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

Sittatunga wrote:

davecheng wrote:

R2D2 wrote:

Well, there is the Viltrox 23mm f/1.4 (with AF). I don’t know how good it is wide open, and it only comes in silver right now...

Viltrox 23mm at @mazon

Might be worth a try (it’s still on my wish list).

That's interesting. It looks similar in size to the EF-M 32/1.4 — which is to say, a lot smaller and lighter than an EF 35/1.4L + reducer. Admittedly, the silver finish does not appeal to me one bit... :/

There's also the Samyang 21mm f/1.4, absolutely superb if you get a good one, but 3x the size of the Canon 22mm and absolutely manual with no EXIF data.

Viltrox 23mm @ B&H    Save yourself some money Amazon $299 B&H $239

davecheng wrote:

The first thing I noticed about the M6 Mark II was its ability to focus on, and track virtually any point on the screen. I know this is nothing special, but it is my first taste of live view and modern DPAF. Most of my work was shooting professional sports with tele primes like the 400 and 600. I used the centre AF point 99 percent of the time, and relied on cropping in post to get the final composition. I kept the 1D's AF sensitivity settings at their quickest, and I was well-practiced at releasing back-button AF when something — mostly, the buttocks of referees — would temporarily cross my subject's path.

The M6 Mark II, by comparison, seems to be able to track anything, anywhere. I feel it offers a freedom in composition that is new and exciting. I can now shoot a 50/1.2 from the hip and actually expect some of the images to be in focus! Eye-detection AF is just wild.

The next big difference is image quality and noise. I think we can all agree that a lot has changed in 12 years since my last camera's 10MP sensor. I often feel like the grumpy old man in the room when I read discussions about what is considered "noisy" these days. The use of f/4 teles for indoor sports, for example, was unheard of 10 years ago.

Thanks for your comments, really interesting. The jumps you mention in features happened only between the M6 and M6 Mark II on the mirrorless side (and with the 90D on the DSLR side and comparable models - from what I've read -- so really only in the last year or two.

I thought the 70D would be 'good enough' for me... shooting video of my wife paddling a dragon boat on the river... it wasn't. I found the ISO 400 and above images far too noisy, and although the dual-pixel sensor could finally do focusing in live view over my clunky old T1i, it would focus on the wrong thing a lot and was slow, thus my upgrade to the m6...

The m6 with EVF turned to out be a wonderful solution --- trying to do video holding the 70D camera out at arms length really sucks --- gets your arms tired after just a minute or two, is unsteady and all that. I started taking a tripod with me to the river, but I chase the boats on a bike on the Tampa Riverwalk, and that was just incredibly inconvenient. Took too long to set up and break down at each stop --- I lost a lot of time and video to that.

Shooting video with the m6 like an SLR with your eye to the EVF and holding it properly braced with your face, left, and right hands, is steady enough with IS so that you don't need a tripod, and you can film for long periods of time. It was GREAT. Also i LOVE seeing the actual image with all the corrections and adjustments already made.... I keep asking myself, who would rather have an optical view over an electronic? EVF can do so much more including allow you to review photos, set the menus etc.

However the m6 would sometimes still focus on the wrong things like background or foreground items like dock pilings, signs in the water, bridge pilings when the boat was paddled under bridges. For really long shots I was using a 2x and even a 3x teleconverter with the Canon 55-250mm f 4-5.6 IS STM (an amazingly sharp EF-S lens, which I modified to work with EF teleconverters) but the M6 could not autofocus with the converters as they dropped the aperture to f11, which I was not at all surprised by. So couldn't really use the teleconverter for video.

I upgraded to the M6 Mark II after seeing a black Friday open box deal I couldn't pass up. To my astonishment, the M6 Mark II CAN autofocus quickly and reliably with the 55-250mm IS STM zoomed to 250mm WITH a 2X teleconverter, in bright sunshine it can even focus with 2X AND 3X stacked on the 250mm lens, giving a 1500mm f32 lens on a crop sensor camera! I kid you not, it's simply astonishing... it seems that if the camera can get it on the sensor with enough brightness, it can focus...

But best of all, like you've found, the m6 Mark II's subject tracking is phenomenal, to the point where I have completely forgotten there is even a need to focus during video --- the camera just finds the boat, focuses, tracks it, and isn't even deterred when the boat goes behind bridge pilings and if there are signs around (unless the boat is mostly hidden). So I totally get it when you say this opens up new possibilities, you can now pay so much more attention to the subject movement, composition etc.

So you jumped in at the right time and the right model for an upgrade...

The majority of camera reviewers seem to keep parroting the same line about the M-series lens lineup being too small and not well supported.... and that using EF glass is weird (such a large lens on a tiny body, would rather have a big body for the big lens).

I don't get that, really... The EF lenses are larger because, for example a 55-250mm f4-5.6, or an 18-135mm f3.5-5,6 IS STM HAS TO BE relatively large to get all that glass for a decent f-stop, IS circuitry etc.... and Canon does a brilliant job of choosing the materials and build quality that keeps the lenses light ---- so what if the lens is a bit larger than the body... the right way to shoot is to mostly hold the lens, and the m6 Mark II body is so well designed and proportioned that even in my big hands it feels perfect! I found the 70D just to be too honking big and heavy ---- think Canon has hit a home run with the M6 Mark II even in some ways over some of the R series cameras.

Do you use the EVF? With the EVF the M6 Mark II is a killer camera, as you can always remove it. I don't ever shoot with flash for the subjects I choose, so not being able to use the hot-shoe and EVF at the same time is a non-issue for me.

davecheng wrote:

Yeah, it's hard to justify the Metabones at three times the cost of the Viltrox. The few available online comparisons seem to indicate they are comparable in terms of centre sharpness. That said, I've had my Metabones now for a couple days, and it's a keeper for me.

The Metabones has better off-centre sharpness. It appears to colour the resulting image a lot less than the Viltrox — both in terms of a colour cast, and what it does to the bokeh. The Vilrtrox introduces a slight swirly quality to the out of focus areas.

I feel the Metabones is more faithful to what the lens would actually look like on a FF camera. But most importantly, the Metabones works with my f/1.2 primes, whereas I couldn't get the Viltrox to work at all.

Interesting. I've had the Viltrox 0.71 EF - EOS M2 speed booster for a couple weeks, and managed to cleanly and reliably hack it to work with 4 vintage Minolta Rokkor MC lenses from 28 to 200mm I've bought for the M6 Mark II (see photos below -- even was able to adjust infinity focus for the Rokkors). I've posted this info on other forums as well.

I included a time exposure of the highway showing 'car trails', 2 second exposure at ISO 100 with the Minolta Rokkor MC 28mm f2.8 lens at f11 with the Viltrox 0.71x speed booster.

With their smaller vintage size and quality build the Rokkors are a great match for the M6/M6 Mark II. They make lovely, slightly warm, sharp images and are so much fun to use! They bring back happy days from decades ago using film cameras (although I was a Canon man even back then with F-1, T-70 and a full set of FD lenses). The Rokkors are noticeably sharper and render more detail and texture than the Canon EF-M 15-45mm lens, all day long, and are as sharp as the Canon EF 50mm f1.8 II and the three Canon EF-S zooms I have (10-18, 55-250, 18-135 IS STMs).

I can confirm what you say about the corner sharpness being an issue with the Viltrox, but also found this applies more to focal lengths of wide to standard, and can mostly be worked around by stopping down to a smaller aperture. I found with 28mm you must stop down to at least 8 (even further is better), at 50mm f5.6, at 135mm f 4, and at 200mm 3.5 is sharp across the frame.

A good way to test is to take photos of a constellation (stars) like Orion from a dark sky at all your f-stops with and without the speed booster. The pin point colored stars are an excellent test. Away from the center at wider apertures with wider lenses, coma and chromatic aberration, and lack of sharpness are noticeable, and with the 28mm the stars close the corners just plain look out of focus, even though the center stars are OK. Stopping down enough makes the performance acceptable, but then what is a 'speed booster' partly for? LOL

I found that the contemporary Canon EF and EF-S lenses, and the vintage Minolta lenses, behaved in very much the same fashion with the speed booster. Of course the EF-S lenses did vignette a bit, more so at the wider ends of the zooms, as they were designed for crop sensors.

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

davecheng wrote:

Fast_Larry wrote:

I am really curious --- can you be more specific, what do you think makes the M6 Mark II stand out so much? Image quality, and/or what other things?

As a relatively new M6 Mark II owner I'm happy to hear your comments, from someone with a lot of experience. I'm only an "enthusiast' but have been shooting with Canon gear since the 80s with the F-1, EF, T-70 and a full set of FD lenses. I went digital in 2007 with a rebel T1i, and this year upgraded successively through a 70D, M6 mirrorless, and then finally 'arrived' with the M6 Mark II which I am extremely pleased with in almost every way.

interestingly the step up from the M6 to the M6 Mark II was quite noticeable, the low-light images, camera's extra resolution, ability to focus in low light, faster shooting modes, and electronic shutter and intervalometer make it great for astrophotography and low light photography, which I do a lot.

Thanks for your post, I'm really enjoying your images.

Thank you! It's a pleasure to contribute to such a supportive and resourceful community.

Keep in mind, I have a huge gap in my experience with digital cameras, likely exaggerating my impression of the M6 Mark II. I started shooting on the Nikon D1 and D1H. Around 2002 was my wholesale switch to Canon with the EOS 1D, Mark II, IIn, and Mark III as the bodies with which I last had professional working experience. I've since "retired" to a career in education and stopped buying cameras. lol

The first thing I noticed about the M6 Mark II was its ability to focus on, and track virtually any point on the screen. I know this is nothing special, but it is my first taste of live view and modern DPAF. Most of my work was shooting professional sports with tele primes like the 400 and 600. I used the centre AF point 99 percent of the time, and relied on cropping in post to get the final composition. I kept the 1D's AF sensitivity settings at their quickest, and I was well-practiced at releasing back-button AF when something — mostly, the buttocks of referees — would temporarily cross my subject's path.

The M6 Mark II, by comparison, seems to be able to track anything, anywhere. I feel it offers a freedom in composition that is new and exciting. I can now shoot a 50/1.2 from the hip and actually expect some of the images to be in focus! Eye-detection AF is just wild.

The next big difference is image quality and noise. I think we can all agree that a lot has changed in 12 years since my last camera's 10MP sensor. I often feel like the grumpy old man in the room when I read discussions about what is considered "noisy" these days. The use of f/4 teles for indoor sports, for example, was unheard of 10 years ago. Most pro sports venues were lit to somewhere around 1/500 f/2.8 ISO 800. You almost *had* to shoot a 400/2.8 wide-open all the time just to manage noise. It would have been a dream come true to work with a lens like the 200-400/4+TC at a clean ISO 3200.

There are a lot of other small things, too. Wireless connectivity would've eliminated the need for card runners at big events. Flicker detection would've helped a lot in venues with sodium-vapour lamps. And I still can't believe that this little "pocket" camera manages a 14 fps mechanical shutter.

I think the modern tech is pretty amazing. It's re-awakened a passion I haven't felt in 20 years — a passion for carrying a camera around everywhere I go and just making pictures of my everyday life.

+1 Agree with your assessment.  Even though I have a pretty good R5 setup, I still consider  the M6ii to be my go-to everyday shooter.  It’s so incredibly capable, and simply a joy to shoot with.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts,

R2

Hi Dave

just taken delivery of my M6 ll today with the 22m f2 and kit lens.

stepped down from Pano A9 due to kit size and my age (just to heavy to haul around at 68 and after a stroke)

looking forward to getting out and shooting some images.

your images are tremendous, this camera is awesome and to get a 32meg sensor in an apsc camera is fantastic.

well done to Canon

malboni wrote:

Hi Dave

just taken delivery of my M6 ll today with the 22m f2 and kit lens.

stepped down from Pano A9 due to kit size and my age (just to heavy to haul around at 68 and after a stroke)

looking forward to getting out and shooting some images.

your images are tremendous, this camera is awesome and to get a 32meg sensor in an apsc camera is fantastic.

well done to Canon

Big congrats on the Little powerhouse.  Don’t forget to check out the M6ii Tips and Tricks thread…

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4433968

Enjoy the great new camera!

R2