The Canon R6 Mark II is a great camera.
Let's get undone.
(upbeat music)
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening, everybody?
I'm Gerald Undone and it's Morbin' time.
So for disclosure, Canon did not sponsor this video.
In fact, they didn't even send me this camera.
Instead, I borrowed it and this lens from Camera Canada.
So big shout out to them.
They're a great store for camera gear
it still has some classic Canon annoyances
like how your histogram and level turn off when
you start recording, the custom white balance
tool that's straight out of 2002 where you have to
take a photo to set a custom white balance in video.
I'm also still annoyed that the camera
turns off when you open the card door,
so hot swapping is impossible
and I think they might be the only camera brand
that's still putting micro HDMI ports
in their full size bodies, which is atrocious.
But if you can move past those annoyances,
you're left with a terrific camera for both photo and video.
But let's focus more on the video side today.
Regarding build and ergonomics,
it's pretty standard for Canon, which is good.
I find it intuitive and easy to use.
I like that there's a dedicated photo video toggle
that's not tangled up with the power switch,
although is it just me,
or does Canon seem to have a new power switch design
on every camera they've made recently?
This one is fine, it just took some getting used to.
The hand feel is good
the menus are familiar and the touch screen is fantastic.
There are a couple of new additions to that menu
though, this camera now has focus breathing correction,
although it's only available for a couple
of lenses at the time of recording this video.
I also noticed the anti flicker shooting option
is now available for video and not just photo,
which I don't think was the case on the original R6.
It works well by letting you set a custom shutter speed
with more granularity to combat flickering lights
and it even has an automatic detection method.
Nice inclusion.
There's also some changes regarding overheating.
This camera does not have the high temperature
setting we saw in the R3 so you're stuck
with whatever threshold this camera is set to natively.
But they did add this new temperature display,
that has several bars that increase
as the camera gets hotter. Definitely more informative
and useful than the previous system.
Now when it comes to overheating,
I had no issues at all with the 4K24 or 4K30.
I was able to record
for two hours and 16 minutes before the battery died.
And that was just one long continuous clip,
as the R6 Mark II has no 30 minute limit, which is great.
And during that time the temperature gauge
didn't even show up. However, when recording in 4K60,
I only got 42 minutes before the camera overheated
but this is actually in line with Canon's marketing.
They claimed it would get 40 minutes and I was able to.
So no harm done,
and I think 40 minutes continuous is probably more
than enough for most people's 4K60 needs.
And if you're just recording shorter clips with pauses
in between, the camera didn't overheat for me at all.
And even if you overheat it at 4K60
the 4K24 is still usable
and the camera actually cools down when in this mode.
4K60 is much harder on the battery though,
one of those 40 minute runs will use
up about half of your battery
so expect under 90 minutes runtime total in that mode.
And as far as cool down, I let it sit
for three minutes after the 40 minute 4K60 clip,
and at which point I was able to record
for another 15 minutes before it overheated again.
And then for extending a battery life
you do have a USB-C port for power delivery
which works well to vastly expand your runtime.
You can also use this for charging,
but I found it rather slow compared
to some other brands that I've tested.
Now when it comes to recording modes,
this camera is more stripped down
than some other models in Cannon's lineup.
There's no internal raw recording
and no all-intra modes either.
You just have IPB recording, but only in 16x9.
So there's no DCI recording or true 24p frame rates.
Max frame rate for 4K is 60 frames per second
and it's 180 FPS in 1080p.
However, that 60 FPS is impressive.
First off, it's completely oversampled
from the 6K sensor just like the 24 and 30P,
but there's no added crop.
So you're framing in detail is identical
whether you're shooting 24 or 60, I love this.
This is fantastic, and because
there's extra resolution to work with,
you can switch into an APS-C mode as well,
which is nice to have. However, the best part
of all of this is that the rolling shutter is
quite good considering the oversampling and uncropped 4K.
In full frame, I measured the rolling shutter
at 15.9 milliseconds
which is great considering what we're getting.
For comparison, that's nearly twice as fast
as the original R6, much faster than the Sony a7 IV,
which comes in at around 26 milliseconds
and about on par with the R5, so this is a great result,
and in APS-C mode, it's even faster of course
measuring it at 9.9 milliseconds.
Now there are some quirks you should be aware
of regarding actually recording these files.
First, while you can record externally
over HDMI with a proper 4K clean feed,
you can't record internally and externally at the same time.
If you disconnect the HDMI,
you can do backup recording internally
to the two SD cards if you wish, which is appreciated.
But just like on previous Canon cameras,
the auto switch function for relay recording is bad.
So if you're trying to double your capacity with two cards,
you should know that when one card fills up,
it doesn't keep recording automatically to the other card.
All it does is queue up the second card, but
you have to press the record button again to have it resume.
And like I said, you can't swap out fresh cards either
without the camera turning off
as soon as you open the card door.
Also, the camera does output 10 bit,
but only when using Canon Log 3,
the rest of the picture profiles are all eight bit.
C Log 3 is also the gamma with the most dynamic range
on this camera, but I definitely wanted to measure it
because it was quite lackluster
on the original R6 to be honest.
So I busted out the Xyla 21 and according to Imatest,
a total of 12.2 stops were detected.
That's the number here next to slope based DR.
And then if we account for noise, we get a score of 11.1.
That's where a signal noise ratio of two
meaning good, clean stops.
So while this is an improvement of
about half a stop over the original R6,
it's still not an impressive result.
For comparison, the a7 IV scores a 12.8
in the medium category with a total of 14.7 stops detected.
This is with the noise reduction option
on the R6 Mark II turned off by the way,
you might be able to get a slightly
higher medium score by enabling that noise reduction
but it'll never exceed 12.2.
I think what we're seeing here is a limitation
in conversion bit depth from Canon,
and maybe the implementation of Canon Log 3.
I believe Canon only uses a 12-bit process
in these cameras instead of a 14 or 16-bit conversion
into a more preferred Canon Log 2.
I believe that's the bottleneck.
And because there's no internal raw,
you can't change gammas in post.
But even if you could,
again, that bit depth would likely be a limitation.
That's why I don't imagine you'll see a huge improvement
using the ProRes Raw on this camera, which is available
via HDMI, but I believe that's spec'd at only 10 bit
in full frame and 12 bit in APS-C.
And this could even account
for the improvement in read speed.
The Fuji cameras for example
read much faster in 12 bit mode
than they do in 14 bit, but sacrifice dynamic range.
So I think this illustrates the biggest difference
in concept between this camera and the Sony a7 IV.
But if we look at the graph here, it looks
at the shadows are just chopped off below a certain point.
This is corroborated by the low 1.0 score
matching the total stops of 12.2.
Usually we like to see a patch range that's higher
than the 1.0 score indicating that there's still
some noisy stops in the shadows that can be recovered.
But that isn't the case here.
There's only the 12 stops regardless
of what you do in the shadows.
So how is that noise anyway? Well, it's decent.
You can get great results up to ISO 12,800
and even a little over, but how you expose
plays a big role here, which is another reason
why I'm not a huge fan of Canon Log 3.
If you plan to follow by the book exposure practices
for C Log 3, you have to expose middle grey down
at around 32.8 IRE I believe,
which is much lower than in Canon Log 2.
And if you have a moody shadowy shot, this can result
in pulling up a bunch of noise with the shadows.
Not a big deal
if you're shooting outside in bright sunlight, but
if you plan on shooting moody interiors and want to use log,
I recommend overexposing by at least a stop
maybe even two stops
if you want to turn the noise reduction off in the camera.
Now when it comes to dialing in that exposure,
Canon gives you zebras, which is nice
but they've also added false color in this camera
which is an appreciated inclusion.
Definitely makes exposing to a gray card very easy.
Oh, also keep in mind that on this camera
and a lot of other Canon cameras that you'll get less noise
if you stick to full stops of ISO
instead of one third increments.
So ISO 1600 is cleaner than 1250 and ISO 3,200 is cleaner
than 2,500 and so on.
Color on this camera is terrific.
And if you do use C Log 3, set the color to Cinema Gamut,
which will allow you to use Canon's official C Log 3
Cinema Gamut to WideDR LUT, which is excellent.
And actually if you're using DaVinci Resolve,
the color space transform
for that combination works great too
and is even slightly more color accurate.
Just doing a bit of an audio test here.
I've got a RODE VideoMic NTG plugged in directly
into the microphone port on the camera mounted on top
and then I've got my headphones plugged in as well.
And this is the distance that I'm talking
to the microphone and it sounds good.
You can set the gain manually.
So I have it set to the lowest plus one.
So we'll get sort of like the base noise floor here
in this configuration.
And I'll just be quiet for a second.
And then there's options in there
for auto gain and the wind filter
if you wanna use the built-in microphone.
And then in a different section
in the menu there is the ability to increase the quality
of the audio recording at an increased bit rate
I guess would be the cost. I dunno if they're switching
over to LPCM or what they're doing.
But yeah, this is what the audio sounds
like recorded directly into the Canon R6 Mark II.
Now I'm not gonna spend too much time discussing autofocus.
We're at a point now where it
either passes the reliability test or it doesn't.
And when it comes to talking head shots like this
you can count on this camera to keep you
or your subject in focus without anything weird going on.
It has several different subject types that can track
and even has an intelligent auto switching function
between them.
And it also has refined controls for speed and sensitivity.
So no complaints there.
The only aspect of the auto focus I don't like
on this camera is the touch tracking. It's not very sticky
and it often doesn't do what I want it to do.
So don't buy it solely for that purpose.
Get a Sony instead if that's what you need.
But if all you need to do is point it
at a person and let it track their eye while they talk,
this camera is mostly flawless in that use case.
In fact, why don't I stick it on a tripod next
to my main angle so we can see how it performs
for the rest of this video tracking my face.
Alright, lastly, stabilization is supposedly improved
but to be honest,
I didn't really notice a big difference in video.
It still does a great job of letting you hold static shots
at longer focal lengths, but it also still suffers from some
of that warpy stuff when walking around with wider lenses.
Okay, let's wrap up.
Canon did a fantastic job with this camera.
For full frame cameras in its price range,
it's probably the most compelling option.
The closest comparison would be the Sony a7 IV.
And it's interesting to see how they trade blows.
The Canon pulls out some big wins when it comes
to rolling shutter and the uncropped 4K60
but the Sony is better when it comes to dynamic range.
Not having that 12 stop limit and being able to
use their best log curve gives you more flexibility
and latitude on the Sony
than you're gonna get on the R6 Mark II.
But then again, if you're just using in a studio setting
like this, both provide adequate dynamic range
and you probably won't notice a difference.
There's obviously a bunch more minor differences
between those two cameras,
but I don't often like to compare cameras
from different brands because most people
aren't just switching systems willy-nilly,
and when they do, it's usually about the lenses
or some other investment and not the bodies.
These days, it feels like there's a new camera body
every few months,
but most people hold onto their lenses for years.
And there's definitely a strong argument to be made
in favor of Sony due to their continued support
of third party lenses,
which sadly is not something we can say
about Canon any longer and in my opinion,
that is a terrible anti-consumer decision that annoys me
to no end.
But if you're someone who only buys first party
lenses anyway, well at least the majority
of Canon's RF lenses are quite good.
So I think what's more important here is
that Canon now has a great answer
to the a74 at that price point
for users who are invested in their RF system.
But if you truly have no allegiance either way,
and you just really need an answer
between which of those two cameras to buy, get the Sony
Ii you wanna shoot it on a tripod with more dynamic range
and the ability to touch all the things you wanna focus
on and get the Canon
if you wanna be able to do this at 60 frames per second.
For most other use cases, get either one, it doesn't matter.
It's great. They're both great, everything's great.
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