6D autofocus is a revolution

You’ve got some lovely photos there. Looks like there are plenty of interesting flowers in Namibia, I recognize some of them from South Africa, Do you know the name of that second to last one (pinkish dark red, could be a liliacae?) it’s beside the yellow hibiscus. The Leopard in mid jump is terrific.

/Neil

Spad16 said:

Spad16 wrote:

You’ve got some lovely photos there. Looks like there are plenty of interesting flowers in Namibia, I recognize some of them from South Africa, Do you know the name of that second to last one (pinkish dark red, could be a liliacae?) it’s beside the yellow hibiscus. The Leopard in mid jump is terrific.

/Neil

Click to expand...

Thanks a lot.


Unfortunately I do not know the names and do not have a appropriate book - do you recognize any? I actually posted them as the first pictures of my gallery in the - so far vain - hope somebody here would know the names.

Your (beautiful) pictures just confirm what I've heard so far: Only the center AF point of the 6D seems to be good. And by chance all your subjects taken with this "revolutionary AF" are right in the middle of the frame... I agree that the center AF point may work very well but as a whole the 6D AF system is really a shame!

Guilty as charged! I only use centre-point, and I’m so happy with a centre-point that really works, that I forgot the rest. For me coming from a 10mp camera to 20mp , a little cropping to change the composition doesn’t hurt at all. Image quality is still better than before. But I can see the need of more focus points for photographers who really compose in camera. For a lot of my photography, birding and aviation, my biggest problem has always been acquiring focus on the subject, once I’ve got it, I blast away (and there I’ll miss the 40D), but more often than not I get a series of blurred images because I missed initial focus. This is why I’m so impressed with the 6D focus, I can’t compare with the 7D, I hope someone else will, but the 6D certainly blows the 40D into the reeds. I think Canon had a stroke of brilliance here, once the nature/wildlife photographers realise how useful the 6D centre-point is, it’s going to sell like hot cakes, in fact I suspect it already does.

/Neil

Christoph Stephan said:

Christoph Stephan wrote:

Christoph Stephan said:

24Peter wrote:

That squirrel looks like fight promoter Don King. Never seen ears like that on a squirrel in NJ...

Click to expand...

This is typical for the Eurasian red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) which is the squirrel species found in continental Europe including Sweden, where the poster resides. It does not occur in North America; indeed, where the North American grey squirrel has been introduced in Europe (Britain, Northern Italy) it is in rapid decline - although it looks like a fight promoter, it is loosing "the fight" there...:-(

Click to expand...

Payback for the European Starling?

Spad16 said:

Spad16 wrote:

Guilty as charged! I only use centre-point, and I’m so happy with a centre-point that really works, that I forgot the rest. For me coming from a 10mp camera to 20mp , a little cropping to change the composition doesn’t hurt at all. Image quality is still better than before. But I can see the need of more focus points for photographers who really compose in camera. For a lot of my photography, birding and aviation, my biggest problem has always been acquiring focus on the subject, once I’ve got it, I blast away (and there I’ll miss the 40D), but more often than not I get a series of blurred images because I missed initial focus. This is why I’m so impressed with the 6D focus, I can’t compare with the 7D, I hope someone else will, but the 6D certainly blows the 40D into the reeds. I think Canon had a stroke of brilliance here, once the nature/wildlife photographers realise how useful the 6D centre-point is, it’s going to sell like hot cakes, in fact I suspect it already does.

/Neil

Click to expand...

Well speaking as another airshow/wildlife shooter I have to say thanks for posting. This is exactly the kind of thing I've been waiting to see (either good or bad) about the 6D. So long as the center point locks on well in low light and still function in AI-servo is about all I need. Currently I have a 7D and 60D and while they are a great combo (long lens on the 7D, wider lens on the 60D), they have to be put away at about the same time. Knowing that when the light fades I can switch to a longer lens on the 6D and still get some extra shooting time in, even if I am compromised a little on frame rate, would be a nice bonus.

Thanks again.

Mike

Spad16 said:

Spad16 wrote:

This is why I’m so impressed with the 6D focus, I can’t compare with the 7D, I hope someone else will, but the 6D certainly blows the 40D into the reeds. I think Canon had a stroke of brilliance here, once the nature/wildlife photographers realise how useful the 6D centre-point is, it’s going to sell like hot cakes, in fact I suspect it already does.

/Neil

Click to expand...

I have had a 7D since they came out. I just got a 6D last week. So far I am quite happy with the 6D center-point focus.

I shot with Nikon FMs and Nikon FEs for years. With those cameras it was always focus and recompose. That's what I am used to . . . so the 6D suites me well. (I'm an old dog. I don't easily learn new tricks.)

I've never had a problem with the 7D focusing system . . . once I read the manual several times and watched the Canon video tutorials. The system is great for action shots. If I plan to shoot action shots I will use the 7D but for scenery and architecture give me a 6D and center-point focusing.

Donald Duck said:

Donald Duck wrote:

I am not saying that the 6D AF is bad, but those shots are not low light by any means. The camera does not care whether the ISO is 5000 or 100; only the intensity of the light (and the contrast) matter.

Click to expand...

No, the camera doesn't care what the ISO speed is, but it indicates to us how low the light was.

I'm going to ignore the ISO12800 shot because it is so heavily processed I can't judge much by it. But the first shot, which is taken at ISO5000, works out to have an EV100 of about 8 - where 12 is listed here as "heavy overcast". So it was pretty dark.

I could repost that ISO12800 shot if you like, I agree I did too much processing on it.

/Neil

Spad16 said:

Spad16 wrote:

I could repost that ISO12800 shot if you like, I agree I did too much processing on it.

Click to expand...

Please note I'm not saying it's a bad shot! - just that I preferred to base the judgement on the other one.

I live in a part of the UK which has no red squirrels, sadly, but I have a plan forming in my mind which could take me much further north in the summer

sorry - I can not agree - the AF is slower than the 6D of the GH3, GH2 and the OM-D - therefore not revolutionary, but Canon-Standard.




see you:

Does not even take into account subject movement. Shooting test charts is playing to all the strengths of CDAF here.

No worry at all , I don't think it's a good photo myself, I like the colours a bit, thats all. But I'm still amazed that the camera did so much better than the 40D, I recently took a photo of an elk that strolled through the same place with the 40D, it was a waste of time, just a blur. I'm not really sure that the camera has focused on the squirrel , it might have gone for the spruce twig in front of it, I can't ask it to read my mind! But at least it didn't focus on the tree, like the 40D would have done if the light had been beter. I don't know if you can judge the amount of light from the original photo, but FWIW here it is. Oh, and I'm afraid forgot to say that I had the non-reporting 1.4 teleconverter on the 400/5.6 lens, but that shouldn't really make any difference, I'm losing a couple of stops, so it's not f6.3 it's two stops (?) higher, but the camera is just getting that much less light, and the focusing is working as if it really was ISO12800, or is my reasoning wrong?

About looking for squirrels up here, you won't see many after March/April, because thats when most people stop feeding birds, the squirrels like sunrose seed too, some years we don't see them at all, but this year seems to be a good one for squirrels and a poor one for birds.

Anyway heres that photo:




Squirrel ISO 12800 no post-processing

It also looks like they were testing in the kind of light that none of them would have any trouble with. But my German is too poor to keep up, can someone help out with their conclusions please?

/Neil

Can't understand the language, but from charts it does show that all recent Canon's have very fast AF acquisition times. The 6D, 650D, and 5DMKIII all have comparable focus times of a very fast .10 ms or so. 5DMKII was slower at .18, and 7D was even slower still!

They also seemed to test resolution variation per lens. To me the venerable 24-105L actually did the best here...the newer 24-70 f4 IMO seemed to do a bit poor here and only the 6D seemed to fire it off with consistency (but lens/body copy variation is a big factor here). 5DMKII however with the 24-105L was still quite a bit sharper than the 6D and was on similar levels with the 5DMKIII, strange since there is a 1MB difference between all three

I've heard some 650D owners claim better blackout and AF responsiveness over the 600D. I'm glad to know the 6D AF speed is quite good (actually the best Canon...probably slightly faster than the 5DMKIII for its simplicity?).


This site however says the 6D is almost twice as slow as the 5DMKIII. ImagingResource also does AF/shutter response time so I'd like to see what results they show (although I don't necessarily agree that using a 3rd party lens is the best idea).

The Panasonic GH2/GH3 have the fastest AF acquisition ..but who cares really...the GH2 has been around for a long time and it performed similarly to the new GH3. I've been through many MFT bodies and currently have an Olympus E-PM2, and I know that CDAF speed and accuracy falls apart when the entire scene is shifting or there is any faster action. CDAF does great when the scene is static. It still gets some keepers in very difficult low-light moving situations...however it is clearly far more difficult to do so and often my CDAF hunts for focus. This is why some of the latest mirrorless camseras are still attempting to tack on compromised on-sensor PDAF still?

Spad16 said:

Spad16 wrote:

It also looks like they were testing in the kind of light that none of them would have any trouble with. But my German is too poor to keep up, can someone help out with their conclusions please?

/Neil

Click to expand...

The statement is: that the MFT's are super fast -
and more than twice as fast as focusing all tested there Canons

Steve Balcombe said:

Steve Balcombe wrote:

Steve Balcombe said:

Donald Duck wrote:

I am not saying that the 6D AF is bad, but those shots are not low light by any means. The camera does not care whether the ISO is 5000 or 100; only the intensity of the light (and the contrast) matter.

Click to expand...

No, the camera doesn't care what the ISO speed is, but it indicates to us how low the light was.

Click to expand...

No, it does not, without the rest of the EXIF.

Steve Balcombe said:

I'm going to ignore the ISO12800 shot because it is so heavily processed I can't judge much by it. But the first shot, which is taken at ISO5000, works out to have an EV100 of about 8 - where 12 is listed here as "heavy overcast". So it was pretty dark.

Click to expand...

It was close to 1/80 sec, f/2.8, ISO 250. My cell phone can handle that "dark" scene.

EDIT: at ISO 100: 1/30, f/2.8 (or so).

Hang on to that cell-phone! But honestly I can only compare with what I know, and that is the Canon 40D with the same lens combination. I’ve tried the same shot lots of time’s with the 40D in the same poor light, the result is always the same, blurred.

/Neil

I have Canon 6D about 2 months and I must to say that it is great camera, especially in High ISO. At once introductionme interested whether functions a combination 6D andy AF 400mm f5,6 L with TC Canon 1,4x II and 2x II but it was fully negative..... In Quick menu for AF is pained only "MF". By your results I´am therefore very surprised. What TC was used, original Canon II, III or anotner type ( Kenko etc ) ? Some special settings fot AF in Custom functions ? Thanks for your ansfer.

not really a "revolution" then, just better than the 40D.