Am I upgrading from a 6D by buying a 5D MK III?

I've bought a 6D from Canon's refurb store as my only full frame camera a few months ago which I use for portraits primarily. I'm pleased with it, but I've been offered a new 5D MKIII for $1800 & am interested in your collective thoughts about replacing the 6D with the new 5d MKIII. Is there an advantage to using one over the other?

I use a 6D. It does everything I need it to do EXCEPT AI-Servo tracking. The 5D3 would be a huge upgrade if you need to track moving objects. Otherwise, not so much. My action camera is a 1DIV. It is easier to configure the AF on the 1DIV than on the 5DIII, and the 1DIV is cheaper.

In your situation not really, the 6D does everything you need except track moving subjects. Of course the 1/4000 May bother you too but there's a trade off because the 6D in return will give you a better sensor.

if the 6D is performing to your needs, then I wouldn't replace it.

for me personally, I need the outer AF points to be reliable, and lock. So I needed the 5D3.

Totally depends on shooting style and needs.

I agree with the above. 6D definitely holds its own

Glass may be a factor, here. I have some large aperture lenses and I do find myself shooting wide open portraits in full sun. In those cases, I ramp up the shutterspeed to 1/8000 even with an ND filter on (I don't have various stop filters for a single filter size, let alone for several filter sizes).

If you want to use focus points other than the center, it is an upgrade. In did lit hotel rooms anything other than the center focus point was completely useless for me on the 6D.

I was in the same boat recently and honestly just wanting to waste money and upgrade but I would wait until the 6D Mark two comes out or something. If your current camera does everything you need it to do then there's no reason to replace. The autofocusing system is really the only upgrade . I hear video is a little better but I'm not sure why nor if it honestly matters for us normal people. I've actually heard that low light situations the 6D is normally rated higher and outperforms so I guess you definitely have to ask yourself why do you need to upgrade and is it worth the nice chunk of change you could spend on new glass

I used a 6D exclusively for almost a year, and ended up upgrading to a 5DSR to address specific shortcomings of the 6D I encountered in some real-world scenarios, the majority of which have to do with the autofocus system (surprised, right? )The improvements I got from the 5DSR's AF system apply to the 5D mk III as well.

What the 6D did just fine:

• Landscapes, cityscapes, day and night. Tripod, manual focus. I had no compelling reason to replace the 6D for this type of photography.
  
• Studio portraiture/fashion. Shooting stopped down to f/8-f/11, I got good results using the center AF point and recomposing.
  
• Still life, product photography, etc. As with landscape, using MF and live view, so no issues.
  
• Low-light and indoor photography. The 6D's center AF point continues to work much farther past sundown than any other camera I've owned. It can practically see in the dark and lock focus in scenarios where the 5DSR needs AF assist.
  

• Shooting wide open with fast lenses. At f/1.8 and wider, recompose is not an option, and outer AF point mediocrity is an issue.
  
• Moving subjects. A sophisticated zone-type AF system like on the 7D2 and 5D3 gets more keepers for sure. Tracking with AI Servo with just the center point is not easy, especially keeping it on fast moving small creatures.
  
• Nailing critical focus in environmental portraiture and outdoor fashion editorial work. Lack of precision of the 6D's outer AF points combined with size of their sensor area gave me a lot of subtle focus misses, especially at wider apertures. 5DSR's "spot AF" can land focus on a subject's iris where the 6D would get the eyelashes, eyebrow, etc. With the 6D I had to take more shots, refocusing each time, to increase likelihood of a keeper, and resort to cheats like focusing on the outer corner of the eye or eyebrow deliberately.
  

Hi absplastic

I saw your comments on the 5DSR and I think of getting it for my own use. I shoot mostly landscapes with manual and AF lenses, as well as portraits mostly with manual lenses.

Other than the focus advantage of the 5DSR, can you see additional benefits?

Thanks

Jacob

absplastic wrote in post #18048997
I used a 6D exclusively for almost a year, and ended up upgrading to a 5DSR to address specific shortcomings of the 6D I encountered in some real-world scenarios, the majority of which have to do with the autofocus system (surprised, right? )The improvements I got from the 5DSR's AF system apply to the 5D mk III as well.

What the 6D did just fine:

• Landscapes, cityscapes, day and night. Tripod, manual focus. I had no compelling reason to replace the 6D for this type of photography.
  
• Studio portraiture/fashion. Shooting stopped down to f/8-f/11, I got good results using the center AF point and recomposing.
  
• Still life, product photography, etc. As with landscape, using MF and live view, so no issues.
  
• Low-light and indoor photography. The 6D's center AF point continues to work much farther past sundown than any other camera I've owned. It can practically see in the dark and lock focus in scenarios where the 5DSR needs AF assist.
  

Where the 6D fell short:

• Shooting wide open with fast lenses. At f/1.8 and wider, recompose is not an option, and outer AF point mediocrity is an issue.
  
• Moving subjects. A sophisticated zone-type AF system like on the 7D2 and 5D3 gets more keepers for sure. Tracking with AI Servo with just the center point is not easy, especially keeping it on fast moving small creatures.
  
• Nailing critical focus in environmental portraiture and outdoor fashion editorial work. Lack of precision of the 6D's outer AF points combined with size of their sensor area gave me a lot of subtle focus misses, especially at wider apertures. 5DSR's "spot AF" can land focus on a subject's iris where the 6D would get the eyelashes, eyebrow, etc. With the 6D I had to take more shots, refocusing each time, to increase likelihood of a keeper, and resort to cheats like focusing on the outer corner of the eye or eyebrow deliberately.
  

More than anything else, the 5DS AF precision and spot AF feature has been worth the upgrade to me, for shooting people. I like to use fast lenses wide open, and it's nice to be able to have good cross type points across the frame that I can trust. 6D's outer points worked only acceptably in shots stopped down enough to hide small misses to critical focus, and when I wanted shallower DoF I often used the 6D in manual focus (with precision matte screen installed) or in live view zoomed in. That worked, but it's so much slower than just being able to use phase-detect AF points that work well.

JacobL wrote in post #18064775
Hi absplastic
I saw your comments on the 5DSR and I think of getting it for my own use. I shoot mostly landscapes with manual and AF lenses, as well as portraits mostly with manual lenses.

Other than the focus advantage of the 5DSR, can you see additional benefits?Jacob

The really big advantage you will have from the 5DSR when shooting with manual focus lenses will be how much you can crop a shot. You can easily crop an 20+ megapixel headshot from a 3/4 body shot if your lens is sharp enough to make good use of the resolution. Having high-resolution portrait shots also allows for more finely-detailed retouching.

Less noticeable will be that the 5DSR can produce lower-noise shots at ISO 100 than either the 5D3 or 6D, and with nearly a stop more dynamic range. If you stand at the same spot and take the same photo with all three cameras using the same settings, and then down-sample the 5DSR shot to the pixel dimensions of the 6D or 5D3 shot, it will be cleaner. The 5DSR has more visible noise at the pixel level, but when you consider the whole frame, it has the advantage.

AFAIK, the only thing the 5D3 does better is that it has a 20% higher frame rate (6 vs 5 FPS), which won't matter for landscapes or portraiture.