Daily life with some old EF glass and a new M6 Mark II

davecheng wrote:

My camera usually travels with me in one of two setups. Everyday carry has the EF-M 22/2 mounted, no EVF, just thrown in a bag or pocket. My "serious" kit is a small Peak Design 3L sling bag with the M6ii, EVF, and two EF lenses — usually the 35/1.4+speed booster and 50/1.2+adapter.

Interesting about your 'kit' arrangements, thanks for sharing that. It might be an interesting topic for a forum discussion, to see what people pack with them when they go out shooting... and compare notes.

I have an 'SLR-holster' type bag that can hold a body with a good-sized telephoto lens in the main section, and a front pocket that can hold 2 lenses, plus a side pocket that can hold a filter and the spare battery.

I take it on my bike rides around the city, there are so many 'riverwalk' scenes, cool views of the city, buildings, ships, sunsets, and more... that I like to carry a full range of lenses with me. I have a small but stable-enough tripod in a bag mounted on the rear of the bike.

My usual setup is to have the EF-S 18-135mm IS STM mounted on the camera (with the rear plastic part popped off it becomes an EF-mount lens), the EF-S 10-18mm IS STM and an EF 2X teleconverter in the front pocket, with a 67mm polarizing filter in the side bag (filter size for both the above zooms). This allows me to shoot anything from 10-270mm with reliable sharpness and quality across the whole range. Sometimes I'll take the 55-250mm IS STM and the 15-45mm EF-M IS STM and the EF 2X, but I'm liking that EF-M zoom less and less, the shots from it just aren't up to snuff with all my others. Even though it 'looks sharp' when post-processed, the images just don't have much fine texture, they look a bit cartoonish.

When I am in a 'manual' vintage mood and wish to do more old-fashioned photography, I'll take the Minolta 28mm f2.8, 50mm f1.4, 135mm f2.8, the Fotasy plain Minolta adapter, the Viltrox now-Minolta speed booster, and a vintage super-sharp Kiron Minolta mount MC7 teleconverter. 55mm polarizer in the side pocket (the size for all 3 MC lenses). This gives me 'primes' so to speak from 20mm (actual on crop sensor) to again 270mm, a pretty wide range. With the tripod I can get lovely, sharp images over that whole range (the 28 with the Viltrox making that cut in all but the extreme corners --- see attached photo). I do a lot of shooting at very wide angles and really wish I had a wider Minolta, but when I know I'm likely to want to shoot very wide, I'll take the Canon lens set with the EF-S 10-18mm instead.

EVF is always mounted on the camera when in the bag (it fits as the bag is for bigger bodies) but I'll remove it if shooting on tripod etc.

Here are examples of photos I'll typically take on my bike rides. All of them are single frame real photos, the ones with the Moon and Sun are not composites! I don't like it when folks post composites trying to pass them off as real photos, some of us are purists and work hard to get 'real' photos of Sunsets and Moonsets, etc.

Canon M6 Mark II with Minolta MC 28mm f2.8 at f8, Viltrox 0.71x, Tampa Riverwalk

Canon M6 Mark II with 18-135mm IS STM at 18mm f5.6, Tampa skyline at sunrise

Canon M6 with 55-250mm IS STM at 100mm f 5, old Tampa Bay Hotel minarets

Canon M6 with 55-250mm at 250mm + 2X MC7 teleconverter, Tarpon Springs

Canon M6 Mark II with 10-18mm IS STM at 10mm, Tampa Morsani USF health building

Canon M6 Mark II with Minolta MC 135mm f2.8 lens at f2.8, 100 stacked 2-second exposures, M31 Galaxy in Andromeda