After months, perhaps years of anticipation, I finally pulled the trigger on a new camera body! I couldn't be a more excited owner of the Canon 6D, a relatively affordable full-frame DSLR. This won't be any comprehensive or technical review like at DPReview or Ken Rockwell, so if you want all the specs, head there. What's so special? Well, about a year and a half ago I bought a 7D, which is a crop frame body. Crop-frame bodies simply don't capture as much periphery in a frame. A 24mm lens looks like a 35mm on a crop-frame body. I loved the 7D for its speed and video capabilities at the time, but I ended up returning it because I wanted the full frame potential. Patiently, I waited for my time to come.
And I got sick of my trusty Canon 40D. I shot less and less because I got bored with the look and the capabilities became dated. Granted, Canon released it way back in 2007 -- centuries ago in technology years.
When the 6D came out, I was pumped. The Canon 5D Mark II had been the standard for pro-am full frame body in the Canon line-up for years, and the 6D made several improvements upon the incumbent with a slashed price point. First, the 6D has WiFi and GPS. This is CRAZY because with the Canon app on my iPhone, I can take a photo on my 6D, pull it up over WiFi on my phone and post it to Instagram like this. I can also control the camera remotely with the app, including ISO, shutter speed, aperture and focus -- all the essentials. You cannot capture video remotely, though if GoPro has that figured out it will be coming in short time for Canon. There is a noticeable delay between the time you push the shutter button on the phone and the camera actually taking the photo, but the alternative was this technology never existing. I can't complain.
Also the ISO jumps up to an absurd 25,600, which basically means you can shoot in the dark without a flash at low apertures. It's unreal.
Sergio is graciously letting me crash his kit bag until I get a new lens for the body. Did I mention high-quality photography is an expensive hobby? I'm swaying between a 35mm 1.4 or 24-70mm 2.8. The one drawback of the 6D so far is that the shutter speed maxes out at 1/4000, which is really odd. Many cameras have maxed at 1/8000 for years. This is a big deal because if I want to really open up the aperture and it's bright out, I'll overexpose the image. Nothing deal-breaking but it just excludes more times when I'd want to shoot at a lower aperture. If everything was perfect, there'd only be one camera body out there. Oh well.
Here are some test shots Amanda took for me in the evening with the Canon 6D. Pretty sweet, huh?! More high quality photography coming from here on out.
