I wrote about the Canon 6D in September. I pre-ordered it as soon as it was possible and it has been a long wait to finally get my hands on the camera… but it finally arrived on Wednesday! Then it seems like it was an equally long wait for the weekend so I can actually use it as well. I’ve never been any good at taking any test pictures so I couldn’t make myself to take any pictures indoors. Well, except one – I wanted to hear what the shutter sounds like. Very nice, a lot like my analogue camera actually. But apart from that, I just need to use the camera the way I always use it and then see how it fulfils my needs.

As it always is with a new camera, it takes a while before you get used to the location of all the buttons. It’s almost like my thumb is pre-programmed for the Play button on the 40D but on the 6D, there’s no buttons below the display at all. Which is really good actually, because I needed to put a plastic protection on the button row to prevent condensation from seeping in the buttons when I breathed on them while looking through the viewfinder. No such problems now. Except when I need to press Play.

Another thing I like is the GPS, which was one of the features on my wish-list anyway. But it’s even better than I thought – not only does it save the position in the picture, but you can also set it in logging mode which means that it will track your route. Hopefully it means that I don’t have to suffer any more frustrations with Sportstracker crashes… although I do need to find out how to transfer that track from the camera to the computer! RTFM…

One of the biggest attractions with going full frame with a relative moderate megapixel count is the performance at high ISO. Last night when I came home, I saw how the lights were reflected in the clouds so I took some shots at ISO 800. I would like to tell you exactly what I think about the level of noise, but I can’t. Since I’m one of the first people in the world who is using a production line 6D, there are no RAW converters which can handle the images. I’m stuck with Canon’s Digital Photo Professional, which is, if I may so, full of crap. Just a piece of s**t of software that I didn’t like when I first used with the D30 10 years ago and I sure don’t like now, coming from Lightroom. Maybe some of the issues I have with it is that I’m not used to the controls, but I have no doubts that I would still hate it even if I was familiar with it. So all I’m doing now is that I do some basic adjustments in DPP (highlights/shadows) to make the most of the RAW file, and then convert it to JPG and import to LR. Needless to say that I’m eagerly awaiting a new version of Camera Raw!

I’ll probably talk more about the camera when I have used it a bit more, so the only other thing I will mention now is that we have a really nice winter going on. Lots of new snow this week and I made the first skiing trip of the season. Although you might also call it for ”walking in soft deep snow with skis on”. Regardless, it was great fun. Couldn’t stop smiling!