Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II - or - Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II

Henrik Herranen wrote:

Hello Pietro!

Pietro Marchesi wrote:

I use a Canon 6D and sometimes my old 20D as a second camera for reach 112-320mm.

I am surprised no-one has commented on this, but here it is:
There is no reach advantage using a 20D over a 6D.

The 20D has a full 8.2 megapixels.

If you take an image with your new and shiny 6D, it will have 20.2 megapixels. If you crop it on your computer to the same size as what your 20D captures, you will still have 20.2/(1.6^2) = 7.9 megapixels, which for all intents and purposes is the same as the 20D's native 8.2 MP.

Except...
Your 6D is almost ten years newer technology so the quality of the individual pixels will inevitably be much better than with your 20D. Then there's handling. Think of how small and low-resolution the 20D's LCD is, and how slow it is to chimp images with it.

So, quite honestly, as much as I have respect for older Canon cameras, you're going to get better results by taking your telephoto images with your 6D and cropping them than taking them natively cropped with an old 20D.

Kind regards,
- Henrik

Thanks Henrik,

So very true. I do this only for convenience of not having to swap lenses and only on sunny days allowing max 200 ISO on my old 20D. Did the same when I used a 5D MKII as my main camera.

At100-200ISO the 20D is still very good, but it only has 8.2MP. At higher ISOs than 200 the differences in IQ to my 6D becomes more and more apparent. Perhaps it is soon time to stop using my old 20D and upgrade to a newer APS-C for tele this spring/summer.

Canon will have to present something new very soon to keep up with the new D5 and D500 from Nikon or many Pros will jump ship. A new Canon APS-C with similar or better AF, RAW buffer and sensor in Feb/Mar 2016?