Hey this Scott of Photography Banzai.
Out here today with the Canon EOS M6 Mark II. New setup, see how it's gonna work out for photos.
But my main purpose with this camera was video. First thing,
build quality... I think it's a step above the M5, of course the M50.
You can buy an EVF for this camera, but I don't think I'm gonna be doing that.
It's a whole different way of doing photography.
I actually have gotten used to holding the camera out just taking photos with the screen.
You'll probably be surprised by the shutter sound of this camera. Here's that shutter sound...
Full and robust...
It's because it's a full shutter. It's not like a half electronic,
half mechanical shutter setup. For whatever reason they had to do it with this camera.
You can do fully electronic shutter mode. I haven't even tried that yet,
but there are always drawbacks with those modes with flash and other things like that.
Or you're gonna have fast motion in a photo even if you're using super fast shutter
speed it's not gonna work out as you would expect because of the readout of the sensor.
If you're into portrait photography this camera is probably not the best
fit. I mean if you do get it to add-on viewfinder that would help.
But you're not going to be able to move the back screen to get that portrait orientation on it.
Like the M5 you still can't push video modes into custom modes, which is pretty irritating
for me. Especially because I picked this up to use it a lot for video. I wish these camera
companies would figure out full video settings. Custom modes for just video.
The Nikon stuff, the Z5, can kind of sort of do that. But there are some settings
that are applied to everything. So they almost made it, but they still didn't make it...
One very nice addition compared to the M50s that I have for video is that when
you set the camera to manual audio levels you will get a screen display for levels
with audio. That's very nice. It happens while recording
and before recording in the video mode, which is very good. That's perfect.
In the photo modes, which if you don't care and use
1080p... because you can't use 4k in those, you will only get it while it's recording,
which is fine. It's not a big deal. It makes sense logically to do that,
but again, you can't save custom modes for video which is a big hassle for me at least.
One of the big features I've been looking at with this camera and one of my reasons for purchasing
it is the clean HDMI at 4k. Of course the 4k isn't apparently amazing on this, but it's got to be a
step up from the M50s that I use for b-roll. For.. the like.. talking portions and such.
I did pick up in addition, the Atomos Ninja V, which I had some issues getting codecs
for that but they apparently emailed me once recently I haven't checked it.
With the clean HDMI you set it up. You put it into that mode
on the M6 Mark II, and it has caveats of course.
You can't record to the SD card in any format while you're pushing that clean HDMI,
which is kind of a hassle. Because sometimes it would be nice to record to the camera and
record to the recorder for the HDMI.
Which the Z6 that I had used with their filmmakers kit came with a Ninja V and
you can actually record to the camera and of course the recorder at the same
time with that clean HDMI. But there is a caveat with that too at least with the
firmware that I used that it said 8-bit so not amazing but it would have been nice.
When you are outputting the clean HDMI the back screen stays on
and it allows you to control the camera itself. The wi-fi is turned off with clean HDMI mode,
which is irritating. So that means no app control through with the camera. So you can't do anything
remotely. it's just weird quirks I assume. It's technical issues that they had making it work
or maybe like some power related thing, who knows!
This might be the best m-series camera for control. The M5 is very similar,
but it keeps the shutter release port which is very nice so time lapses and things like that.
Being on a tripod for landscape work, you have that wired shutter release port.
Even just.. it's good to have that. With M50 and that series of camera they took it out.
But you also retain the three dial control scheme, which is great. And
actually with this camera you can set it up a little more customizable than the M5.
I put the ISO on the back wheel dial thing,
which I would prefer. But you couldn't do that on the M5.
On the two top dials you can actually control aperture or shutter speed for each one. That
way if you prefer to have aperture on the front or the back you can do that.
On off switch on this side which is good. You can use your thumb to easily turn on the camera.
With the M5 and such a lot of Canon cameras it's on the other side you
need two hands to make a work. Or a strap and a hand type of deal.
The main thing that turned me off about this camera initially of course the price. Not
cheap compared to some other things that you can get like the Z5 that I have now.
And you know you have to pay extra for the viewfinder and it's just definitely
has some type of price premium compared to some of the similar cameras.
It would have been nice if Canon had released a higher quality EVF for the
M6 Mark II compared to the original one, but they didn't. So that turned me off
against it because it's the 2.3 million dot... not great looking optically EVF.
Had they at least improved the optics like took it from the RP
which has this, probably the same panel which isn't great,
but still even just larger better optics... I would have been more on board with that EVF.
Another issue they didn't resolve with this camera
which I think they should have is gotten the speed of the maximum mechanical shutter in there.
Of course you can use electronic,
but with the mechanical you're limited to 1/4000th of a second maximum.
But I guess at the very least you do have the electronic shutter
that can go up and use those faster aperture lenses like this 32mm f/1.4.
Out here right now it's pretty bright so I'm hitting the maximum if I do use the mechanical.
I might as well switch to the electronic and see what it is like at least.
Before we go further in the video I want to take note of the Canon EOS
M6 Mark II's electronic shutters and the raw files related to that.
I have an export from Digital Photo Professional 4, which is from Canon,
and one from Acdsee Photo Studio Ultimate 2022 which is what I generally use.
There is a visible difference with the raw files and output straight from the camera
with the electronic shutter.
So if we zoom in here... you're going to notice a very visible stepping.
You can see the different lines. The output from the camera
and then there's a bit of darkening between the lines on Acdsee especially.
Anyways, something to take note of with the M6 Mark II and the
electronic shredder with the raw files. Haven't looked at the JPEGs, no idea.
You need to turn off long exposure noise reduction
and then you can get access to the shutter mode, which is in page six
at least on the manual mode. Long exposure noise reduction on page five... that's stupid honestly.
Fast moving subjects may look distorted. Vannot be used with continuous shooting, flash
photography...
Actually the way Canon does things they usually add something better in the following cameras,
so with the M50 Mark II that might be a full firmware update and nothing else...
Apparently it has better eye autofocus, at least from whatever distance,
it's a little bit better... I... it'd be nice to test it out but I of course don't have one
so hopefully Canon will eventually do a firmware update. I highly.. highly.. doubt it.
If you want the best silent shooting camera for the m system this is it.
The M50 and 50 Mark II do have it but it's in, uh, scene mode. It's not very useful.
I have been critical of this camera but so far it's nice.. it works..
and definitely has some upgrades over the M50.
But there are a lot of things I would have liked to have seen.
Better EVF! If you're gonna offer an add-on EVF
offer a good higher quality add-on EVF that is an upgrade over the M50.
Of course at this level it would have been nice to have two card slots.
Maybe I have moved the card somewhere else this.
This version of the camera was meant to be smaller than the M5, so kind of a weird place for it.
Biggest thing for me too is the custom modes don't work with video. Would have been nice to have
custom video modes with 4k so I could set up certain things.
One for HDMI recording. One for standard recording where it's just straight up ready to go by itself.
But now I'll have to change settings and hope I don't mix something up when I'm doing that.
To change the focus point it's the old setup where you press this side button down here
next to the grip. And then use the dial-y arrow directional thing.
It would have been nice if they had an actual joystick dedicated to moving the focus point.
I know it has touch and drag, but you can't use touch and drag
you know up to face because it doesn't have a viewfinder attached.
The frustrating thing is they have a good system. They have a lot of nice benefits,
features, functionality... Dual pixel autofocus for video, really good.
They don't update it very often. They have weird quirks here and there, which.. if you..
if you want to video focus which I do want to video focus with this camera because there are
a lot of benefits to using these for video. It's just not there.
It's not to say you can't do it, because I'm going to do it!
I'd mention in the website, it would be nice if they continue
EF-M with an addition of video focus models. Like what Sony is doing with their ZV-1 I
do think there are going to be situations where you want to disable the touch screen.
I've been using it like this.
Having it rub against me... and... that sounds wrong!
But, haha, twice I've had the timer turn on somehow
and then I keep forgetting how to turn it off.
Anyways that's it for this video. Hope you enjoyed it.
At least with me it's more about the process, the journey, doing it as a hobby on this side,
and then the video side is more of the business rather than doing client work.
Which I'm sure a lot of you are interested in that
and do it. And maybe I can help you in some ways, but it's not going to be
my main focus. More of just... mess with the gear... talk about it. Use it... and all that.