Well fingers crossed. In September me and Amy are hoping to have a real holiday. Real somewhere in a galaxy far far away. Okay I got a bit carried away there perhaps but at least far far away from her and dictator Macron and his shenanigans.
Originally we wanted to go to Japan but Japan is more or less locked up for tourists now. The travel agency said they would not even bother try to arrange something until the bloody Olympics were done and over with.
So the choice fell on the Maldives which is still reasonably open. At least at the time of writing this.
Now I have, since some time, been using a fairly old, by todays standards at least, Canon Powershoot G1X as my travel camera when I don’t really want to schlepp around my real, ES 5D, camera. It is a decent enough came but I am not always happy with the results. Especially the dynamic range and/or exposure seem to cause me gripe every so often. Photos often becomes washed out and noise creeps in quite quickly when increasing the ISO levels.
So I decided to look into getting something new for our Maldives holiday with completely ruining the budget at the same time. In the end my choice fell on one of Canons hybrid cameras, the EOS M6 Mark II.
The following is not really a review but more of a first expression.
So I’ve only had it for a few weeks now but here are my first impressions. The build quality is quite good indeed for a compact hybrid. I am a long time Canon user so it is maybe not very surprising that I feel quite comfortable with the control and their placements. One thing that I have never had before is a tactile back screen. It is really a bit of a missed blessing for me. It is great that you can just touch the screen to have the camera focus where you want it to focus. On the other hand, when carrying the camera around in powered up state I found if way to easy to accidentally touch the screen and mess with the settings. More than once I found that the focus area was not where I had left it.
One reason this camera appealed to me was that I could get it with a good old fashioned fixed lens with a decent enough maximum opening, the EF-M 22/f2. It is a short pancake lens as well which is really what I wanted in a compact travel camera. So far this lens combined with the camera have been producing quite adequate photos. Sure it is not a Leitz optic by far but the results are well worth the money spent.
Having a fixed lens is kind of going back to my roots. A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away… Sorry, got a bit carried away there again. Anyway, quite a while ago, when I started get interested in photography fixed lenses were the kings. As far as I am concerned that still are. Better optical quality, larger opening, more compact. The only reason people really use zoom lenses are for convenience. It is actually quite fin to work within the limits of a fixed lens again and a 22mm on a ASP-C sensor is the equivalent to a 35 mm which suits me just fine.
The one thing I really miss is the optical viewfinder of my G1X or 5D. I really prefer a optical viewfinder. But then slamming on a prism and all that goes with it would really mess with the compactness of the camera and I did want a travel camera after all.
So far the image quality have been more than acceptable and my first impression is that the M6 seems to have a higher dynamic range and is less prone to create washed out parts when shooting difficult subjects. It seems to be less noisy when cranking up the ISO level as well. A 30+ megapixel sensor gives some headroom for cropping as well so I don’t really miss a zoom lens that much.
Below are a few sample shots that I’ve made so far…
PG's Ramblings 