Canon M6 II with kits lens or Body only + buy a lens? Locked

R2D2 wrote:

nnowak wrote:

R2D2 wrote:

borris14 wrote:

I'm looking to upgrade from a Canon G7X II which was my first camera that got me into photography.

I want something to step up to and the M6 II seems to tick a lot of the boxes - I know it is three years old but still looks a good camera and something newer like the R7 is a little too big of a leap for me price wise.

My main question is whether people think the M6II kit with the 15-45 lens and EVF for around £1050 is a good deal and an acceptable lens for that package? Or whether the 15-45mm lens should be skipped, and I should go for body only and buy a lens separately? That would mean not having the EVF too though. My main uses are family and travel photography.

What do people think?

I'll go against the grain a bit. (If you get a good copy of the 15-45) it'll give you a 24-70mm equiv lens, which with the M6ii's higher MP and much better image quality (over the G7X ii), with some cropping you'll easily get out to the G7X ii's 100mm equiv zoom. So no loss there. The 15-45 is so nice and light too.

Cropping to get a 100mm equivalent view drops the M6 II all of the way down to 16.7 megapixels on a sensor area smaller than micro 4/3.

The G7X II has a much brighter f/1.8-2.8 lens than the EF-M 15-45mm f/3.5-6.3. In full frame equivalence, the G7X II is a 24-100mm f/5.0-8.0. The EF-M 15-45mm has a full frame equivalence of 24-70mm f/5.6-10. Cropping to a 100mm equivalent puts you at f/14 equivalent.

Yes, the M6 II sensor is much better than the G7X II sensor, but the slow apertures of the 15-45mm neuters much of that advantage. Cropping only exasperates the situation.

You can spout equivalence all you want nnowak, but I've shot many tens of thousands of pics with 1" sensor cameras, and the M6ii outperforms them significantly shooting just about anything (even at base ISO). Heck, M43 (even at 20 MP) loses any reach advantage too vs the M6ii IMO.

If you think the OP should stick with the G7X ii vs getting the M6ii + Kit Lens, well that's your choice here. But my advice is just the opposite.

You own the M6 II, and I an assuming still own a 1" sensor camera.  Feel free to post some side-by-side samples and prove me wrong.  When your M6 II is at ISO 6400, the G7X II would only be at ISO 1250.  To get to a 100mm view, you also need to crop the M6 II image to 5011 X 3341.

This comparison here certainly does not show the M6 II blowing away the G7X II.  The M6 II image also has the advantage of using the much sharper EF 50mm f/1.4 stopped down to f/5.6.

I am not saying that the M6 II can't produce significantly better images than the G7X II, but the EF-M 15-45mm kit lens squanders much of the potential.