A bit of background. I am a full-time professional photographer. I have a bricks and mortar studio and I primarily photograph people. I shoot weddings, portraits and headshots. I sell a lot of wall art and also supply digitals for business.
My Canon history is the 5D2, 5D3 5D4, and now I am using the 5D4 and the R6 as my combo. I also have an RP as a backup that I actually like for basic videos. The RP is an excellent little camera IMO.
So, I was using 2 5d4’s for pretty much 4 years. I watched with real interest at the developments Sony was doing with their eye AF. Despite them being excellent cameras, I was never really tempted to change… mainly because its expensive and a pain in the rear end to change all of your workflows. When the R6 and R5 were announced I was super interested.
So I got the R6 and started learning how to use it. These are my thoughts in coming from the 5D4 to the R6.
In no particular order:
Auto Focus.
This is nuts. It is so good and so easy it is honestly like cheating. It’s another skill of photography that has been stripped away. The tracking is so sticky and it just works. When I first got it, I took my dog to a dog beach and let her run around. I put it in Animal AF and just followed her around with a 135 F2 at F2. I have not done the maths, but I would say easily over 90% are in focus. That’s pretty impressive for a dark dog running at you at F2.
Animal Eye AF
For people in the studio, it is actually a bit of a game changer. Especially for the headshots I do. I shoot on a tripod for this sort of work….. Not for sharpness. It is so I do not have to be looking through the camera… it means I can interact with my clients without a camera squished up to my face. It just tracks and every shot is sharp. Not exactly a stress test, but it is great to have that confidence to let the camera do the work for you. For moving people, it is also excellent. It rarely misses.
Build.
It’s good, but to be honest I don’t like it as much as the 5d4. Even though the size difference is marginal I am so used to the 5D series it feels a little small, and I find myself bumping buttons. I understand this is just a muscle memory thing, but I do wish personally it was the same size. Also, the dials do not seem a robust as the 5D series. To be fair it is really a successor to the 6D series, so I should not really be judging it against the 5D cameras.
Image Quality.
I like it. I think has a better look for people than the 5d4’s sensor. It’s a little smoother…. It might be the bigger pixels. It’s very difficult to explain, but I am so used to looking at 5D4 files that I can see a difference. It’s not the colour it is more the overall look. Dynamic range is fine…. I thought the 5d4 had more than enough for anything other than real-estate and landscape photography. High ISO…. Also, fine. Even though I photograph weddings and events if I am heading above 3400 I tend to light it anyway. It’s not a clean file consideration for me, it is more a look thing. I like directional light. I have shot higher ISO’s with candles etc, and they look excellent. Let’s face it… all the cameras are good now.
Megapixels
The never-ending debate. To be truthful I kind of wish I had got the R5. The reason I did not get it I want to deal with those massive files for the sort of work I do when I do events. There is no medium or small raw. If it had small or medium raw I would have got the R5.
There is compressed raw, but it is not file size that is the issue, it is processing them and the slow-down you get in Lightroom. My understanding is that even though the files are smaller there is still overhead on your system as they have to be “decompressed” for processing negating any performance bump. 20 megapixels is fine for pretty much everything but as I mentioned earlier, I sell a lot of wall art that are collections of sizes. They require a lot of cropping into squares and odd shapes to make them fit into the templates. Over the last 4 years I have gotten a bit loose with my composition to give me options in cropping in post. I am finding I am running out of pixels when I shoot too wide. To be clear, it is not the camera it is sloppy habits I have developed with a 30 megapixel sensor that is 50% larger than the R6.
So for the studio I am using my 5D4 which is better anyway for using with strobes because of the optical view finder.
Whining aside, the files are a pleasure to process. Way faster than the bigger files.
EVF
It’s excellent and to see your exposure before you take the photo is awesome. I hate it at night in low light in say a reception room. It looks so bad. This is obviously not an issue in terms of how photos end up looking, but this is where an OVF is way better IMO.
Silent Shutter
I know this is not new, but it is a true game changer for me. It is awesome. I am yet to experience banding, but I am not doing anything too stressful with just the electronic shutter.
Customisation:
Excellent. There is a never-ending myriad of ways to set this up. I will not go into the million variations here, but it is very good. One thing I have done is set up C3 to behave just like my 5D4 so if I do get lost, I can flip to those settings and keep on motoring. For events, I shoot in aperture priority with a minimum shutter speed of 250 and manual for anything using lights. So I have c3 as single point, no servo and just use the joystick with manual shutter.
Weddings and Events: This is like the super wedding camera. I do not know how they did it, but it almost uses Jedi intelligence as far as focusing goes, it seems to pick out what you want . I love it. Flipping between people is a piece of cake with the joystick. Also the silent shutter is 24 K gold. I cannot overstate how useful this is.
Reliability:
No issues as yet. Works as advertised .
Battery Life:
I was shocked how good it is. With the new battery I am getting just as long out of it as a non-mirrorless camera.
Flip Screen.
I love it, but I forget to use it and find myself lying on the ground or climbing on things. I am sure I will remember it is there after a while.
EF Lenses.
That is all I own apart from the RF 24-105. Zero issues. I have read people saying that it has breathed new life into old lenses. I have not really noticed this, the photos look the same to me.
IBIS. This is awesome. I mean it. I am a pretty lousy handheld shooter. I must remember to do some lower shutter speed stuff to capture movement.
Video:
I am new to video, so any advancements are lost on me. I do a bit but it is pretty basic. Looks awesome to me .
Overheating:
It has never overheated as a stills camera.
Overall:
If I was being truthful, I really do not like the EVF as much as an optical viewfinder. But I knew that going in. The reason I have made the migration is I do not want to be that old dude who refused to move with the times. It is a better camera, no doubt, but it is just the handling and the EVF that I am not keen on. I am sure it will grow on me.
Despite my complaints (which are just MY complaints and not real issues ) I would give it 5 stars. It is truly a remarkable camera.
Finally, Sorry for any grammar problems and also I would usually include more photos, but I am not in front of my work computer where I keep all my files.
I was shooting 20 FPS and they were all in focus.
All I did was point the camera at my dog.
