6DII + 50mm 1.2 or R6 + 50mm 1.8

Hi everyone,

I need some advice please.

Currently I'm using the following Canon equipment:

6DII
24-70 2.8 II
70-200 2.8 II
17-40 4.0
50mm 1.8
85mm 1.8

...as well as some lighting equipment.

For now I'm totally happy with bokeh, shutter speed, color, detail, etc. I don't need 4k video cause I have a Sony film camera for that, which is great. The only thing I miss is decent low light performance! I would like to be able to shoot indoors at 1/100, or at least 1/80, without the use of artficial light.

I'm not sure whether my next move should be a 50mm 1.2, or an R6.
What do you guys think??

Thanks in advance.
 

Sporgon

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If you’re thinking of a 50/1.2 for low light performance using it at f/1.2 I assume you’re happy with having virtually nothing in focus ? I’ve never really understood this view that a razor thin dof becomes acceptable just because the available light is low. I can understand the f/2.8 over an f/4 lens on a dslr for better AF in low light but beyond that f/2.8 there’s nothing further to be gained in that regard. Also on the 6DII you’d have to stick with centre point AF to have a chance of putting your gnat’s whisker of dof in the right place.
If your only reason for change is to get better low light IQ then I’d want to be sure that the R6 is still better than the 6DII when that camera is downsampled to the same 20mp. However I think that if you got an R6 with adapter and used your current lenses you’d see a huge step up in overall performance.
 
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What iso are you happy with in the 6D II? The R6 doesn’t have any effective DR/noise advantage over about 1600iso.5C27DEBD-3A46-424B-A2FA-3723CB4C06F0.jpeg
47BF245B-AB1C-4682-BA11-20A4705B3947.jpeg

Probably the biggest difference you could make to your high iso images is trialing several of the latest RAW converters and noise reduction software plugins and getting the benefits of them. They will be more impactful than the difference between those two bodies and the lenses really won’t help much because of the focus accuracy and very narrow depth of field.
 
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stevelee

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I have the 6D2 and find I can shoot in low light indoors just fine. Noise is low up to ISO 3200 at least. Image stabilized lenses allow slower shutter speeds. I don’t own any lenses faster than f/1.4 and rarely shoot wide open except for effect. I will shoot an outdoor portrait on the 85mm f/1.8 wide open, or close to it. There might be some specs that would suggest otherwise, but I am not at all tempted by the R6 from what I know. (I am tempted by going to medium format 102MP for landscapes, but so far am resisting, since I doubt I would really shoot enough landscapes after the novelty wears off to justify a $10K investment.)
 
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stevelee

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What iso are you happy with in the 6D II? The R6 doesn’t have any effective DR/noise advantage over about 1600iso.View attachment 200826
View attachment 200827

Probably the biggest difference you could make to your high iso images is trialing several of the latest RAW converters and noise reduction software plugins and getting the benefits of them. They will be more impactful than the difference between those two bodies and the lenses really won’t help much because of the focus accuracy and very narrow depth of field.
Note that the JPEG from the 6D2 is much bigger than the R6 one. Shooting Raw, you would have a lot more to work with in the larger file as far as noise abatement. Even in this apples-oranges comparison, much of the noise from the 6D2 appears to be color noise, which Photoshop deals with very easily with little if any loss of detail. In real life, I have had little cause to use ISO 12800. ISO 6400 is my usual upper limit, and generally gives me usable if not optimal results. Large expanses of nearly black will show a lot of noise, as in this example. If you get rid of all of it, it looks like an over correction. I have been known to use Photoshop’s “Add Noise” to add finer grain back and make it look more natural.
 
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Note that the JPEG from the 6D2 is much bigger than the R6 one. Shooting Raw, you would have a lot more to work with in the larger file as far as noise abatement. Even in this apples-oranges comparison, much of the noise from the 6D2 appears to be color noise, which Photoshop deals with very easily with little if any loss of detail. In real life, I have had little cause to use ISO 12800. ISO 6400 is my usual upper limit, and generally gives me usable if not optimal results. Large expanses of nearly black will show a lot of noise, as in this example. If you get rid of all of it, it looks like an over correction. I have been known to use Photoshop’s “Add Noise” to add finer grain back and make it look more natural.
I used the ‘print’ feature on DPReview to normalize the RAW images so they are an accurate and legitimate comparison.

Of course as Sporgon points out the differences in the two cameras shouldn’t be left to a single metric, the R6 is a vastly better camera than the 6D II in pretty much every metric. But it is an EVF instead of an OVF and native RF mount so a ‘simple’ body upgrade will quickly devolve into a lot more than that!
 
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stevelee

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OK, so a pretty good comparison, rather than cropped out-of-camera JPEGs as I assumed. Thanks for the clarification.

Even though I use the screen on the back a good bit, especially shooting astronomical things, I’m not ready to give up the OVF. And in my shooting, I don’t really run into the limitations of the 6D2 so as I can tell. Until I start thinking, “I wish my camera could …” or “was better at” I don’t see a lot of point in spending thousands of dollars for what I see as incremental improvements or solving problems I don’t have, so far as I can tell. I’m sure there have been technical advances over the 4 years that I have been using this camera, and I don’t begrudge those who take advantage of them.

When the topic of the 6D2 comes up, I don’t so much feel the need to defend it, but rather just share what my experience has been FWIW. I realize that we all have different needs, interests, shooting styles. I hope my comments were helpful to Nuno.
 
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