R6 - for Astrophotography? Yup. (PICS) Locked

The EOS R6 + EF 24mm f/1.4L II USM lens - (the red reflection is from my car door).

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I drove out to the mountains tonight because the sky was clear today.   Arrived at 8pm.  Returned home by 10pm.  Skipped dinner.  Downloaded images from both my EOS R6 camera and my EOS M6 camera and edited them over a couple of hours.  Mostly noise-reduction from the M6 and color tweaks from the R6 (to suit my taste).
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No Vignetting with the EF 24mm f/1.4L II USM lens !!!
So, you bought an EOS R6 and wondered if the R6 would be any good for astrophotography.  So did I.  And knowing that the light-wells on the R6 were allegedly larger than its rivals, it stands to reason that the R6 ought to be capable of capturing something useful with that full frame sensor.  It surprised me in being able to render some admirable detail at fairly high ISO.  What really surprised me is that the same EF 24mm f/1.2L II USM lens that vignetted so horribly with a non-correctable hard vignette (not light-falloff) when used on the EOS Ra did NOT vignette in the slightest with the EOS R6.  In addition, the lens was tonight sporting both a UV Filter for protection PLUS the lens hood.  I had planned to strip them off one-at-a-time to determine if the lens or the camera was problematic but the first images to appear on the LCD of the R6 showed me the problem no longer existed with the R6.  No vignette!?  I guess there's a minor mechanical difference with the EOS Ra and the EOS R6.  I can't help but wonder what it could possibly be since both the R and the Ra use the same body design.  The same RF-to-EF adapter was used.  I was pretty happy to see that this lens is very useful on the EOS R6 because I didn't want to retire it altogether.  I'm going to post a thread with that lens later when I get to shoot another location with it.  I just spent a weekend on the central coast with this 24mmL lens and it works quite nicely on the R6.
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GEAR USED:
* Manfrotto Tripods (x2).  One for each camera.
* Baseball cap with LED lights fitted (very handy)
* Reading glasses to magnify the LCD to check focus
* Flashlight, just in case.
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SETTINGS USED:
* All images shot in JPEG
* No images have been cropped.
* No Stacking.
* No Tracking.
* Images were edited quickly in Lightroom & resized in Photoshop.
* White Balance for R6 = Daylight
* White Balance for M6 = Tungsten
* IBIS was turned OFF
* Manual Focus used with both cameras
* R6 ISO settings = ISO 2000 - ISO 5000
* Aperture = f/1.4 - f/2.0 (24mm) / f/1.2 - f/1.4 (85mm)
* Shutter Speed = 20 seconds (24mm) / 5 seconds (85mm)
* 2-Second Timer Delay used.
* EXIF details should be embedded in all images (phone users may not see this).
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Problems encountered:
* EOS R6 - None
* EOS M6 - self timer became slightly unresponsive in the cold.
* Ash from woodfires was falling on the cameras and lenses.
* Sky was fairly bright tonight - despite the moon not having risen.
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R6 + 24mmL - I was standing in the dark when taking this.  BONUS: No hard vignette!!
Large Magellanic Cloud in the top left corner.  Carina Nebula is in the lower middle of frame.

R6 + 24mmL lens - The milky Way's galactic core was visible on the LCD.

R6 + 24mmL lens - The Galactic Core - after editing lightly for color/contrast preference.

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The EF 24mm f/1.4L II USM lens is known for producing coma towards the corners.  I didn't bother to correct this during editing.  It's easy enough to stop the lens down slightly and this reduces the effect of star-blooming. Some slight light falloff was present towards the edges but it was very subtle and easy to correct.  Lens corrections were switched ON for both lenses when fitted to the EOS R6.  The bright area of the Milky Way (the Core/the Bulge) was visible on the LCD of the R6 when I was trying to see what the camera was aimed at.  You can see this quite clearly on the LCD in the photograph above.
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The sky was oddly bright tonight.  There was a washed out yellow hue to the images which I tend to only see when there's a moon in the sky.  I'd timed my arrival to be at least 3 hours after sunset and around 2 hours before moonrise.  Shifting the yellow hue toward blue in Lightroom gave me a pleasant result so that's what you're seeing here from the EOS Ra.  I imagine any lens from Canon or even other manufacturers will be just fine on the EOS R6 for this type of photography. 
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EOS R6 + RF 85mm f/1.2L USM lens

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EOS R6 + RF 85mm f/1.2L USM lens
This is a rather special lens which I chose to buy instead of a telescope.  The lens has some unusual features (eg Blue Refractive Optics) which suppresses chromatic aberration ...and the resolution from this lens is excellent.  It's abnormally sharp at f/1.2 although it's slightly sharper at f/1.4 whilst retaining a large aperture.  It was relatively easy to pick out some bright stars, zoom in to 10x magnification on the LCD and manually focus the lens.  The EOS Ra has a slightly better LCD screen magnification tool that is far easier to use for manually focusing a lens on a star. 
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Astro with the EOS R6 - compared to other Cameras:
I found the R6 easy to use.  The settings were easily engaged.  The camera was highly responsive and the image quality was better than I thought it would be.  The LCD screen was reactive even in cold weather.  The R6 is less noisy at higher ISO settings compared to the EOS 6D DSLR... which is a favorite camera for many astrophotographers. The signal to noise ratio was quite reasonable and the larger light wells/cells on the EOS R6 enabled good light collection when facing the night sky.  I'd have spent more time with different settings to try and lower the noise further if I had the time to spare ... but the results I was getting with the settings used were enough to convince me that the R6 is versatile enough to be used as an astro camera.  The Full Frame sensor on the R6 is gathering more light than an ASP-C sensor could hope to do with similar exposure times and ISO settings.  As long as your lens has a relatively wide aperture (ie preferably wider than f/2.8) you should have no problem getting good exposures.
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Now I'll personally be using the EOS Ra for my astro-landscapes etc. and that's exactly why I bought it ... so this will be one of my only sets of Astro images from the EOS R6. But if I am traveling and might have need to take some astro-landscape images, I know the R6 can do the job.  All I need is a tripod.
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R6 compared to the EOS Ra astrophotography model.
The EOS R6 produces slightly more noise than the EOS Ra and slightly less detail with the same exposure times.  The EOS Ra was also designed to capture more of the red emission nebulae in the 656.3nm (Ha) frequency... something that other cameras can barely achieve without modifying the sensor.  But the results from tonight's experiences with the EOS R6 showed me that I could expect to use this camera for astro should it be the one on hand when traveling.  Again, the light-gathering ability was very good.  Noise was close to the 6D (DSLR) whilst being better than the 6D at higher ISO settings. The EOS R6 didn't quite come close to the rich colors captured by the EOS Ra but the results were just fine.  Better than I expected.  I think that the R6 is perhaps just as capable as most Full Frame cameras for this type of subject.  Very little editing was required for these images.  No doubt further tweaking of settings and images will produce more spectacular results.  And RAW users will likely be able to pull a little more flex from the files captured.  Left to my own devices, I'd probably edit these images a lot more than I have here. Another thing the EOS Ra features is a magnificent 30x magnification but you can still nail the focus on a star with the R6 and you don't even need to seek out a very bright star to do this.
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The camera did not heat up when shooting 6-second and 5-second exposures for an hour.  To repeat, I have not introduced any colors to these images.  In order to extract the blue hue in the Rho Ophiuchus region, I simply increased the color saturation to enhance it.  The same process revealed the pink/red colors in the star-forming nebula regions.  This image directly below is an unedited image straight from the camera... straight from the memory card.  No crops, no color alterations and no edits or adjustments... I just wanted users to know what I was getting tonight.  Usually my skies are a bit darker than this.  The region in the image below (with the Lagoon Nebula) was directly overhead at the time.    The ash falling on my camera and lens was from nearby homes with wood burning fires... plus there have been precautionary burn-offs in the area.... and these may have been contributing to the light pollution in the air.
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Hopefully these samples will be of use to others contemplating what the R6 can do under fairly clear skies with moderate to bright lenses.
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EOS R6 + RF 85mmL - A full sized unedited JPEG straight from the camera
The Lagoon Nebula is dead center.

R6 + RF 85mmL - Looking towards the Carina Nebula with the R6.  It was washed out near the horizon.  I have no idea why the sky was so bright over there tonight.  (not cropped)

I've only been home for three hours since taking these images, Just enough time for a color/contrast tweak.  This is made from 6x JPEGs merged into a vertical panorama.  Contrast, Hue, Color, Levels  & Curves were edited for the image on the right. Existing colors embedded in the JPEGs were bumped up and enhanced.  No additional color was added.

EOS R6 + RF 85mm f/1.2L USM lens - as seen by my EOS M6.

The Canon EOS Ra with the same RF 85mm f/1.2L USM lens (hood removed)
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Regards,
Marco Nero.

Thanks again, Marco, for your posts. They are very helpful and I don't even have my "R" bodies. yet.

Kent

Thank you for posting this information with so much detail. I have the R5 and Canon 24mm 1.4 L which I plan to use for astrophotography at the Grand Canyon soon. This information is very helpful!

Great post, thanks,

Amazing shots as usual

knutte wrote:

Thank you for your post, I had (reluctantly) planned to get R5 but the price is making me hesitant and was thinking the R6 might be stepdown from the R5 in respect to astro but I'm rethinking my order.

I was considering the R5 several times but the cost difference vs the features/specs didn't appeal to me.  I almost think that Canon should have crippled the R6 in some way to get people to flip over to the R5.  With the specs being so similar (except for the sensor). it's got a lot of people to become hesitant.
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The R5 is a 'higher megapixel camera' so the pixels/light-wells are much smaller on this sensor. They have to be smaller in order to fit so many of them onto the same sized sensor. By comparison, the pixels/light-wells on the R6 are physically larger according to Canon reps... and are therefore likely to be more suited to astrophotography. But this doesn't mean the R5 can't do it.. and you can see an example from an R5 user here (see link immediately below) ... but note the magic words in his description of the experience: "If I primarily shot astrophotography I'm not sure the upgrade would be quite warranted..."
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https://fstoppers.com/astrophotography/astrophotography-canon-r5-how-does-it-perform-506450

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Edit: I have just discovered that the image taken above was the result of 17 stacked individual shots from the R5 taken at ISO 3200 on an f/1.8 lens.  If that's what was needed to pull out the details in this shot, and he was shooting in a dark sky location (he was), then the R5 would appear to struggle a little more with this type of photography (which makes perfect sense).  He seemed to find the results from the R5 were similar to those from the 5D IV.  He was also keen to extract more detail than he was getting with individual short-exposure shots.  But it's important to note that when exposing in bright skies, you sometimes need to stop down and try to stack just to resolve the scene properly without blowing the exposure out.
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No doubt one of the numerous R5 users here can take a couple of shots and post about their experiences here. I'd be interested to get an honest opinion from an R5 owner from DPreview's forums on the subject.  The samples I've seen online from the R5 (relating to astrophotography) have all been processed aggressively, shot with Tungsten WB and appear to be noisy... or have clear star movement, indicating longer than ideal exposure times.  You can get away with this more if you're just posting to Instagram.  It's hard to say what the performance is like based on these observations.  We don't know how much the images were edited or compressed before posting them online.
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To anyone with an R5, I'd be very interested in hearing how those tightly packed pixels perform on the same sized sensor.  Canon thinks the sensors with 30MP (EOS R/Ra) can "average out the noise" in a way that was unexpected and pleasing - so perhaps this benefit rolls on towards the R5?.  I am often asked to recommend different cameras for astro to friends or associates so the information is important to me. 
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I enjoyed using the R6 so much that I'd be prepared to try and shoot some astro landscapes from a (hopefully) darker location using different settings from a new location.  I have three days of cloud and rain coming up so if you can wait almost two weeks from now until the weather clears, I might be tempted to try something different.
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From my observations with the R6 and the Ra, I'd comfortably state that the Ra is considerably better for astrophotography than any of the other R camera (or DSLR) due to greater noise control (which extends further than the pixel limitation) and enhanced wavelength sensitivity.

Outstanding, as usual.

No stacking, no tracking, no bizarre specialized software?  Really?  I'm going to go find a dark spot to shoot some astro.

Eddie Rizk wrote:

Outstanding, as usual.

No stacking, no tracking, no bizarre specialized software? Really? I'm going to go find a dark spot to shoot some astro.

I just got around to editing one of those images a little more (see below).  It's not perfect but I was simply curious to see what could be done with it.  I'm not sure why the skies were so washed out last night but I think I was shooting too close to both sunset and moonrise combined with city lights and people burning wood in their mountain-lodge fireplaces.
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EOS R6 + RF 95mm f/1.2L USM lens
Original JPEG image  - straight out of the R6 camera.

EOS R6 + RF 85mm f/1.2L USM lens
After editing (Lightroom + Photoshop).  No additional colors or structures were added.

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Last night was just a tripod - and a baseball cap with LED lights in it... and the 2-second self timer to prevent tripod vibration. This is also what most people will be using with their R6. The software I used to edit the images was Lightroom with some further editing and resizing in Photoshop.  I edited these two images this afternoon.
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Editing
The process I used was to adjust levels and saturation in Lightroom, reduce color noise very slightly... no sharpening was applied...  and the file was then exported to Photoshop as a 16-Bit Tiff to ensure no further image degradation occurred. I rarely do this.  Normally I leave the images as 8-Bit files.  Then I adjusted color balance, contrast, levels, curves and selectively re-saturated specific areas. Dust lanes were enhanced manually along with luminous backlit regions. Careful comparisons were made with the original file to ensure the structure remained the same.  I then layered the edited file back into the original JPEG image.   Image was then reduced in size to 3,000 pixels wide... and then converted to 8-Bit before saving as a JPEG.
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EOS R6 + EF 24mmL lens - Original unedited JPEG from the camera (resized to 3000p)

EOS R6 + EF 24mmL lens - Edited image.
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The images BELOW are not of the EOS R6 but show the EOS Ra.
Still waiting to use my tracking mount.
I have assembled an equipment platform to enable me to track the sky efficiently using a Celestron EQ mount. But I don't yet have a battery to power the system just yet. As the weather warms up and Celestron release the battery I need (currently out of stock), I'll get around to calibrating it and using it to enable me to use smaller apertures with longer exposures. I probably won't need to use the EOS R6 on it since I have the EOS Ra for this specific purpose.
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EOS Ra on a Celestron CGX EQ mount... still waiting for a power supply to run it.
Hopefully I'll get to use the Ra on this next month with longer lenses.

EOS Ra on the mount's saddle plate.

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Having the R, the Ra and the R5 I have to add that Vignetting is exactly the same for all of them for a goiven lens when using RAW. The difference that you observ between r6 and Ra with the 24 with your - for astro very unusual - jpg approch may come from not having the correct lens profiles during in camera processing. To save raws would cost exactly nothing and would allow to settle this question ....

Many thanks.  As a prospective R6 owner and keen astrolandscaper (with a 6Dii and Sigma 20mm f1.4) this is good information.  Thanks.

3V AudioVideo wrote:

Very cool!

I plan to get the R6 and use it for astrophotography too. I am a little concerned though to learn that this camera does some RAW noise reduction in lower ISO ( don't know at which setting). NR is not good when using AP software that will stack and process images. I hope you can do some tests to see how well the camera works in those cases.

I'm told that any noise reduction is subtle.  Apparently it's not applied aggressively and in theory won't likely eat into the stars.
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I'm not shooting RAW or Tracking shots (yet).  But if I get the chance to follow up using a few RAW shots I can take a look and see what the results are.

G Dickson wrote:

Many thanks. As a prospective R6 owner and keen astrolandscaper (with a 6Dii and Sigma 20mm f1.4) this is good information. Thanks.

Here's the mosaic that I took with 6 JPEG images stitched together automatically in Photoshop. These are not stacked.  Just stitched together into a Panorama. I spent an hour on it this afternoon to bring out the colors. No additional color was added to the image that wasn't there to begin with. The main tools used in Photoshop were 'Color Balance' and 'Curves' and this was combined with a dodge layer and selective saturation. I could probably spend more time on it but I think it shows that there's some reasonably capability on hand from the R6. I could have added color to make the image more "technically accurate" but I wanted to edit this image without adding anything that wasn't already available in the original images.
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R6 + RF 85mm f/1.2L USM - 6x image Mosaic. All colors extracted from the captured image.

Wonderful work as usual.

Did I miss a part where you shot the Ra on the EF 24L and compared? Curious to see an apples to apples with the color rendition differences. I believe you, just curiosity.

I realize these won't be exact as setup for this stuff is a hassle. I've frozen my tail off doing enough astro to say it's a chore...

That said I'm pleased to see the R6 can double-duty for astro decently as I'm personally not going to fork up twice as although I love astro, it's another beast entirely to itself...

RLight wrote:

Wonderful work as usual.

Did I miss a part where you shot the Ra on the EF 24L and compared? Curious to see an apples to apples with the color rendition differences. I believe you, just curiosity.

I didn't see a need to compare the R6 with the Ra because the Ra is a stand-alone specialist camera and most people won't be buying it since it's a dedicated astrocam.  I was more interested in seeing if the R6 could perform for astrophotography by itself as a 'normal' mirrorless camera.  With a full frame sensor, it was inevitable that it would perform reasonably well. I think Canon just threw the Ra out there because they could.  There was no effort to backlight the buttons or add an intervalometer to the camera.  It even has face tracking and all the regular features from the EOS R on it.   But the 30x magnification and the IR-Cut modified sensor are the only notable differences between models.  Compared to the R6, the Ra is the better astro camera, but that's logical.  As for the better performer for terrestrial photography, the R6 is vastly superior with IBIS and Eye-Tracking and better video etc.
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The main problem with the EF 24mm f/1.4L II USM lens for me is that it produces a hard vignette on the EOS Ra that had to be cropped.  There was no other way to deal with the issue and it's clearly a physical difference between the camera models that is causing the problem.  Both images below are unedited (aside from image reduction before posting).  Whilst different parts of the Milky Way are visible in each image, the stronger color and crimson regions of Nebula are brighter on the Ra.  Both cameras are set with Auto White Balance.
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EOS Ra +  EF 24mmL - same EF 24mm f/1.4L II USM lens vignetted horribly.
* This image is unedited & uncropped..

EOS R6 + EF 24mmL - same lens on the R6 with same adapter produces no vignette.
* This image is unedited & uncropped.

I realize these won't be exact as setup for this stuff is a hassle. I've frozen my tail off doing enough astro to say it's a chore...

It is a chore. The drive, the setup, the risks (animals, people, insects, car accidents)... And we are just out of winter here so the temperatures are still unpleasant.

That said I'm pleased to see the R6 can double-duty for astro decently as I'm personally not going to fork up twice as although I love astro, it's another beast entirely to itself...

The EOS R6 very similar to the EOS 6D but appeared to perform with less noise than the EOS 6D.  Sensitivity is similar, possibly better.  It's really difficult to make an absolute statement without comparing them side by side and that applies to all things.
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Compared to the EOS Ra (which didn't vignette with other lenses), there was no contest.  The Ra resolved more detail, was cleaner with less noise at similar settings and produced far more vivid color on the straight-out-of-camera JPEGs.  The noise difference is even better than the R which uses the same sensor (prior to removing the IR filter).  But I'd say that the R6 is vastly superior as a terrestrial camera and you don't' have to worry about sickening shades of magenta in day-to-day shots. 
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An unedited image from the EOS Ra - straight after being taken. (EF 50mm lens)
Note the rich colors even before downloading and editing.

Marco Nero wrote:

G Dickson wrote:

Many thanks. As a prospective R6 owner and keen astrolandscaper (with a 6Dii and Sigma 20mm f1.4) this is good information. Thanks.

Here's the mosaic that I took with 6 JPEG images stitched together automatically in Photoshop. These are not stacked. Just stitched together into a Panorama. I spent an hour on it this afternoon to bring out the colors. No additional color was added to the image that wasn't there to begin with. The main tools used in Photoshop were 'Color Balance' and 'Curves' and this was combined with a dodge layer and selective saturation. I could probably spend more time on it but I think it shows that there's some reasonably capability on hand from the R6. I could have added color to make the image more "technically accurate" but I wanted to edit this image without adding anything that wasn't already available in the original images.
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R6 + RF 85mm f/1.2L USM - 6x image Mosaic. All colors extracted from the captured image.

Oooh, very nicely done.

R2

Thanks. And I'd agree, the Ra appears to have superior rendering.

Side note, you can load lens correctional data into your Ra, which it looks like yours is lacking it for the 24L, that's all. The R/Ra have virtually every lens pre-loaded, but, not all of them. I know you're a SOOC-JPEG shooter that does post on the JPEGs, so if you don't have the profile loaded, it won't correct it. You can however apply it to RAW, if you have it, in DPP4...