6D

I bought a new camera. While thinking about what I wanted to write I found that I'm kind of at odds with myself when it comes to photography and technology. One one hand, a camera should not define a photographer. I promise you I could rock the heck out of an old Pentax K1000. Film speed, Shutter, and Aperture. The holy trinity of photography. As simple as it gets. Traditionally I've favored analog to Instagram. But on the flip side, I also appreciate the technological advances that come with photography. This camera has some key features that I've wanted for a long time in a DSLR. For example, GPS. Sidenote: I've wanted this so long, I actually researched the patent to see if it had been claimed years ago. (damn you Fuji!)I like the idea that I can take a picture, and be able to navigate back to the exact spot I was standing. Click on the capital photos below to visit my Flickr, where the GPS metadata automatically uploads and you can view a map of exactly where the photo was taken. I'll be going on a long road trip this Spring, and the idea that I'll be able to find exactly where each photo was taken is really awesome. Who knows what the technology will be like in 20 years, I may want to revisit and reshoot. This camera also has a full sensor. This is a first for me, I've always used the smaller APS-C sensor, due to the cost. This is the first mid price range camera Canon has released that has the full sensor. Viewing my first few photos this evening has lead me to the conclusion that I will never buy an APS-C camera again. The clarity is amazing! There are other features that I find appealing as well such as the built in wifi. The ability to control the camera wirelessly via computer or smart phone has some interesting possibilities. Another feature is an in camera HDR functionality. Unlike it's older brother which can process the HDRs in RAW mode, the 6D does this in JPEG. To be honest, the picture quality is still pretty high. The first image of the capital below is with the HDR. The second photo is without. The HDR is not a perfect full ranged image, but considering it does this with three images and managed to do so sharply even though I was outside shivering my hind end off, I'm pretty impressed. I've even more impressed by the fact that it doesn't look like an overprocessed HDR image, like what you see with most cameras/photographers. I was also curious about the ISO range on the camera. Without choosing an option to expand the ISO, the camera's default maximum is 25,600. In previous DSLRs anything past 800 started getting grainy and looked very off. Though you can see a little bit of noise in this image, it's really not too bad, especially when you consider just how much higher a rating of 25,600 is than 800! My first impression is that this camera is AWESOME. The only negative things I can say are 1) The chromatic aberration correction is not as good as Canon would like you to believe, and 2) Its RAW files are not supported by Adobe at this time (which is not a fault of the camera at all, and is a price we pay as an early adopter). For now I'm just using the newest version of DPP and exporting to Photoshop. I think I'll try to get out on Thursday and take some prettier pictures. The images above were mostly for testing purposes.