of my landscape shots where there were deep shadows and strong highlights, so it was at the top of my upgrade list. My case is maybe a bit less common though as I can't keep the exposure exact each shot in a timelapse, so often there's a heavier push in the shadows or exposure in pp as the lighting changes during the shoot
 
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Michael Clark

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Is it really a case of only one stop difference though? A number of the comparisons to other modern cameras (5dmk4 etc) show that the difference is larger than that. More like up to 3 stops at base iso?

This doesn't look like three stops to me. More like 1/3 stop compared to the original 6D or the 5D Mark III (which was good enough for a lot of people for a long time, and still is for many). About 1 1/2 stops at base ISO compared to the 5D Mark IV, but most of that is gone by ISO 1600. 20180809ss1.png20180809ss2.png

There's essentially no difference with regard to S/N ratio, on the other hand...

20180809ss3.png
 
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