Deal of the year - pulled the trigger on M6

crashpc wrote:

As long time Canon (also M) user, I don´t find newer Canon products very compelling for purchase. M6 was in the same class.

Well, good deal changed that. Got it for $385 with 15-45mm kit lens. After I sell the lens (already have one), and maybe the old M, The final cost of transition will be around 180. Peanuts, that is...

I never do normal reviews, as everybody can read many of these. I usually do "differences and small things to point out" reviews. Here is what I got.

The camera body is little lighter, but well built. I like how it looks, the size of it, and how many dials and buttons it has. Too bad that I didn´t feel all this helps me with handling the camera. Most buttons are smaller and with poorer feelings about these. It´s more "fiddly" camera, so there is not much of a difference between fiddling with the LCD, and fiddling with hardware controls. I rather take it as a change, not as a good upgrade. I could do quite well with awesome touch screen UI of the original M, and didn´t feel it´s better here. The grip is quite an upgrade, but not huge. It´s small grip, and it´s close to the lens, so my fingers touch both at one time, which I somehow hate. I will accept it though. All this is due to the high expectations compared to the sleek "old powershot design". There were none before, except for size. But after time, The original M turned out to be NOT POCKETABLE with any lens, So Once I slap 22mm on the M6, the feeling is bout the same.

Screen is now tiltable. I have almost no use for this function, and I´m concerned about lifetime of the flex cable being stressed by screen panel movement, but hopefully it will be okay with low usage. Viewing angles are good, and I like color and contrast of it. Refresh rate felt like significantly better, also there is less "lag" in the image. I found it jumps into lower refresh rates and more lag if one shoots in dark environment with longer times (over 1s), which the older bodies didn´t do as much. That gives me worse feel about it, but it´s not a biggie either. Now, I´m quite dissapointed with the screen size, as the screen panel is quite big, but the screen alone is not. It has huge bezels. That´s shame. It could be significantly larger, for better view and touch UI capabilities, ergonomics.

Focusing was quite huge jump. I found some occasions, when I could fool the AF, so it wouldn´t focus at all, but it was prety minor issue. Not at the times I needed it to focus on particular subject. That one needs to be verified after I do some birding with 55-250mm IS STM and Kenko TC mounted on it.

Still, it was quite fast, accurate, does good in lower light, and the focusing settings are broader, so it does better job generally. Still, it´s only half way to DSLR speed. When I needed to focus with my previous SL1, and the AF motor didn´t have to move a lot, it could focus as many times as I managed to push the AF button, and it tracked "usable-to well". Even eight times AF in a second wasn´t problem. M6 is no slouch, but still is slower, and only does about 3x-4x(best case) focus iterations per second. I would not use it for kids or moving animals seriously at any point. Still, with most lenses, it´s night and day compared to M and M10. So I´m very happy for it.

Image Sensor and output Is generally better, but due to the expectations, it´s mixed bag. Mild bump in resolution, and maybe weaker AA filter helps with sharpness, it does what I expected. Dynamic Range feels like 1,5 stops better, and it will definitely solve some of my landscape and indoors shooting issues. Base ISO noise feels like 1/3 stops better than my older Ms. Little better in darker areas without pushing. High ISO noise alone feels the same. So, no "one stop higher ISO speed shooting", no "poor light issues solved instantly". No. I´t´s only mild upgrade. Barely noticable in real world. But still, the upgrade is welcome. Also, I can substitute the additional resolution for more denoise, so It can rather get over 1/2 stops of performance bump in the final image. This works for most of the ISO range. I´ll be more likely to shoot ISO 1600, which alone, is good enough.

Lenses are little bit pain here, even after so so many years.

I only use 22mm lens on the camera now, and I´m going to use EF, EF-S, and third party lenses for this camera. Those other Canon M lenses, although very good, don´t feel like FUN enaugh to justify this system for me. No fast primes, no long reach tele lens.

I even had 11-22mm IS STM, and while it was very, very good, I found that it´s still not enough "fun", so it went, eventually....

Re

$385 for the camera and 15-45 is a deal

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