It’s hard to know where to start when talking about the changes that shooting with mirrorless cameras have made. In the absence of anything profound I think that I will start with something that has been said by others but which I need to express very strongly. So much so, I’m going to make it a quote:

“Canon got everything right when they introduced the EF to RF converter”

Why did I feel the need to say that in quite such strong terms? I hate changing systems. Back in the day (1995) when I swapped from Nikon F4S bodies to Canon EOS1Ns, and had to swap all of my lenses as well, it was tough. Nothing was familiar apart from the rolls of film I was slotting into them. Changing everything in one hit meant that I had to get my head around half a dozen different things all at once. This time around, swapping from Canon EF to RF I got to keep my familiar (and much loved) lenses whilst I got used to the new bodies and their wildly unfamiliar viewfinders. Eventually I will swap out all of the lenses too but there really is no hurry. The converters aren’t perfect but, looking back over the last few weeks, they have been such a help in making the transition.

Why isn’t there any hurry? Well, it turns out that all of my EF lenses whose sharpness I was starting to have misgivings about are actually still pretty darned good. Going beyond that, event my twenty year old 1.4x MkII extender appears to be way better than I had thought.

So that’s an OK picture but the reason I included it is because of just how the image quality held together. I was completely comfortable shooting with that combination which allowed me to just shoot having to think about what the camera body was doing rather than worrying about the whole package. This being a WordPress website, the photograph looks a little less spectacular on here than it does on my screen so if you are curious and want to see the original you can go to my Photoshelter site and download a JPEG from there.

All of the lenses that I have used with these cameras so far look better than they do on my DSLRs. That could be that the older cameras have, well, aged – but there’s something more to it than that. Could it be that the image stabilisation is as good as Canon say?

I have acquired one of the most obviously useful RF lenses, the RF 24-105 f4L IS USM and it is a perfectly good lens. Useful range, sharp, not too heavy. It’s a good lens but I haven’t actually taken it on a job yet. I intend to but at the last minute I keep finding myself packing my EF 24-70 f4L IS USM instead. I know how good the RF 70-200 f4L IS USM is but there’s something about my much older MkI EF 70-200 f4L IS USM lens that makes me keep using it. Yes – the RF/EF converter is a great piece of kit.

So, apart from giving some old lenses a new lease of life what else can I say about my hop over the fence?

For this kind of photography the eye-tracking auto focus is spectacularly good. It appears to recognise eyes in a way that I really didn’t expect; through spectacles, in the “eyes” of a soft toy and even the stone representations of eyes on a carved Portland stone statue. Learning where to rely on it and where to abandon it has taken a little while but I reckon that six weeks into this and I have all-but mastered knowing when it is going to be less than reliable (and that’s not that often).

I have mentioned how good the R6 is in low light. I edit other people’s work quite regularly and amongst the cameras they shoot with is just about every professional and semi-professional level camera you could name and I will stick my neck out here and claim that the Canon EOS R6 has the lowest noise and the fewest artefacts when you get to 2500 ISO and beyond – probably even beating the Canon EOS R3?

Many years ago I used to shoot from very low and very high angles using Nikon F3P and F4S bodies by simply removing the viewfinder prism and composing and focusing straight on the ground glass screen. When I swapped to Canon I missed that option but now, I finally have it back. Shooting using the variable angle LCD screen as a viewfinder is useful and, most importantly, really easy and I find myself doing it quite a bit. Add in the silent shutter and suddenly there are different shots to be had without the guesswork.

I now have the cameras set up just how I want them to be. Shooting RAW to card 1 and large JPEG to card 2. As I send JPEGs via FTP from the cameras quite a lot I find that having images set to review from card 2 extremely useful as well. I have some custom setting using the C1, C2 and C3 modes and having the various buttons and dials customised a little. I have the same five options set up on the “my Menu” on each camera. It’s amazing how many of the default settings for so many things work absolutely fine for me though.

These cameras are small, light, packed with really useful technology and the cost of them doesn’t break the bank. I still have two EOS5D MkIV bodies left and am probably going to sell at least one of those. All of my other digital EOS cameras have been sold to help finance this swap over and, so far, I haven’t missed any of them.

I have yet to work in pouring rain and I am still getting used to using SD memory cards. I would still love there to be a voice memo option on the R6 and when-o-when will Canon put a lock on the diopter adjustment? So these cameras are far from perfect but I absolutely love using them. If any of you could ever see me at work you’d know that having a camera to my eye covers up the big beaming smile that’s there because I love what I’m doing. The R6 is small enough that one or two people who I have photographed have been able to see that smile and I have to tell you that it is as big as it has ever been.