Canon 70d or 6d

[ndancona]

It's time to upgrade. I've had a t3i 600d for three years now and I've learnt a lot on it and has given me a lot of good use. I am now at a level where I feel this cameras limitations and I want to upgrade to something better.

I am not a pro but a very active enthusiast. I sometimes accept paid work only to try and support my photography habit. I need a good camera but I can't justify spending thousands just as a hobbyist.

My question is, will the 70d be a noticeable upgrade? I am not interested in video just still photography. Should I save a bit more and go for a full frame 6d.

My current problems with my equipment are poor low light performance and weak auto focus. Noise appears on images above 200 iso range. I know the 6d is far superior in this respect being a full frame sensor, but how does the 70d compare? Personally I almost prefer to stick with a crop sensor camera as it's what I've become familiar with but will this come at a price for less performance?

 

[goodguy]

70D isnt a big improvement over the t3i when it comes to low light performance.
Get the 6D!
I just moved from crop sensor to full frame myself and the change is amazing, I am pretty sure you will love it, I did.

Good luck

 

[ronlane]

What lenses do you have? The EF-S lenses will not work with the 6D full frame, you will have to get EF lenses.

 

[ndancona]

What lenses do you have? The EF-S lenses will not work with the 6D full frame, you will have to get EF lenses.

I have a 50/1.8, 85/1.8, sigma 70-200 2.8, 18-55 kit lens

 

[ronlane]

The 50 and the 85 will work for sure and possibly the Sigma, not sure. The 18-55 won't though.

 

[Ido]

What kind(s) of photography will you do?

 

[Derrel]

Migrating the 50mm, 85mm,and 70-200 lenses to a full-frame body will turn that three-lens set into a POWERFUL basic set of lenses useful for many, many assignments. On family portrait sessions, the 70-200 will become amazingly useful and versatile, once the shackles of that 1.6x field of view narrowing is eliminated. The 85mm f/1.8 will immediately become a valuable, fast, short telephoto lens that can actually be used indoors, in normal-sized rooms!

The 18-55mm kit zoom is a $100 US value lens...sell it off to somebody who can use it. The 6D has really GOOD higher-ISO capabilities, and you can get a good semi-wide in the older, cheap, and decent 35mm f/2 Canon EF lens. A 28mm f/1.8 wide-angle would be helpful; or, look for the plentiful 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM Canon zoom which is sold used pretty cheaply at times; there are hundreds of thousands of those out there, part of original 5D and 5D-II kits, so people often sell off the 24-105 L lens fairly affordably.

The FF sensor format makes the *****lenses**** that are actually available into what they were originally designed to "be". The 70-200 is, for social photography, kind of ruined by 1.6x field of view narrowing; the 1.6x FOV deal ruins the 70-200 for use in smaller areas.The 1.6x FOV narrowing, well, it's great at the cricket pitch, but awful in a family's home.

I say move to the FF format not for the picture quality and the good High ISO performance, but for the HUGE range of lens options and shooting options that restoring the full field of view of the lenses brings with it. Moving the 50,85, and the 70-200/2.8 zooms back to their full field of view will immediately give you 70% of all the needed lens lengths for a career in part-time paid shooting.

 

[ndancona]

Thanks Derrel for the informative reply. Gonna start saving my pennies!

 

[Derrel]

Nick, you already have a great style and a great eye. You deserve a high-performance camera like a 6D. Your night photos will benefit from the better performance at all ISO levels, and your people photos will also be easier to shoot; you can actually SEE BETTER through that bigger, FF format viewfinder than the smaller finder APS-C cameras.

 

[ronlane]

Derrel, that 24-105 is the kit lens with the 6D too, so you may be able to find them together and ditch the T3i with the 18-55 in tact as a kit.

 

[TCampbell]

The focus system on the 6D won't be radically different than what you have on the T3i. It has an 11 point AF system... through the viewfinder it's the same diamond pattern you are used to seeing in your T3i except there's an extra point just left and right of the center point. Also, just as in your T3i, only the center point is "cross type".

The 6D does have improved AF performance in low light... being sensitive down to -3 EV (fairly dim lighting conditions... few cameras have working AF down to that level.)

The 6D will, of course, have noticeably improved ISO performance in low light.

The 70D basically has the same focus system as the original 7D (almost... they're mostly identical but there are some differences.) But I doubt you'll see much difference in ISO sensitivity and noise (it's a tiny bit better... but you won't be doing cartwheels down the hall in your excitement over the improvement.)

The 7D II offers both improvement at high ISO / low noise as well as a vastly improved focus system. Like it's predecessor... it has a lot of optimizations which make it a great camera for action photography, but it does does well for non-action photography.

If you are sooting any form of "action" then those lenses with slow moving focus motors (your 50mm f/1.8 or your 18-55 kit lens) aren't going to keep up as well as a lens that has faster, snappier focus motor performance (like the USM lenses). I only mention this because you mentioned "weak autofocus" but didn't elaborate on what you mean by "weak".