The relatively new Canon EOS R6 MK III arrived on Friday, and joy of joys, it came with my favourite lens, a 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom lens.
This is not mean to be a definitive review at this point, just my initial thoughts. The full review and video will come later.
Smaller Form Factor
The first thing I noticed is how small the actual body of the EOS R6 MK III is. I am used to an EOS 5DS or for video, the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro, and these dwarf the R6 in comparison.
Having said that though, the R6 MK III feels fabulous in the hand, all controls fall easily to the thumb and forefinger and are logically placed as you’d expect from Canon, which of course has been doing this stuff for a long time now.
The flip out / rotating LED screen is correspondingly smaller of course, but it still bright and easily readable. I even took it outside to get these flower shots, and in the harsh WA summer sun and 34° C or so, it was usable, although focussing was a bit of an issue on close ups, but by no means impossible.
I have to say this lens did cause the camera to be a bit unbalanced in the hand as it is a solid beastie, so if I was using this for say motor sport or fauna / avian photography, I’d recommend a monopod with this particular setup.
The auto focus by the way is superb.
Viewfinder
Unfortunately, the viewfinder does not extend or tilt on the EOS R6 MK III, but that may just be a personal preference.
There is a solid help screen system built in which pops up useful hints and ideas, but if you are an experienced photographer, I suspect you’d soon be turning that off.
In the pre-release information I received, the R6 MK III was definitely touted as being aimed more at the photographer than the videographer and I can see that quite evidently. This is not a bad thing of course; not everyone want to shoot video and then have to go through the motions of editing, colour grading and so on.
So, first impressions, purely looking at the Canon EOS R6 MK III as a camera not a camcorder is that Canon has done a very good job with this model and built on its predecessor’s strengths.
Quick Specifications
For the specification nerds, the Canon EOS R6 MK III is a mirrorless full frame CMOS 32.5Mp camera with a burst speed of 40fps max in electronic mode. Maximum video resolution is 7K.
You get both a CF Express card slot and an SD slot and the body only weight is 699g.
The RRP of the body only is $4299 which I am guessing puts it out of the realm of the person stepping into their first camera of this type, but certainly well within the bounds of the enthusiast, especially one with existing Canon lenses.