Canon 6d, Hands On First Impressions

I received my Canon 6D shipment the night before leaving for a trip to photograph Bald Eagles in Iowa. Although I didn’t use the Canon 6d to photograph the eagles. I did use the Canon 6d to photograph sunrises and landscapes in Iowa. I also tested out new features of the Canon 6d like the WiFi and GPS.

Here are my first impressions of Canon’s new full frame camera.

Low light Performance

While I didn’t completely test out the low light performance of the Canon 6d, I did take some hand held predawn sunrise photographs. I was impressed by the image quality and lack of noise in the photos. This photo was taken hand held at ISO 1000 with a shutter speed of 1/80th of a second.

Size

It’s a full frame camera that is about the size and weight of a Canon 7d. It also fits nicely in my hands and the controls were easy to access. It’s a nice size for travel photographers without sacrificing full frame quality.

GPS

The new GPS feature of the Canon 6d was easy to setup and worked flawlessly. Turn on GPS in the menu, the word GPS Will flash on the top led until it makes connection. You will need to have the camera outside where there is a clear view of the sky. The photos I shot with the GPS function displayed on the image preview info on the LCD and uploaded correctly to Lightroom 4. The camera also has a GPS logging function where the path you traveled is recorded in a log file.

Menus

The menus on the Canon 6d were designed in the same style of the Canon 5d Mark iii where you do not need to scroll down to see all the options under each menu tab making the menu options easy to find.

Quick Control Dial

The quick control dial on the back of the camera is smaller than the dial on the Canon 5d Mark iii and 7d. It took a little getting used to but it is still very usable.

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