Canon-6d-front-224x175With all of the recent camera announcements, it's easy to forget that Canon introduced a new budget full-frame camera, the Canon 6D. While it doesn't sport all of the features of the 5D Mark III, it should be a step up from the aging 5D Mark II (which hasn't come down in price very much thanks to Canon's new minimum pricing agreement with resellers). Johnnie Behiri, who often tests out the latest and greatest cameras, took a pre-production Canon 6D for a spin and gives us his thoughts and some footage below.


Here's a little of his process and what he had to say about the footage:

The footage was taken with a pre production model camera and hopefully the video quality in the final version will be improved.

Camera weakness:

-Severe moire
-Soft image
-No headphone socket
-No audio through HDMI while recording (for monitoring audio on new EVF's)
-No clean HDMI output

Notes:
-Format: 1080/25 All-I
-Video shot with available light. Litepanels 1x1 was used for the interview only
-Audio was recorded directly to the camera. No external audio recorder was used.
-ISO settings 640-1250
-Picture profile: Netural 0,-4,-1, 0
-30% sharpening was added in post (Adobe Premiere CS6)
-No CC was applied

He also mentions that the camera has manual controls for audio, and the footage is very clean to ISO 1250. Honestly I think it looks great from this sample. With the exception of some moire -- which you could argue should be absent from a new Canon camera in 2012 -- I think it looks exceptionally clean and crisp. In practice I don't think the moire will be any worse than the 5D Mark II, but obviously more testing will need to be done. Canon wanted Johnnie to emphasize that this is a pre-production camera, so some of the image issues could be worked out a bit once the camera is finally released sometime next month.

I think not having the headphone jack is a big deal, especially since the competition has included this feature even in the lower end models. As for the other stuff, the clean HDMI isn't as concerning, but it would be nice for Canon to start including these in all models, especially since they've decided to bring it to the 5D Mark III. Dynamic range doesn't look like it will be as good as the Mark III, but again, it's tough to tell from these shots.

I won't really make any conclusions at the moment other than to say that I think this could be a great camera if you don't need the headphone jack and you're already heavily invested in Canon lenses. For a new camera which should have better high-ISO performance than the Mark II, $2,100 for the body is competitive, especially since this is a full-frame camera. We'll just have to wait and see if Canon makes any adjustments to the camera by the time it's released.

What do you guys think about the footage? Is this a camera that interests you? What do you think about the pricing compared to the competition?

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