The best camera for those who need compactness! Canon EOS M6 review: attempt number six

Despite the lead­er­ship of SLR cam­eras, an increas­ing num­ber of pho­tog­ra­phers are choos­ing mir­ror­less cam­eras. They are small­er, eas­i­er to use, albeit with their own char­ac­ter­is­tics.

Today on the Canon EOS M6 review is a bright rep­re­sen­ta­tive of mir­ror­less cam­eras with good hard­ware and at a nice price. Let’s see what he can do. To get start­ed, watch the video!

Spec­i­fi­ca­tions:

• cham­ber dimen­sions 112 x 68 x 44.5 mm;
• weight 390 g;
• CMOS image sen­sor, APS‑C;
• effec­tive pix­els 24.2 mil­lion;
• total num­ber of pix­els 25.8 mil­lion;
• DIGIC 7 proces­sor;
• bay­o­net EF‑M. EF and EF‑S lens­es are com­pat­i­ble via adapter;
• built-in 5‑axis dig­i­tal sta­bi­liza­tion when shoot­ing video;
• aut­o­fo­cus Dual Pix­el CMOS AF, 49 AF points;
• pho­to­sen­si­tiv­i­ty, pho­to: ISO — 100–25600;
• light sen­si­tiv­i­ty, video: ISO — 100–12800;
• shut­ter speed: 30–1/4000 in 1/3‑stop incre­ments;
• 3.0‑inch 1.04M-dot ClearView II LCD touch­screen with 3:2 aspect ratio. Rais­es up to 180 degrees and tilts down to 45 degrees.

Ergonomics and design

The Canon EOS M6 has a small, grip­py body with a rub­ber­ized grip. Weighs 390 grams — can be com­fort­ably removed with one hand. The M6 ​​looks expen­sive and attrac­tive, but for the most part is made of plas­tic rather than a met­al alloy like the M5.

The screen flips up com­plete­ly, so you can screw the cam­era to a tri­pod and cut vlogs. With the M5, such a trick will not work — there the screen is low­ered and the tri­pod clos­es it.

The mobile mech­a­nism looks reli­able and allows you to choose unex­pect­ed angles. You can shoot almost from the ground, track­ing com­po­si­tion and focus on the screen.

The three-inch touch screen pleased with a cool and rich pic­ture. It has good view­ing angles and respon­sive­ness is not worse than in smart­phones. With it, it is con­ve­nient to enter the pass­word from Wi-Fi, nav­i­gate through the menu and focus by touch­ing any point on the dis­play.

It is enough to point at a mov­ing object, and the focus­ing sys­tem will cling tight­ly to it until you change the angle.

But there were some odd­i­ties — the M6 ​​does not have a viewfind­er. Rely­ing only on the screen will not work, because it goes blind in the bright sun. So get ready to shell out anoth­er 23 thou­sand rubles for a detach­able viewfind­er. With a cam­era price of 36 thou­sand, this is very expen­sive.

The built-in flash is hid­den in the body and shoots, it is worth press­ing the lever. It is slight­ly recessed, which elim­i­nates acci­den­tal press­ing. You can use any oth­er flash that is attached to the “hot shoe”.

On top is the shoot­ing mode dial, shut­ter but­ton, and a pro­gram­ma­ble but­ton and expo­sure com­pen­sa­tion dial.

Under it is a larg­er wheel, the func­tions of which change depend­ing on the shoot­ing mode. In man­u­al mode, it changes the aper­ture val­ue, in semi-auto­mat­ic mode, it sets the ISO. You can adjust mul­ti­ple val­ues ​​blind­ly with­out dis­trac­tion while shoot­ing.

On the left side there is a micro­phone input and a micro-USB con­nec­tor. On the right is an HDMI out­put and a remote con­trol con­nec­tor. The Wi-Fi but­ton will help you quick­ly post pic­tures, send them to a com­put­er or imme­di­ate­ly print to a wire­less print­er.

Image quality

The Canon EOS M6 has a 24 megapix­el APS‑C image sen­sor. As a pro­cess­ing proces­sor — DIGIC 7. The same pow­er­ful hard­ware as in the top Canon EOS M5 mir­ror­less cam­era.

The cam­era works with EF‑M optics, the advan­tage of which is its small size and weight. The choice of native glass­es is poor — only 7 mod­els. But they can be expand­ed with an adapter and lens­es from Canon EF mount DSLRs.

I test­ed the capa­bil­i­ties of the M6 ​​on two lens­es — the EF‑M 11–22mm f/4–5.6 IS STM and the EF‑M 18–150mm f/3.5–6.3 IS STM. The first is an ultra-wide-angle zoom lens with a stub. The sec­ond is an all-in-one uni­ver­sal glass for dif­fer­ent shoot­ing con­di­tions.

Canon EOS M6 turns on in 1–2 sec­onds, which is not bad for a mir­ror­less cam­era. Aut­o­fo­cus is also fast thanks to Dual Pix­el CMOS AF tech­nol­o­gy. The cam­era with native lens­es focus­es in about 0.3 sec­onds even in low light.

In con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing, the M6 ​​also does not slow down — 7 frames per sec­ond in aut­o­fo­cus mode. The cam­era takes 31 JPEG shots per burst.

The cam­era cor­rect­ly repro­duces col­ors, slight­ly over­es­ti­mat­ing the bright­ness and con­trast. The pic­ture is bright and vibrant even in cloudy weath­er. Automa­tion quite accu­rate­ly sets the white bal­ance in dif­fer­ent light­ing con­di­tions. The cam­era has a wide dynam­ic range and tries to pre­serve details and tones even in dif­fi­cult con­di­tions.

In low light, the M6 ​​does a good job up to ISO 6400. The pic­tures are sharp, detailed, although after ISO 2500 there is already a lit­tle dig­i­tal noise. If you shoot for social net­works, image qual­i­ty up to ISO 10000 will be enough. For print­ing, max­i­mum ISO 6400.

The auto­mat­ic modes in the M6 ​​per­formed well. If you’re a begin­ner or just don’t have time to fid­dle with the set­tings, you can turn on the Intel­li­gent Auto Mode and take cool shots.

For night shoot­ing, the hand­held night shot mode is use­ful. The cam­era takes three frames and com­bines them into one, while get­ting rid of noise using smart algo­rithms.

Video filming

Video M6 writes in Full HD 60 frames per sec­ond. I would like to be able to shoot in 4K, but for now — alas. But even dur­ing long shoot­ing, the cam­era does not over­heat and does not ask to rest. It is good for shoot­ing blogs, you can write by hand thanks to 5‑axis elec­tron­ic sta­bi­liza­tion.

In addi­tion, all EF‑M lens­es fea­ture STM tech­nol­o­gy, which gives you smooth aut­o­fo­cus dur­ing movie shoot­ing.

The videos are good, the pic­ture is real­is­tic, juicy. This is a decent option for begin­ner blog­gers, as well as for home pho­tog­ra­phy. There is no longer a need for a sep­a­rate video cam­era.

The 1040 mAh bat­tery lasts for 295 shots and 85 min­utes of Full HD video record­ing. Nor­mal result, but not a record. If you go on a trip, it is bet­ter to get an extra bat­tery.

Verdict

The result is a decent mir­ror­less cam­era for ama­teurs and expe­ri­enced pho­tog­ra­phers alike. Com­pact and light­weight, the M6 ​​is made for trav­el, and its fast aut­o­fo­cus and high rate of fire make it a good reportage cam­era.

How­ev­er, it should be borne in mind that there is no viewfind­er here. If you are sure that it will not be use­ful, this is your choice. Oth­er­wise, the dif­fer­ence in price with the top-end M5 cam­era becomes min­i­mal and all mean­ing is lost in it.

Advan­tages:

• Good pic­ture qual­i­ty

• Com­pact and handy body

• Fast burst shoot­ing

• Fast aut­o­fo­cus

• High-qual­i­ty dis­play with the abil­i­ty to rotate up to 180 degrees up

Flaws:

• No viewfind­er. Remov­able is expen­sive

• No 4K video sup­port

• Small park of native optics

• Insignif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in price from the top M5