In a previous blog post, I shared some autumn photos from a pleasant, October excursion to Swallow Falls State Park with my new Canon R6 mirrorless camera. It was my first excursion with that camera. But now that several weeks have passed and I have had opportunity to take the R6 out on several more excursions, I figured it was time to write a little blog post on my first impressions of that camera, both pros and cons!

Here are my first impressions of the R6 using example images from my recent trip driving to and from North Dakota to photograph a beautiful, God-honoring wedding.

Pros: What I like about the Canon R6

Face Tracking AF Method

Hands-down, the most significant advantage of the R6 over the 5Diii, and the number-one reason why I would recommend this camera to anyone, is the face and eye detection and tracking autofocusing method. You can have the most epic lighting, the clearest subject, and the best composition, and yet, if the subject is not in tack sharp focus, the photo is useless. This is especially true in any type of portrait genre.

For years, in wedding photography, it has always been a constant struggle for me to get the eyes of my subjects in tack sharp focus . . . in every photo. Working under a deadline, taking hundreds of photos of people, all day long. It is a tiresome task, to say the least, to change the focus point or to focus-recompose every single shot. It’s not an impossible challenge, of course. I have successfully photographed dozens of weddings! And it’s a good thing to figure out ways to overcome a challenge without relying on technology.

But, I was ready for the help of some technology. 🙂 And the R6 does a masterful job of it. Face and eye detection and tracking saves me time, allows me to be more focused on composition and subject interaction, and I gotta tell you, it’s an incredible relief to know my shots are going to be sharp practically every time.

Because I do not photograph people only, I register buttons on my camera in a way similar to this method so I can switch easily between using Face Tracking when focusing on people and “normal focusing” when focusing on other objects.

Articulating screen

Something I was looking forward to for a long time, when it came to a camera upgrade, was an articulating screen. The last time I upgraded my camera was in 2017, and that to a camera that was released in 2014. I’m not into all the latest and greatest stuff, but an articulating screen is one aspect that I regularly missed over all those years.

When the camera is mounted on a tripod inches from the surface of the ground, or when a group shot would be better taken above eye level, I would often run into issues with getting my human head in the same vicinity as the camera body. With an articulating screen, I can now back the camera literally flat up against a wall and still see what I’m composing. Or compose shots with me in it, and position myself properly before remotely releasing the shutter.

Third dial for ISO

I always wondered why even the most advanced DSLRs would have 1 dial for aperture, 1 dial for shutter speed, but no dial for ISO. It was always a clunky “push a button then scroll” sequence to change the ISO in full Manual. Finally, on the R6, I can adjust the ISO just like I would the other two components of the exposure trio.

Weight

I have to admit, it is nice to have a lighter camera. Especially when I’m out hiking.

Increased Dynamic Range

I like the extended image quality that can be achieved with HDR, so I find myself bracketing scenes fairly often. Running across the following scene on a backroad in Wisconsin, I thought for sure I would need an HDR bracket. However, when processing the photos later in Lightroom, I was surprised at being able to get the same, naturally dynamic range with one single CR3 image (left) as the 4-photo merge (right).

Even when viewing at 100%, the lack of noise in the shadow areas is admirable. As long as I’m “Exposing To The Right” with the R6, I think I should be able to approach just about any low-ISO landscape scene with only one photograph.

Cons: What did not impress me about the Canon R6

IBIS

In Body Image Stabilization is an amazing concept! I love it. Just don’t believe it if they claim it provides more than 2 stops of real-world improvement with unstabilized lenses. On an excursion through a park with gorgeous fall colors, I figured shooting at 1/20th or 1/15th of a second would be no problem with my unstabilized 16-35mm. Not true. Even though the following photos may not appear blurry, when zoomed in, you can tell.

Viewfinder

The one aspect that will keep me going back to a DSLR, especially in landscape photography, is the viewfinder. When shooting with the R6, I truly miss having an real, optical viewfinder. Why? Let me explain.

Have someone point a flashlight at you. It’s so bright you can’t look at it, right? Now point that same flashlight into the lens of your mirrorless camera. You can look at it, now. It’s a pale, washed out white. It’s not “bright”! It’s like trying to print sunlight on paper. White paper is as bright a white as you’re going to get when printing. But paper-white isn’t very bright. You can look at the “sun” in a printed picture and it doesn’t make you squint. It’s not “bright” any more. And that’s what it’s like looking through a mirrorless viewfinder. Light sources are “paper-white”. So, gorgeous, sunlit scenes suddenly feel dull and fake through the viewfinder. It’s hard to discern variation in light intensity, or to perceive fine gradations between bright and brighter.

Try to feel inspired shooting sunbursts with a mirrorless camera . . . ugh. It’s so blah. 🙂

White Balance in the viewfinder

Another problem is that white balance in the viewfinder is true to whatever the setting is you have it set to . . . not reality! If I set the white balance to “Cloudy” when I’m indoors, the color of the room through the viewfinder is going to be an ugly orange . . . not reality. I use the same “Cloudy” setting outside on a cloudy day, and maybe it will be closer to reality, but it’s still not reality. It will probably look too cool through the viewfinder. Regardless, it’s not reality, and that’s what bugs me.

Worse yet is when you have it set to Auto White Balance. I use Auto WB all the time. Because I shoot RAW, I’m not concerned all that much about white balance, so I don’t mess with it while I’m out in the field very often. Way too many other things to think about! But when I am standing in awe at an incredible display of autumn color, and reverently raise my camera to capture the inspiration of the moment, and my eye is greeted with a desaturated, cool-toned rendition of the scene, the inspiration vanishes like a leaf on the wind.

Battery Life

Thankfully I’ve got lots of batteries. 5 for my two cameras. But even then, I’m not sure how I can manage to hike out to the Mississippi headwaters in Itasca State Park on a cold morning, arriving in just the nick of time to capture the sun bursting over the horizon . . . only to find that my battery is dead and all the others are in my other camera bag! I never used to have this problem. 🙂

Which reminds me. I’ll have to tell you about the case of the disappearing battery and charger at the wedding in Fargo! That was a real mystery, to say the least. But I’ll save that for another blog post. 🙂

For now, I hope you enjoyed getting to know a little more about the mirrorless Canon R6 and my first impressions of it!