New M6 Mark II with some questions

Hello,

this is my first post in this forum. I have been reading for a while and it is time to start sharing with you

I bought a second hand M6 Mark II with 15-45mm + viewfinder + Canon EF-EOS M + 3 batteries, perfect condition (with boxes, plastics...) for 680USD.

Do you think was a good price?

I am loving the camera and a little overwhelmed with all the settings and configurations. I have some questions regarding the camera.

I have seen there is electronic and mechanical shutter. Is there any difference shooting with electronic mode for street photography? (not high speed).

In terms of lifetime of the camera, is better to shoot in electronic? I think every time I use the mechanical shutter there is a degradation and can be broken after 100k shots.

If the mechanical shutter breaks, can I continue using the camera only with electronic shutter and for video recording?

And finally, I would like to set the gps location in the photos, I was installing CameraConnect in my iPhone but I think I have to enable wifi to do this, not possible to do it with Bluetooth. Any one is doing this or can give me some tricks to have reliable GPS data?

Thank you in advance for your responses!

Badlagar wrote:

Hello,

this is my first post in this forum. I have been reading for a while and it is time to start sharing with you

Welcome!

I bought a second hand M6 Mark II with 15-45mm + viewfinder + Canon EF-EOS M + 3 batteries, perfect condition (with boxes, plastics...) for 680USD.

Do you think was a good price?

Seems like a good price! If you still have the budget you may want a few more lenses, another thread going on right here.

I am loving the camera and a little overwhelmed with all the settings and configurations. I have some questions regarding the camera.

I have seen there is electronic and mechanical shutter. Is there any difference shooting with electronic mode for street photography? (not high speed).

Electronic shutter will be more susceptible to camera or subject motion, and you may end up with distortions you didn't expect, beyond the blurs you may get from "normal" shake or motion. (Something I encountered some months back, for instance.)

However you do have the benefit of silent shutter... Give it a try under the conditions you want to use it with and see if it's working for you.

In terms of lifetime of the camera, is better to shoot in electronic? I think every time I use the mechanical shutter there is a degradation and can be broken after 100k shots.

I don't think it's worth worrying over unless you are really taking thousands of shots every week. I personally haven't heard of anyone's mechanical shutter breaking on their M cameras.

I don't have answers to these:

If the mechanical shutter breaks, can I continue using the camera only with electronic shutter and for video recording?

And finally, I would like to set the gps location in the photos, I was installing CameraConnect in my iPhone but I think I have to enable wifi to do this, not possible to do it with Bluetooth. Any one is doing this or can give me some tricks to have reliable GPS data?

Thank you in advance for your responses!

Enjoy the camera!

Ali wrote:

I don't have answers to these:

If the mechanical shutter breaks, can I continue using the camera only with electronic shutter and for video recording?

I only have one data point on this.  I bought a used M50 from MPB.com last Fall.  After about 5 months, the mechanical shutter stopped working and the camera ceased to function.  All it would do is display an error message.  I could not use the electronic shutter.  Fortunately, MPB replaced the camera under their warranty (and they allowed me to upgrade to an M6ii by paying the difference, which I gladly did).

Badlagar wrote:

I have one more question. Is it necessary to activate the "auto cleaning" for the lens if I am not switching often the lens? It is another mechanical part that can fail and I don't know if it is really necessary to have it so often. At the moment I have configured it only when closing the camera but I am thinking in completely disabling it.

I leave the auto cleaning on (except when I'm doing astrophotography).  I believe that it is cleaning the sensor (not the lens).  You could be right about it being just one more thing that can break.  I'm not sure how effective it is anyway.  Maybe someone else can speak up about this?  There was a DP Review video recently on how to clean your sensor if it gets dirty.  So maybe this auto clean isn't necessary?

B_Gardner wrote:

Badlagar wrote:

I have one more question. Is it necessary to activate the "auto cleaning" for the lens if I am not switching often the lens? It is another mechanical part that can fail and I don't know if it is really necessary to have it so often. At the moment I have configured it only when closing the camera but I am thinking in completely disabling it.

I leave the auto cleaning on

I also have it on.

(except when I'm doing astrophotography). I believe that it is cleaning the sensor (not the lens). You could be right about it being just one more thing that can break. I'm not sure how effective it is anyway. Maybe someone else can speak up about this? There was a DP Review video recently on how to clean your sensor if it gets dirty. So maybe this auto clean isn't necessary?

From my experience from back when, I would not recommend self-cleaning (from what I remember not easy, also nerve-racking!), but turning off auto cleaning and occasionally doing a manual clean cycle (Sensor Cleaning -> Clean Now) seems reasonable. If you don't change lenses often, especially in dusty areas, you can probably go months without noticing any issues.

And of course if you do see any dust in your photos you can do it right then. (If you want to check for dust take a photo of a light uniform surface like a wall or sky with a high f number)

Badlagar wrote:

Hello,

this is my first post in this forum. I have been reading for a while and it is time to start sharing with you

I bought a second hand M6 Mark II with 15-45mm + viewfinder + Canon EF-EOS M + 3 batteries, perfect condition (with boxes, plastics...) for 680USD.

Do you think was a good price?

I am loving the camera and a little overwhelmed with all the settings and configurations. I have some questions regarding the camera.

I have seen there is electronic and mechanical shutter. Is there any difference shooting with electronic mode for street photography? (not high speed).

In terms of lifetime of the camera, is better to shoot in electronic? I think every time I use the mechanical shutter there is a degradation and can be broken after 100k shots.

If the mechanical shutter breaks, can I continue using the camera only with electronic shutter and for video recording?

And finally, I would like to set the gps location in the photos, I was installing CameraConnect in my iPhone but I think I have to enable wifi to do this, not possible to do it with Bluetooth. Any one is doing this or can give me some tricks to have reliable GPS data?

Thank you in advance for your responses!

GPS setup over Bluetooth hemorrhages battery from your smartphone, heads up. I find it’s more hassle than worth, but feel free to use.

Regarding mechanical shutter, I don’t know the rating on the M6II but I’ve put down at least 50-70k on my first copy without issue. Electronic shutter causes banding in artificial light and rolling shutter on panning the camera or fast moving subjects on the M6II; it’s not a stacked CMOS. I recommend using mechanical shutter for most things as such. Theoretically you can use e-shutter if you wear out the mechanical shutter. It doesn’t close when off so it’s always open. It doesn’t fail closed to my knowledge, but could which would inhibit electronic shutter if it failed closed or partially closed somehow.

Badlagar wrote:

Hello @RLight, yes, I realized yesterday that 20% of the battery from my iPhone was used by the Canon CameraConnect every 24 hours. I was researching a little bit and I had the option "begin logging" enabled.

Yes, it's essentially just starting a collection to be sync'd.

I really do not know what is "begin logging" doing, but if you disable it the gps will still sync correctly as soon as you are in bluetooth range of the camera. So the battery issue is not an issue anymore. Battery was draining around 1% per hour and now will drain only the time the camera is active. In 1 hour session I expect to drain a 1% of the battery.

It may not be collecting accurate GPS data then when you re-sync the GPS data to the shots if that's the route you're going. Double check the shots accurately reflect GPS data. It may be it's only syncing the location at which you sync it back at.

I miss some good documentation about the app. It is not clear for me some aspects. For example if I shoot only raw and send the photos to the iPhone. Will be a jpg created?

Yes

What properties will have this jpg, same as shooting in jpg mode?

Good question, I don't know myself and wondered. My bet? It's an in-camera RAW to JPEG conversion; the results should be no different than if you did an in camera RAW to JPEG with no edits. The iPhone (probably) doesn't know what to do with that CR3 file. MacOS does, but that's because it gets a huge RAW processing library in the OS to include other RAW formats. iOS probably doesn't get this library in it's bundle and the camera is likely doing this conversion with defaults / settings at time of capture since you're not intervening on those settings at the time you upload it.

Regarding the shutter, makes sense that if at some point is broken, that you can still use the camera in electric mode but probably there is some build logic that force you repair it. Almost every brand have very clear how to do programmed obsoleteness and I would not be surprised if this is the case. But again, there is a good documentation from Canon explaining this edge cases.

Probably not. But this is probably something a camera shop or even google can assist with when you get there.

I have a lot of trouble connecting the app with my older iPhone so just gave up and use an app called Gaia which logs all my walks and I can easily download the GPX file to my computer then add to the image file with Adobe Lightroom.  If you don't have Lightroom or Gaia, there are other phone  and computer apps that will work much the same.  The trick is to make sure the time setting is the same on the camera and phone.

It would be much simpler if camera companies would put GPS hardware in their cameras .

Badlagar wrote:

With an iPhone 13 Pro I have not seen any issue. I have also some other services running GPS (not only the camera). For example is activated for Find My iPhone. This way the iPhone is always with the correct location updated. Once the camera is connected is getting the last system location, so it is working pretty good.

Good to know, thanks!