The R6 Mark II came with v1.1.0 that has a number of firmware bugs. I tried v1.1.1 and recently v1.1.2 and my 2 biggest beefs still exist, they are:
- when you press the shutter button when the camera has gone to sleep/power saving mode and only the image area appears with no menus or display stuff around the edges, then it takes several seconds to fully kick into life and be able to fire shots.
- if you shoot electronic shutter at continuous 20 fps and let the 99 frame buffer on the lower right of the viewfinder count down to zero, the camera should stop taking photos and waits while some room clears in the buffer then it starts firing again in a sputtering fashion while the buffer keeps getting exhausted, which is how it should behave. If you consume the entire buffer then release the shutter button, the buffer frame counter goes blank (rather than show zero) then some time later usually more than 10 seconds later, the buffer counter suddenly reappears but jumps straight to like 36 and starts counting up erratically back to 99 jumping lots of numbers along the way rather than sequentially count upwards, so might be say 36, 37, 38, 54, 55, 59, 79, 80, 81, 97, 98, 99 with the same time space between each increment. That is all fine and dandy, but every so often, when the frame buffer hits zero and goes blank, the camera freezes. The peripheral info in the viewfinder disappears, the camera ignores the shutter buton and even turning the power switch off does nothing. When this "stuck on zero frame buffer" happens the only way to get the camera working again is to pull the battery for a few seconds and it happens no matter what memory card I try UHS I or UHS II up to 300Mb/s V90. I have checked the SD cards were not hot in case the camera was waiting for them to cool but nope they were barely warm. When it locks up, you can leave the body sit for 7 minutes and the power save mode does not kick in.
Another bug it's always done is right after shooting if you press the Playback button, at times it won't show recent images, or if it does they flash up very briefly then return to the shooting screen. I love the camera and the AF tracking is unreal but there are some serious glitchces in the firmware and it doesn't matter if I have a genuine Canon lens or my big Sigma f2.8 70-200 Sports on an EF-RF adapter. So long as I don't let the buffer hit zero, it will not happen, it only occurs when the buffer is full.
I have notified both Canon in Australia and Asia about this. Canon Asia said they will pass it on to their technical team. Canon Australia asked for the body to be sent in for repair which I have not done as this cannot be a hardware fault unless it is an inherent design flaw, as it ONLY happens if the buffer hits zero, it's never happened while the frame buffer is 1 or higher, so it will almost certainly be an oddball firmware glitch.
It's so frustrating because other than these quirks the camera is sublime, especially the awesome AF tracking and the insane frame rate with electronic shutter. I've never loved using a digital camera as much as I do the R6 Mark II but when it hangs I have to resist hurling it at a wall. I miss not having my old T90 film SLR - it was bulletproof.
