bobwalder wrote:
Just purchased a 6D so getting to know it. I took it to Big Bend to photograph the Milky Way last week and though I got some nice results I struggled with the camera. Lens was the f4 11-24mm zoom.
I was shooting alongside 2 Nikon owners and a Canon 5D MkIII owner. The Canon owner, being experienced at night photography, was helping me with exposures. He said the sensor on the 6D should get better low light results than even his.
Here's the issue.... everyone else was shooting at ISO 3200, f2.8 for around 20 seconds. I bumped up to ISO 6400 to make up for the extra stop (f4) but ended up with exposures of 45-50 seconds just to get results comparable to the others. When they tried light painting, they were getting some amazing results (brief 1 second flashed from LED lamps on the foreground) but my camera picked up virtually none of it.
So on the face of it, my sensor was WAY less sensitive than any of theirs. I had long xposure low noise reduction set to Auto, by the way... only on certain shots did I get the long delay as it wrote to memory card so clearly it was being used occasionally... there was no discernible difference to the exposures or results so I doubt that setting was the culprit.
So..... any ideas? Faulty camera? Faulty lens? Settings I need to look at? Or is the 6D just really bad at night photography (not something's no I would have expected based on reviews)?
Would really appreciate some help, especially from other Canon owners. REALLY not looking for "switch to Nikon" type advice, thanks :0) I need to decide quickly if I need to return camera, lens or both, or if I can fix this via camera settings
Thanks in advance
Just purchased a 6D so getting to know it. I took... (
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I'd guess that 98 out of 100 "camera problems" are no fault at all of the camera or lens... but are due to the user doing something wrong.
If you could post them, it would be very helpful to see one or more of the "faulty" images with EXIF still attached.
You mention 20 second exposures and that should always cause Long Exposure Noise Reduction to operate when it's set to "Auto" (or "Enabled"). Set to that, LENR should activate with any exposure of 1 second or longer.
Are you aware how LENR works? It's actually two "exposures" of the same length, one right after the other. The first is the "usual" exposure where the shutter opens and an image is recorded. The second that immediately follows is a "blank" that the camera does with the shutter closed, which it then uses to detect noise, which is then "subtracted" from the first image. So a 20 second exposure will take at least 40 seconds, for example. any exposure with LENR applied will take twice as long as it's setting on the camera.
That explains why your "exposures" were taking so much longer than the other people... they probably didn't have LENR enabled.(I would probably turn it off for star field shots, too.... but you should ask them.)
Here's the tricky part... If you forget what's happening and cancel the second "shutter closed" exposure for any reason (such as by turning off the camera), the camera will dispose of BOTH the LENR and the original image!
If you try to "light paint" during the LENR "blank" shot with the shutter closed, your efforts won't be recorded.
Generally speaking, the 6D is a very low noise/high ISO capable camera. One of the best. Should have been able to shoot without LENR, at at 6400.You might give it a try.
The main reason many night shooters use f/2.8 lenses is not necessarily that they use the lens wide open... In fact they may stop the lens down to an optimal f-stop for best edge-to-edge sharpness with the particular lens they're using. (You should test your lens to see what it's optimal f-stop is.)
Many users might choose an f/2.8 (or faster) lens for a brighter viewfinder. But with DSLRs, Live View and Exposure Simulation might be a good substitute.