I’ve had the new(ish) Canon EOS R6 for a few months now and I wanted to give a review after using it for a few commercial mountain bike shoots, a race, and a wedding video. This won’t be a technical review, but a few likes and dislikes that I have with the camera.
Derek wheeling on his Tarmac in the Eliel Diablo Jersey
When I first picked it up, I put it to the test right out of the box and got it to a commercial shoot that I did for Dialed Health. We shot both inside his studio and outside on the road bike. I was blown away at the ISO range that I was able to use the camera while we were inside. I could push it further than my Mark IV with what appeared to be no noise at all. I didn’t use a speed lite inside and pushing it up to 4000 iso was no problem at all as we shot some photos of Derek working out. We brought it along with us on the road and got some shots of Derek in his new Eliel Diablo Kit. We were shooting in the middle of the day so I know that I didn’t need to crank the ISO, but this is where I wanted to test out the autofocus tracking. The R6 has the option to shoot with eye tracking specific to either human or animal. Even with Derek wearing sunglasses and helmet, the camera picked up on him just fine. It almost threw me off a bit when it came to framing up the image. All I needed to do was put the focus point on him wherever he was in the frame and then move the camera around to put him in the frame where I wanted him. Even with Servo on my 5D Mark IV, with moving subjects I tend to have to plan where they’re going to be in the frame before I start shooting and then move the camera appropriately. After using the camera in a few different shoots, however, I ended up going back to the way that I used to shoot in most scenarios. This was personal preference because I tend to be happier with my images after I have thought about them a bit. The Auto focus definitely has its benefits though and I will continue to use it in certain scenarios.
Insane image quality on the 20mp Canon R6
My next few shoots were also mountain bike related shooting for the Rocklin Bike Coalition and MTBDLVRD. The RBC was where I really started to switch back to my old method of using auto focus. I found that it was having trouble when things moved a little too much. We were shooting at a bike park with a lot of distractions in around the riders so it the system struggled a bit to pick up people quickly when they were on the pump track or jumping in the air. The MTBDLVRD shoot, I ended up using a good mixture of both focus methods. This shoot was a ton of fun getting to ride with friends and sessioning a few different spots on a trail was why I started bringing my camera along on the mountain bike in the first place. And the camera performed so well. I have been having so much fun with how fast the camera can shoot. 12 fps mechanical and 20 fps digital has been so fast. I put together a little video of my friends flying down the trail and capturing their changing emotion in their face on every inch of the trail gets me excited to ride every time I watch it. I only used 12 fps in this video, but I’m looking forward to put together another soon using the full 20 fps.
Now with how amazing this camera is, I also have a bit of a beef with it. The overheating is quite a big issue. I was out shooting the California Enduro Series race at Mammoth Bar and was again being a bit trigger happy with the riders coming down the trail. But the camera kept giving me an overheating warning and I had to continuously stop shooting, turn the camera off, and try to let it cool down. I want to give it the benefit of the doubt in this scenario however because I was sitting in the hot 100º sun and shooting away. It was a bit unfortunate to have this a first test because I do plan to use this camera in some extreme conditions as I develop my career and I would hate to have it fail.
Another situation where I would hate to have it fail was when I was shooting a wedding this past weekend. I was so excited to upgrade to the 4k 60fps with C-LOG that the R6 provides. Color grading is so much more flexible with C-LOG and having the large file formats, be them a pain to edit on my ancient computer, are fantastic for the final product. Now I’ve NEVER had an issue with overheating with my Mark IV and I had to pick it up a few times during the day to cover for the R6 while it cooled off. One solution that I am heavily considering is picking up an Atomos Ninja V to avoid the overheating issue entirely. This will be approximately $1000 more on top of the camera once I’ve ordered SSD’s and built a bit of a rig, but if it can improve the image quality, be a screen that I can actually see (especially in broad daylight), and have peace of mind that my camera won’t overheat in certain situations, I would be more than happy to have this as an option.
If anyone else has some suggestions to handle the overheating issues or have recommendations for essential equipment for the R6, I’d love for you to comment or shoot me an email with some advice!
Besides the overheating, I am still very happy with how this camera has performed for me so far. The 20 megapixel sensor has been plenty for both commercial and personal work so far. I will eventually upgrade my Mark IV as well, but for the time being I’ll stick with improving my workflow with the R6. I hope you enjoy the shots and I hope you’re looking forward to the next adventure.