Hot on the heels of the new Nikon D600 comes the Canon 6D, bit like buses…. Calumet Photo are quoting about £1800 for the body only
The 6D is apparently not a replacement for the 5D but a stable mate designed with features for landscape, travel and outdoor photographers. It is lighter than the 5D so easier to carry around and has geo-location GPS facilities so you can tag images with their exact location and built in wifi for transmitting and sharing images. Here are some details
A 20.2-megapixel DSLR featuring a full-frame sensor and compact design. Ideal for portrait, landscape and travel photography, offering tight control over depth of field and a large choice of wide-angle EF lenses.
- Enjoy the full-frame advantage with a 20.2 megapixel CMOS sensor, for a wider choice of wide-angle lenses, great image quality, and more depth-of-field control
- Tough magnesium-alloy body and compact design
- Great in low-light. Shoot at max ISO 25,600 (expandable to ISO 102,400) and with precise AF, even in conditions as dark as -3EV
- Follow the action with 11-point AF and 4.5 fps shooting
- Built-in GPS geotags images with location
- Wirelessly control and download from your camera with built-in Wi-Fi • 14-bit DIGIC 5+ processor for accurate colour reproduction
- Shoot Full-HD video
- Live View composition on a 1,040,000-dot 7.7cm (3.0″) ClearView LCD screen
- The ever reliable people at DP Review have a full preview available here
The EOS 6D is best seen as a full frame version of the EOS 60D – indeed it’s very similar in both control layout and dimensions. Its front profile is very similar to the Nikon D600, but it’s rather slimmer front-to-back, and lighter too. However it differs from the Nikon in a number of key respects; for example it has Wi-Fi and GPS built-in, while the D600 offers a distinctly higher spec’ed autofocus system, dual card slots and a built-in flash.
The EOS 6D is built around a new Canon CMOS sensor, which offers a pixel count of 20.2MP (compared to the D600 and A99’s 24MP, or the 5D Mark III’s 22MP). In concert with the DIGIC 5+ processor it offers a standard ISO range of 100-25600, expandable down to 50 and up to 102,400. The AF system has 11 points, but only the central one is cross-type (i.e. sensitive to both vertical and horizontal detail). However according to Canon to will operate at extremely low light levels; right down to -3 EV – a stop dimmer than the 5D Mark III.
The EOS 6D’s most eye-catching additions are integrated GPS and Wi-Fi – their first appearance on a Canon SLR. The GPS unit includes exactly the same functionality as on the company’s compacts – it can embed location data into every image, and has a logging function that can keep track of where you’ve been through the day. This, we suspect, will be most-popular with landscape and travel photographers.
The integrated Wi-Fi unit has the basic functionality you might expect, allowing transfer of images to a smartphone or tablet, and direct upload to social media sites such as Facebook and YouTube. You can also send images directly to a Wi-Fi-enabled printer. But we think more photographers are likely be interested by the fact that it can also be used to turn your smartphone into a wireless remote control via Canon’s EOS Remote app for iOS or Android, complete with live view and full control of exposure settings.
The EOS 6D gains Canon’s silent shutter mode that we saw on the 5D Mark III, which offers quieter, more discreet shooting. It gets in-camera HDR and Multiple Exposure modes, but disappointingly these are JPEG only, unlike on the 5D Mark III that also records RAW files. There’s also a single-axis electronic level to check for wonky horizons. READ THE FULL PREVIEW
You may find this comparison site useful as well as the DP Review pages, this lists the differences between the Nikon D600 and the Canon 6D
Oxford School of Photography 