The original Canon EOS 6D broke new ground in full-frame pricing when it launched in 2012 for around $2,100. Its successor, the EOS 6D Mark II, debuts at $1,999 in a body-only configuration, placing it on par with Nikon's midrange full-frame model, the D750, and signficantly more than Sony's full-frame mirrorless option, the $1,600 Alpha 7 II, both of which have earned Editors' Choice marks. The 6D Mark II offers some solid upgrades over the original model, including a better autofocus system for both stills and video, more resolution, and a vari-angle touch LCD. But image quality doesn't match up with the Nikon and Sony options.
Design
The 6D Mark II ($1,049.00 at Walmart) is similar in size and weight to the original 6D. It's compact for a full-frame body, measuring 4.4 by 5.7 by 2.9 inches (HWD) and weighing 1.7 pounds without a lens. Like most SLRs, it's finished in matte black, with a rubberized covering that makes it more comfortable to grip. The viewfinder is a glass pentaprism design with a 0.71x magnification rating—the same size you get with the pro-grade EOS 5D Mark IV.
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In addition to the body-only option, Canon is selling the 6D Mark II with the EF 24-105mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM for $2,599 and with the EF 24-105mm f/4L IS II USM for $3,099.
Canon EOS 6D Mark II Review
The new 6D's control layout doesn't stray far from its predecessor, a welcome choice for upgrading photographers. You still find a depth of field preview button at about the 8 o'clock position of the lens mount, angled so you can access it with your right ring finger when shooting. The lens release button is at the standard location, 3 o'clock.
Top controls include a locking Mode dial, with the power switch at its base, to the left of the hot shoe. The 6D Mark II doesn't include a built-in flash—Canon's full-frame lineup omits that feature as a rule—but you can add a Speedlite or wireless trigger to the shoe. To its right you get a monochrome information LCD and a row of buttons to adjust the AF mode, Drive setting, ISO, metering pattern, and to toggle the top LCD backlight. Ahead of them you'll find the top control dial, M-Fn button, and shutter release. M-Fn is new to the 6D Mark II. It's a button Canon uses in its pro SLR lineup to cycle through the different autofocus area settings, making quick work of switching from a wide area or a single, selectable point.
Menu and Info buttons sit to the left of the eyecup on the rear, and the switch that's used to toggle between still and video capture is at its right. The camera will automatically switch to Live View when set to video mode, with the center Start/Stop button used to control recording. When in still image mode, Start/Stop switches between the optical viewfinder and rear LCD.
The AF-ON, Exposure Lock, and Focus Select buttons sit to its right, running along the top of the rear plate. Below the Live View toggle you find the zoom/magnifying glass button, Play, and Q, which launches an on-screen control menu. The rear control dial, with center Set button and a directional control pad, Delete button, and Lock switch round out the rear controls. The Lock switch is redesigned compared with the 6D—it has an up/down motion, instead of sliding left and right. Zoom and Play are slightly angled, instead of right above one another, but aside from that the rear controls of the Mark II are the same as you'll find on the 6D.
The big change on the rear is the LCD. Gone is the fixed display, replaced by a 3-inch, 1,040k-dot, vari-angle, touch LCD. It's a huge upgrade for both still shooters and videographers. You can more easily shoot at a very low angle, without having to get down on your knees and peer through the viewfinder. Instead, just tilt the LCD up and use Live View to get your shot. And, yes, you can swing the display forward to snap a selfie, or, for video professionals, show your interview subject your shot before you start rolling.
Connectivity
The 6D Mark II sports Bluetooth, NFC, and Wi-Fi for communication with a smartphone, and it can work with both IR and Bluetooth wireless remote controls. The wealth of connection options improve the pairing process with your phone. I connected the camera to my iPhone in a matter of minutes, and was quickly transferring JPG images at either full resolution or a more reasonable 3.8MP for social sharing. You can also use an Android device; both platforms use the Canon Camera Connect app to communicate with the 6D.
The app also supports remote control. Your phone's screen shows the view through the camera lens, and you can tap on a part of the frame to set focus, just as you would with the rear LCD. Full manual exposure control is available, and you can also switch to video mode and use the remote. In addition to smartphone connectivity, the 6D Mark II can send images to another Canon camera or printer, be remotely controlled via a computer with the EOS Utility installed, and upload directly to Facebook, Flickr, Google Drive, Twitter, or YouTube via the Canon Image Gateway service.
There's also built-in GPS, which adds the location from which a photo was captured to its metadata. Physical connections include a microphone input, mini HDMI, a remote control port, and mini USB. Canon's decision to use the dated mini USB interface, rather than the more modern micro USB or USB-C, is puzzling. Images are stored on SD media; there's a single slot with support for SD, SDHC, and SDXC formats at UHS-I speeds.
Improved Autofocus
The 6D Mark II sports a new sensor and autofocus system. We'll talk about the 26MP full-frame sensor in a bit, but first, a look at the performance and focus coverage provided by the 45-point autofocus system. It's not the first time Canon has used this focus array—it's a carryover from the APS-C EOS 80D. That means its coverage area is fairly limited when compared with other full-frame models. The 6D's sensor is about 2.5 times the size, in terms of surface area, as the 80D, so the focus system is bunched together toward the center of the frame. If you want a full-frame camera that's adept at tracking action as it moves across the frame, and want the freedom to compose shots with a fleeting, off-center subject, you'll be better off with a pro model. The 5D Mark IV spreads its focus points across a wider swath of the frame, as do high-end flagship models like the Canon EOS-1D X Mark II and the Nikon D5. But they also cost a lot more.
Despite being compressed, the focus system is speedy and accurate. The 6D Mark II starts, focuses, and fires in just about 0.4-second. In bright light it locks focus and fires in a short 0.05-second, but it slows to about 0.6-second in very dim conditions. It shoots images at up to 6.5fps, with tracking, and does a solid job keeping subjects in focus as they move toward or away from the lens, as long as you keep them under the eye of the focus system.
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There are a number of focus modes available, but the 6D does have different capabilities when shooting using the optical viewfinder versus the rear LCD. The focus system can be set to check its entire coverage area to look for a subject, or limit coverage to the left, center, or right third. There's also an option to select a single point or a group of nine points, moving the active point(s) with the rear control pad. Tracking is active when the lens is set to contiuous focus (AI Servo) mode in a wide coverage area. This is in stark contrast to Nikon's 3D tracking mode, which lets you select a single point that moves as it tracks a subject. Canon's tracking is effective, but doesn't give you as much control over the initial acquisition as what you get from a Nikon SLR.
Focus in Live View is driven by Canon's Dual Pixel AF system, which puts phase detection on the sensor. It's speedier, and smoother, than the contrast methods used by competing SLRs from Nikon and Pentax. The 6D locks focus when shooting stills using the rear LCD in about 0.5-second, and slows to about 0.8-second in very dim light. The advantages when shooting video are more palpable, as the camera delivers smooth, pleasing racks when changing focus. Focus area options include a wide area, face detection, or subject tracking. For the latter you simply need to tap on your subject and the 6D will identify it and keep it in focus.
More Pixels
The 6D Mark II's image sensor is new and, at press time, unique to the camera. It's a 26MP full-frame chip, a big resolution bump from the 20MP 6D, and a slight increase from other models in this price range, which tend to use 24MP sensors. Despite the extra resolution, there has been some early chatter about a lack of dynamic range at lower ISO settings.
Basically, if you expose a scene to preserve highlights, but want to pull some detail from the shadows when working with a Raw image file, you're met with excessive noise in the darkened areas. Take a look at the split-view shot above. I underexposed it in order to ensure the details in the sky were preserved, at the cost of underexposing the shadows. I had to push the shadows about 3 stops, the equivalent of shooting at ISO 800 instead of the ISO 100 setting I used for the scene.
The result is a lot of noisy grain in the lifted shadows, as you can see in the crop above. Sensors that show what analysts have dubbed ISO Invariance would show the same amount of noise in pushed portions of the image as they would if you had shot the scene at a higher ISO. The 6D Mark II is showing much more noise in the shadows than you get from its ISO 800 output. It's a shame Canon doesn't simply use the sensor from the 5D Mark IV, as it delivers much better results when pushing low ISO images brighter.
This is not to say that you can't get good quality images from a camera if it lacks ISO Invariance. But sensors have gotten much better over the past five years, and the 6D Mark II's biggest competitors—the Nikon D750 and Sony a7 II—both deliver much stronger results. Like the Mark II, the first 6D also shows poor results when pushing Raw images shot at lower ISOs. It's not something that affects every shot, and if you do find yourself in a tricky exposure situation, bracketing a few different exposure settings for a scene can go a long way to sidestep unwanted noise without blowing out highlights.
But it's not just a lack of ability to push Raw images when needed that's an issue here. I used Imatest to analyze the visible noise when shooting at each native ISO setting, from the lowest ISO 100 through the top of the extended range, ISO 102400. If you stick to JPG format you'll be able to capture images with relatively low noise (less than 1.5 percent) through ISO 12800. There is some noise reduction applied, which harms detail. It's truer to say that the camera delivers clean, crisp JPGs through ISO 1600, with some very minor smudging of the tiniest details visible at ISO 3200. ISO 6400 and ISO 12800 images are still pretty good, with lines in our test scene remaining distinct. But details start to blur at ISO 25600 and ISO 40000 (the top setting if you don't enable extended ISO). Test shots at ISO 51200 and 102400 are noticeably blurred. We see very similar JPG results from the Nikon D750.
It's in Raw where the 6D Mark II exhibits some deficiency versus competing models. It shows crisp details through ISO 3200 when shooting in Raw, but noise cuts into very fine detail at ISO 6400 and 12800, and grain is oppressively heavy at ISO 25600 and 40000. It gets even coarser at ISO 51200, and Raw images at ISO 102400 are rough with very little detail. Despite being a few years old, the Nikon D750 shoots cleaner, crisper images at ISO 12800 through its top ISO 51200 setting.
Video Quality and Autofocus
Dual Pixel AF makes the 6D Mark II a friendlier option than other SLRs. The focus system smoothly racks as a scene changes or your subject moves toward or away from the lens, eliminating the need to have someone at the controls pulling focus. Documentarians working on run-and-gun direct cinema projects and parents just wanting to get a good-looking video of their kids will appreciate the 6D Mark II's ease of operation.
The quality of the video is a mixed bag, however. There's no 4K recording—Canon wants you to move up to the 5D Mark IV or 1D X Mark II to get that functionality. The 6D Mark II gives you 1080p at your choice of 60 (59.94), 30 (29.97), or 24 (23.98) frames per second. It can also shoot at 720p at 60fps, or at 30fps with a lower quality. But despite recording at a decent 30Mbps compression rate using IPB compression, output is on the soft side. The better compression scheme for 1080p that you get on the 5D Mark IV, ALL-I, isn't here.
There is a microphone input, but no option to add headphones to monitor audio as it's recorded. You do have a manual gain option, but level meters are only visible if you tap the Q icon on the touch LCD, which takes you to the screen used to adjust them. I'd have liked to have them on screen at all times, even if you set the camera to automatic audio control.
You can create 4K time-lapse videos in-camera, with high-quality 500Mbps Motion JPEG compression, which is convenient. There's also an interval timer for stills, so you can shoot time-lapse images at full 26MP quality and later combine them into a video using desktop editing software. If you don't want to fill up your card, there's also a 90Mbps, 1080p time-lapse option.
Serious videographers are better off with a mirrorless camera. The Sony a7 II records 1080p footage at a higher bit rate, offers in-body stabilization so that any lens is steadied for handheld recording, and sports standard microphone and headphone jacks, as well as XLR via an optional adapter. Its autofocus system is smooth, and you can manually focus using either the rear LCD or EVF. Sony also has models that shoot in 4K, for more money: the high-resolution a7R II, and the 12MP a7S II, which records 4K footage natively, without need to downscale resolution.
Conclusions
The Canon 6D Mark II has some things going for it that competing models don't. It offers the most resolution, by a little bit, of any entry-level full-frame model, sports an in-camera GPS, and it's the only one in its class with a vari-angle touch LCD. But it falls short of expectations in image quality. That's not to say it's incapable of producing stunning photographs—it is—but competing models can outperform it when pushing Raw files at lower ISOs, and when simply capturing images at very high sensitivities.
If you're in the market for an affordable full-frame SLR, the Nikon D750, which sells for the same price as the 6D Mark II, remains our Editors' Choice, and is an excellent option for stills-first shooters. If video is a big concern, or if you simply want a solid camera for less than $2,000, the mirrorless Sony a7 II is a better bet. Canon shooters with established lens libraries aren't likely to want to switch brands, which leaves the 6D Mark II as a solid, if not class-leading, affordable full-frame option. If you want the best, you'll need increase your budget. The Canon 5D Mark IV, which sells for about $1,500 more, is our Editors' Choice pick in its price class.
The Canon EOS 6D Mark II improves upon its predecessor with 26-megapixel resolution, improved Live View focus, and a 45-point autofocus system, but its sensor isn't as good as competing models.
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