Canon EOS 6D Mark II - Review 2022

The original Canon EOS 6D broke new ground in full-frame pricing when it launched in 2022 for around $two,100. Its successor, the EOS 6D Marker Ii, debuts at $1,999 in a body-only configuration, placing information technology on par with Nikon's midrange total-frame model, the D750, and signficantly more than Sony's total-frame mirrorless pick, the $i,600 Alpha 7 2, both of which take earned Editors' Choice marks. The 6D Mark II offers some solid upgrades over the original model, including a better autofocus system for both stills and video, more than resolution, and a vari-bending affect LCD. Only image quality doesn't match up with the Nikon and Sony options.

Design

The 6D Marking Ii is like in size and weight to the original 6D. It'southward compact for a full-frame body, measuring 4.four by v.7 by two.nine inches (HWD) and weighing ane.seven pounds without a lens. Like near SLRs, it's finished in matte black, with a rubberized covering that makes it more comfortable to grip. The viewfinder is a glass pentaprism design with a 0.71x magnification rating—the same size y'all get with the pro-grade EOS 5D Marking IV.

In addition to the body-merely selection, Canon is selling the 6D Marking II with the EF 24-105mm f/3.5-5.half dozen IS STM for $2,599 and with the EF 24-105mm f/4L IS Ii USM for $3,099.

The new 6D'southward control layout doesn't devious far from its predecessor, a welcome choice for upgrading photographers. You withal detect a depth of field preview button at near the 8 o'clock position of the lens mount, angled so you can admission it with your right ring finger when shooting. The lens release push button is at the standard location, 3 o'clock.

Top controls include a locking Mode punch, with the power switch at its base, to the left of the hot shoe. The 6D Mark II doesn't include a built-in flash—Canon's full-frame lineup omits that feature as a dominion—merely you can add a Speedlite or wireless trigger to the shoe. To its right you become a monochrome information LCD and a row of buttons to adjust the AF mode, Drive setting, ISO, metering pattern, and to toggle the pinnacle LCD backlight. Ahead of them you'll discover the height command dial, Thousand-Fn button, and shutter release. Chiliad-Fn is new to the 6D Marker II. It's a push Canon uses in its pro SLR lineup to bicycle through the different autofocus expanse settings, making quick piece of work of switching from a wide area or a unmarried, selectable point.

Bill of fare and Info buttons sit to the left of the eyecup on the rear, and the switch that's used to toggle betwixt still and video capture is at its right. The camera volition automatically switch to Live View when prepare to video fashion, with the center Start/Stop button used to control recording. When in notwithstanding image mode, Outset/Stop switches between the optical viewfinder and rear LCD.

The AF-ON, Exposure Lock, and Focus Select buttons sit to its right, running along the tiptop of the rear plate. Below the Live View toggle you discover the zoom/magnifying glass button, Play, and Q, which launches an on-screen control menu. The rear command dial, with center Ready push button and a directional control pad, Delete button, and Lock switch circular out the rear controls. The Lock switch is redesigned compared with the 6D—it has an up/downwardly motion, instead of sliding left and right. Zoom and Play are slightly angled, instead of right above one some other, merely aside from that the rear controls of the Mark Ii are the same as you'll find on the 6D.

The big change on the rear is the LCD. Gone is the fixed brandish, replaced by a three-inch, 1,040k-dot, vari-angle, bear upon LCD. It's a huge upgrade for both still shooters and videographers. You can more hands shoot at a very low angle, without having to go downwards on your knees and peer through the viewfinder. Instead, just tilt the LCD up and use Alive View to get your shot. And, yes, you can swing the brandish frontward to snap a selfie, or, for video professionals, show your interview subject your shot before you start rolling.

Connectivity

The 6D Marker Ii sports Bluetooth, NFC, and Wi-Fi for communication with a smartphone, and information technology tin can work with both IR and Bluetooth wireless remote controls. The wealth of connexion options improve the pairing process with your phone. I continued the photographic camera to my iPhone in a matter of minutes, and was quickly transferring JPG images at either full resolution or a more reasonable iii.8MP for social sharing. Yous tin also utilise an Android device; both platforms apply the Canon Photographic camera Connect app to communicate with the 6D.

The app also supports remote command. Your phone'southward screen shows the view through the camera lens, and yous can tap on a function of the frame to set focus, just as you would with the rear LCD. Full manual exposure command is bachelor, and y'all tin can likewise switch to video mode and employ the remote. In improver to smartphone connectivity, the 6D Mark II tin send images to another Canon camera or printer, exist remotely controlled via a computer with the EOS Utility installed, and upload directly to Facebook, Flickr, Google Drive, Twitter, or YouTube via the Canon Prototype Gateway service.

There's also built-in GPS, which adds the location from which a photo was captured to its metadata. Physical connections include a microphone input, mini HDMI, a remote control port, and mini USB. Canon'south decision to apply the dated mini USB interface, rather than the more than modern micro USB or USB-C, is puzzling. Images are stored on SD media; there's a unmarried slot with support for SD, SDHC, and SDXC formats at UHS-I speeds.

Improved Autofocus

The 6D Marking Two sports a new sensor and autofocus organization. We'll talk about the 26MP total-frame sensor in a scrap, but get-go, a look at the operation and focus coverage provided by the 45-bespeak autofocus system. It's not the first time Canon has used this focus array—information technology's a carryover from the APS-C EOS 80D. That means its coverage area is fairly express when compared with other full-frame models. The 6D'southward sensor is about ii.v times the size, in terms of area, equally the 80D, so the focus system is bunched together toward the middle of the frame. If you want a total-frame camera that's expert at tracking activity as it moves across the frame, and want the freedom to compose shots with a fleeting, off-center discipline, you'll exist better off with a pro model. The 5D Mark 4 spreads its focus points across a wider swath of the frame, as do high-terminate flagship models like the Canon EOS-1D X Mark II and the Nikon D5. But they too cost a lot more.

Despite being compressed, the focus system is speedy and accurate. The 6D Mark 2 starts, focuses, and fires in merely most 0.4-second. In bright lite it locks focus and fires in a brusk 0.05-2nd, merely it slows to about 0.6-second in very dim atmospheric condition. It shoots images at up to half dozen.5fps, with tracking, and does a solid job keeping subjects in focus equally they move toward or away from the lens, equally long as yous keep them nether the middle of the focus system.

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There are a number of focus modes bachelor, but the 6D does have dissimilar capabilities when shooting using the optical viewfinder versus the rear LCD. The focus system can be set to check its entire coverage surface area to look for a subject, or limit coverage to the left, centre, or correct 3rd. There's as well an option to select a single point or a group of 9 points, moving the active point(southward) with the rear command pad. Tracking is active when the lens is gear up to contiuous focus (AI Servo) mode in a wide coverage area. This is in stark contrast to Nikon's 3D tracking way, which lets you select a single point that moves every bit it tracks a subject. Canon'due south tracking is effective, only doesn't give you as much control over the initial conquering as what you become from a Nikon SLR.

Focus in Live View is driven by Canon's Dual Pixel AF system, which puts stage detection on the sensor. It'due south speedier, and smoother, than the dissimilarity methods used past competing SLRs from Nikon and Pentax. The 6D locks focus when shooting stills using the rear LCD in about 0.5-2nd, and slows to about 0.8-second in very dim light. The advantages when shooting video are more palpable, equally the camera delivers polish, pleasing racks when changing focus. Focus area options include a wide area, face detection, or subject tracking. For the latter you merely demand to tap on your subject and the 6D will identify it and go along it in focus.

More Pixels

The 6D Marking Ii's prototype sensor is new and, at press time, unique to the camera. It'south a 26MP full-frame chip, a big resolution crash-land from the 20MP 6D, and a slight increment from other models in this cost range, which tend to use 24MP sensors. Despite the extra resolution, there has been some early on chatter nigh a lack of dynamic range at lower ISO settings.

Basically, if yous expose a scene to preserve highlights, merely desire to pull some detail from the shadows when working with a Raw paradigm file, yous're met with excessive racket in the darkened areas. Take a expect at the split up-view shot above. I underexposed information technology in club to ensure the details in the sky were preserved, at the cost of underexposing the shadows. I had to push the shadows about 3 stops, the equivalent of shooting at ISO 800 instead of the ISO 100 setting I used for the scene.

The issue is a lot of noisy grain in the lifted shadows, as you can run across in the crop above. Sensors that show what analysts have dubbed ISO Invariance would show the same corporeality of noise in pushed portions of the image as they would if yous had shot the scene at a higher ISO. The 6D Mark Two is showing much more noise in the shadows than you become from its ISO 800 output. It'south a shame Catechism doesn't merely use the sensor from the 5D Mark IV, as information technology delivers much better results when pushing depression ISO images brighter.

This is not to say that y'all can't get adept quality images from a camera if it lacks ISO Invariance. But sensors accept gotten much better over the past five years, and the 6D Mark II'due south biggest competitors—the Nikon D750 and Sony a7 Two—both deliver much stronger results. Like the Mark II, the outset 6D as well shows poor results when pushing Raw images shot at lower ISOs. Information technology'due south not something that affects every shot, and if you do notice yourself in a tricky exposure situation, bracketing a few different exposure settings for a scene tin get a long manner to sidestep unwanted racket without blowing out highlights.

But it's not just a lack of ability to button Raw images when needed that's an issue here. I used Imatest to clarify the visible racket when shooting at each native ISO setting, from the lowest ISO 100 through the top of the extended range, ISO 102400. If you stick to JPG format yous'll be able to capture images with relatively low noise (less than 1.5 percent) through ISO 12800. There is some noise reduction applied, which harms detail. It's truer to say that the camera delivers clean, crisp JPGs through ISO 1600, with some very pocket-sized smudging of the tiniest details visible at ISO 3200. ISO 6400 and ISO 12800 images are all the same pretty skilful, with lines in our test scene remaining distinct. But details offset to blur at ISO 25600 and ISO 40000 (the top setting if you don't enable extended ISO). Test shots at ISO 51200 and 102400 are noticeably blurred. We see very similar JPG results from the Nikon D750.

It's in Raw where the 6D Mark Two exhibits some deficiency versus competing models. Information technology shows crisp details through ISO 3200 when shooting in Raw, merely dissonance cuts into very fine detail at ISO 6400 and 12800, and grain is oppressively heavy at ISO 25600 and 40000. It gets even coarser at ISO 51200, and Raw images at ISO 102400 are rough with very piffling detail. Despite being a few years quondam, the Nikon D750 shoots cleaner, crisper images at ISO 12800 through its acme ISO 51200 setting.

Video Quality and Autofocus

Dual Pixel AF makes the 6D Marker 2 a friendlier pick than other SLRs. The focus organization smoothly racks as a scene changes or your subject moves toward or abroad from the lens, eliminating the need to have someone at the controls pulling focus. Documentarians working on run-and-gun direct movie theatre projects and parents only wanting to get a practiced-looking video of their kids will capeesh the 6D Marker 2's ease of operation.

The quality of the video is a mixed bag, still. At that place's no 4K recording—Canon wants you to motility up to the 5D Marking IV or 1D 10 Marking Ii to get that functionality. The 6D Mark II gives you lot 1080p at your choice of 60 (59.94), thirty (29.97), or 24 (23.98) frames per second. Information technology can also shoot at 720p at 60fps, or at 30fps with a lower quality. But despite recording at a decent 30Mbps compression charge per unit using IPB compression, output is on the soft side. The meliorate pinch scheme for 1080p that you get on the 5D Mark IV, ALL-I, isn't here.

There is a microphone input, simply no option to add headphones to monitor audio every bit it's recorded. Y'all do have a manual gain selection, but level meters are but visible if you tap the Q icon on the touch LCD, which takes y'all to the screen used to suit them. I'd have liked to have them on screen at all times, even if you ready the camera to automatic audio control.

You can create 4K time-lapse videos in-camera, with loftier-quality 500Mbps Motion JPEG compression, which is user-friendly. There's also an interval timer for stills, so you can shoot time-lapse images at full 26MP quality and afterwards combine them into a video using desktop editing software. If you lot don't want to fill up your carte, there'due south also a 90Mbps, 1080p time-lapse option.

Serious videographers are better off with a mirrorless camera. The Sony a7 2 records 1080p footage at a higher bit rate, offers in-trunk stabilization and then that any lens is steadied for handheld recording, and sports standard microphone and headphone jacks, also equally XLR via an optional adapter. Its autofocus system is smooth, and you tin can manually focus using either the rear LCD or EVF. Sony besides has models that shoot in 4K, for more than coin: the high-resolution a7R 2, and the 12MP a7S Two, which records 4K footage natively, without need to downscale resolution.

Conclusions

The Canon 6D Mark Two has some things going for it that competing models don't. Information technology offers the near resolution, past a little bit, of any entry-level full-frame model, sports an in-camera GPS, and information technology's the only one in its class with a vari-bending touch LCD. But it falls short of expectations in image quality. That's not to say it'due south incapable of producing stunning photographs—it is—but competing models can outperform it when pushing Raw files at lower ISOs, and when just capturing images at very loftier sensitivities.

If you're in the market for an affordable full-frame SLR, the Nikon D750, which sells for the same cost as the 6D Mark II, remains our Editors' Choice, and is an excellent option for stills-first shooters. If video is a big business organisation, or if you simply want a solid camera for less than $ii,000, the mirrorless Sony a7 2 is a amend bet. Canon shooters with established lens libraries aren't likely to want to switch brands, which leaves the 6D Mark 2 every bit a solid, if not class-leading, affordable full-frame option. If you want the best, you lot'll need increase your upkeep. The Catechism 5D Mark Iv, which sells for about $one,500 more, is our Editors' Choice selection in its cost class.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/consumer-electronics-reviews-ratings-comparisons/16357/canon-eos-6d-mark-ii

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