6D Put Through Its Paces

With a day of practice with the new Canon 6D, it was ready to put to a test at a family event - the Ketelsens at a dinner meeting at Pizza Ranch at Clinton, IA. Some enjoy the pizza, some go for the fried chicken and mashed potatoes, but the food matters little when it comes to catching up on our lives!

I pretty much had the camera out the whole time, trying to avoid getting my fingers too greasy. Stars of the show as always were the 2 great nieces in attendance. At left, Mya provides the smoldering "Ketelsen Look" over the glasses at me. And just to prove that a 9-year-old could operate the 6D, Great-niece Alivia took the photo at right of her great-uncle Dean...




My sister Linda and her husband Lauren had been down visiting us in Tucson last weekend - just returning to their home in the Midwest the day before. About the time we were headed for Chicago, they were on their way to the Grand Canyon and points of interest in northern Arizona. At left, Linda at center shows off photos on her tablet to sister Kathy at right and Melinda at left. They had a great time at the Canyon (Lauren's first trip there), and Sedona on their way back to Phoenix. At left, Alivia makes a cameo appearance between Linda (her grandmother!) and great-aunt Melinda...



So the 6D worked great!  While I was concerned about lack of a built-in flash, it seemed to work well under ambient lighting at an ISO of 6400 as all these shots attest.  The camera was set to aperture-priority, so the f/number was fixes at F/5.6 and chose the correct exposure for the lighting, typically a 60th to 100th of a second.  Autofocus worked fine, and the camera was surprisingly fast and quiet.  At left is another shot by Alivia, this time, of great-uncle Rich (Kathy's husband).

Full Frame, Canon 6D

Full Frame, Canon XSi

So the biggest thing to wrap my brain around and get used to is that the 6D has a much larger sensor that the APS-sized XSi I've been using for 8 years. With a sensor twice as large and almost twice as many pixels, there are a few applications that will affect me, though not particularly the average user. So today I went out looking for some examples of where there are dramatic differences...

I used the macro lens on a couple subjects - first up is a few of the maple seeds that our car (that has been sitting for 6 months) was buried under upon our arrival here. A few seeds were "posed" on a tree stump so I didn't have to kneel on the ground. A tripod was used to hold the camera steady. Note that the setup was exactly the same for both cameras - the 6D and XSi with about 3cm of extension tubes and the 100mm Canon Macro. Lens focus and distance to the seeds was the same for both setups. Both are focus stacks to extend the depth of focus, but that had little effect on fields of view. At left is the full frame of the 6D, and at right the full frame of the XSi. There is a pretty dramatic difference, with the expected result that with the same optical setup, the field would be considerably smaller with the XSi's APS sensor...

Canon 6D - full resolution crop

Canon XSi - full resolution crop

But interestingly, the pixel sizes are not too different. The XSi's pixels are about 5.2 microns, the 6D about 6.5 - about 25% larger. If you look at the above images at the camera's full resolution, they should match to about 25%. Shown here are just that - full-resolution crops of the same area of the above frames to demonstrate the ultimate resolution. At left is the 6D image, at right the XSi. With smaller pixels you would expect a slight advantage in resolution on the image at right, and a little larger scale with the 6D at left which is what is shown. So really for critical work, the smaller pixels of the XSi still give it a little advantage in resolution (though not if field of view!)...

Full Frame, Canon 6D

Full Frame, Canon XSi

Another example came with the full 5cm of extension tubes I have with the macro - the biggest I can make something without new optics or more extension. Here is a dandelion seed pod. At left is the 6D image and at right the XSi - again, distance to the subject and focus setting were the same for both, and both were focus-stacks again to extend the depth of focus. Again, as you would expect, the larger sensor had the larger field of view. Note there are some inherent defects in the image as there was some subject motion in a very slight breeze and the shutter speed of a 40th second, even at ISO 800. With the large extension, this is where having a flash unit would be useful to minimize exposure...

Canon 6D - Full Resolution Crop

Canon XSi - Full Resolution Crop

And similarly, looking at the full-resolution images, the same as above is demonstrated - the smaller pixels provide a narrower field at higher resolution (XSi) as the slightly larger pixels of the 6D.

So I'm loving the camera, though admittedly I still need to crack the manual and learn a few details of basic operations, though at least I've figured out how to zoom in on an image - sure seems a lot more complicated than the earlier generations, though...