CWP Gear | Canon 6d
/Since I spent a good amount of time talking about all my Lens Love, I thought I should also give some love out to my baby, my sweetie...the Canon 6d.
I started my DSLR journey with a Rebel T3i then moved quickly to a 7d and then about 6 months later I moved into the 6d. The reasons for all the upgrading are a few so I will list out all the things I love about this camera and if you are on the fence about different body types, hopefully this will answer some real life, real world experience questions that you might have!
The real question for most photographers who are at the stage where they are looking to upgrade is this:
Canon 6d or 5d Mark iii?
It is a legitimate question and one I wrestled with for a while. I had already upgraded once from the t3i to a 7d which got me a more professional body, speed and the ability to switch settings on the fly as opposed to constantly bringing the camera down from my face and switching things up.
But I knew if I wanted to take things to the next level, I needed to upgrade to a full frame camera. The full frame sensor offers overall better image quality but they really shine when looking at ISO performance. I can push my ISO on the 6d so much higher than I can on the 7d (which is really only necessary if you are shooting in darker spaces and places....like wedding churches or venues) so I knew that was important to me.
As a quick example...here are two shots with the 6d taken in my dark hallway, one at 800 ISO and one at 12800....yes Twelve thousand!!
50mm | 2.8 | 800 | 1/30
50mm | 2.8 | 12800 | 1/500
Even though you can see the noise at 12800 ISO, its not the horrible monstrosity you would think it would be at that high of a level. So I can easily push to 3200 or even 6400 without worrying too much about grain or noise.
So back to the original question at hand: 6d or Mark iii?
I read and read and read and read some more and here is what I narrowed it down too. The Mark iii has two distinct advantages over the 6d.
- dual card slot
- focus points (61 on Mark iii vs 11 on 6d)
The dual card slot didn't appeal to me back when I was researching as much as it does to me now. The ability to shoot on two cards at the same time is a great safety precaution. If one card is corrupt you automatically have a back up on another card. Highly beneficial for wedding photographers or people who shoot once in a lifetime events.
The AF system on the Mark iii is extremely advanced and wins against the 6d hands down, but again, it wasn't something that was so important to me that it made me overlook the most important difference:
The price.
The Mark iii is a good $1000+ more than the 6d.
I could not justify that difference at the time and so the 6d won for me. And this guy has not disappointed me in the least. Images are sharp, focusing works for what I need and the ISO performance is fantastic. I think this is a fantastic camera for family or senior photographers or photographers who don't shoot a ton of weddings.
As my focus is changing over to more and more weddings, I will be upgrading to the Mark iii at some point in the future, but I will be proud to keep the 6d as my backup camera for a long time to come!
