Yesterday, I had made some disparaging remarks about the 6D vs. the
E-1. I wanted to quantify those remarks a little bit. I'm not
referring to non-ideal conditions, where pushing higher ISOs is
required, but shooting best-effort ISO 100 landscape photography
conditions.
When shot at ISO 100 and using precise metering techniques for
mid-tone to avoid exposure, contrast, and pretty much all other
adjustment, the camera files are a pretty good match, with just
interpretative differences between the two companies. The 6D gives a
touch more highlights, and the shadows "appear" similar. But the
problem comes in when you start yanking the highlight and shadow
recoveries, adjust color balance, curves, saturation, etc. The 6D
files start to do things to make life miserable.
I did a test sequence on a test target of mine, that ranged from +2
exposure to -3 exposure from a carefully metered norm.
The 6D does give a significant increase in highlight recovery. A quick
and dirty guess is that the 6D has a full stop, and change, more
usable highlight range than the E-1. And most importantly, as it clips
the highlights, it does so without the color-casts that the E-1 throws
in. I will do further testing with all four cameras to determine
exactly what the ranges are for these cameras from mid-tone normal.
Without a doubt, the 6D has more dynamic range available above
mid-tone than the E-1, but the highlight recovery, when used as a
curve tool for non-clipped highlights is resulting in more pleasing
images with the E-1 than the 6D. Clipped highlights (when highlight
recovery is set to maximum) is a problem with both cameras, but the 6D
usually fairs a little better.
The real eye-opener is with the shadows. In the test images, I did a
-3 exposure of my test target fixture. As with the highlight test, I
cranked every setting to maximum to make sure I found the breaking
point. But for the E-1, the breaking point is still another stop down.
What the dynamic range gods give, the dynamic range gods give away.
The E-1 has at least a full stop of usable information below mid-tone
than the 6D. But that's only when comparing desaturated images. Crank
up the color saturation (as I am so want to do), and the E-1 is even
better than the 6D, with an effective difference of around two stops.
Color (chroma) noise of the 6D is a bit awkward. Like other Canon's
there is the tendency to have more noise in the shadows than the
highlights, but the 6D is also similar to the E-1 in that there is a
noise pattern present at all brightness levels (dithering). The
luminance noise is more uniform in the 6D than what I've experienced
in almost all Canons. The 6D does not have the typical CMOS
"watercolor" look that has plagued so many of the Canons--and why I do
generally like this camera. This noise is easily addressed with the
noise-reduction sliders and is pretty much a non-issue, with either
camera. But the color noise is the stickler.
In Lightroom, I took the -3 tests, pushed the exposure, shadow
recovery and vibrance up to maximum. (too much you say? Nah, just a
normal day at the office for me). Both the E-1 and 6D exhibited
significant color noise. But the difference is that with the E-1, the
color noise is 100% eliminated by the color noise slider and the
black/gray test targets stayed perfectly neutral. The 6D, on the other
hand, lost the sparkly colors, but left behind blobby color,
low-frequency, patterns that cannot be dealt with. And the black/gray
test targets no longer stayed neutral. Adjusting ACR profiles changed
the color balance of the black/gray test targets, but not the nature
of the shifts. The color "blobs" can span 10-50 pixels in width.
These "color blobs" and shadow color shifts is what I'm battling.
While Canon's ACR profiles help, they don't cure the problem and a
profile that works for one picture is trash for the very next one. I
feel as though I'm walking a tight-rope with the 6D files.
Another 6D anomaly is how the camera handles reds, both direct and
implied. Say WHAT???? Olympus cameras tend to allow reds to go
warm--especially as they start to clip. The 6D has reds go cool. Take
"Ferrari Red" as an example. Olympus makes every red look "Ferrari
Red" with the hint of orange, whereas the 6D will make them go pink or
magenta. As I try to work with fall colors, I'm just not getting the
6D to match my vision in real-world photographs. Nice, but just not
there. This is particularly true with the outdoor portraits. I can get
the skin tones right and the background looks like garbage, or I can
get the background right and the skin tones turn to garbage.
Final note. Last week's trip was to a set of locations which I have
photographed a couple dozen times before. The conditions in the U.P.
are unique and have some unique challenges. Nearly ALL of the
waterfalls flow to the north. The tree bark is gray. The soil is
either sandstone or heavy in minerals (iron). When shooting color
slide films, the Ektachromes are worthless, and you have to shoot
either Provia or Velvia. Otherwise, the wood appears cold and too
reflectively bright and the soil turns lifeless. The Fujichromes (I
never tried Astia at this location) warm up the trees and soil while
keeping what is neutral properly neutral. In this environment, I've
found the E-1 to better match The Fujichromes in the ability to warm
the trees and soil without losing color integrity everywhere else.
To put this into perspective, though, we're talking about my typical
heavy-handed editing techniques to achieve a bold, colorful image.
We're not talking about standard "in-camera JPEG burn-and-churn"
images. The 6D is still a keeper of a camera for multiple reasons, and
I DON'T regret shooting with it, but it is a situation where I have to
work harder to get what I want out of the files. I will probably need
to experiment around with other raw converters or profiles learn how
to address the issues.
AG Schnozz
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