Photographing a Real Wedding with the Canon EOS R6 - Everything You Need to Know!

hey there i just recently bought the new r6 canon mirrorless camera and i love it i'm just going to tell you i'm obsessed with it and if you're on the fence of whether or not you should invest in a mirrorless camera as a wedding photographer i'm going to help you make that decision in this video i like my new camera i love my new camera i'm such a dork but as you're shooting you can see what it's doing so like it's like you're editing while you're shooting it's amazing i'm impressed don't tell the brad that i've never should use this camera before hey there i'm caitlin welcome to my youtube channel this is a place where we love to empower photographers to build profitable and purposeful businesses while also letting you see a little behind the scenes in our everyday life so this is my first time experimenting with a new camera system and this is a big deal because for me i took a big risk buying the camera trying it out and using it for a full wedding day so in this video i'm going to talk about the initial impression on the wedding day things that were really great and surprise me i was like amazed by these things and then also share some things that were challenges so you kind of have an overall all-encompassing view of what it might be like for you to use an r6 for your first time so when this was first announced i was not the first person to order it i wasn't sold on it tai had to literally come to my house and explain to me why i should order this camera and for me as an educator i'm happy with my mark iv right i was i i'm so comfortable with it it was serving me really well i was getting the images that i wanted i realized this is the way the industry's moving and i i want to make sure that i'm pushing myself challenging myself and learning new things and not getting stuck where i am and so i went ahead i ordered the camera um honestly i ordered it and i wasn't excited about it i'm like tyler told me to do this i've got to order this camera um but when it came uh i was pleasantly surprised here it is it has been i don't know four years since i've got a new camera five years maybe you've never done an unboxing never done we really know what we're doing also i feel i feel nervous because i have a wedding in three days it's tiny just feel like this is a new era [Music] new era in this photography world oh my gosh this is so crazy it's really light and it's really tiny so this arrived on a sunday but i was out of town and so i actually didn't open it and get it in my hands until wednesday knowing i had a wedding coming up on saturday so there was a lot that was going through my mind like this is really different as i started shooting with it i loved it but i knew that i didn't know it fully and so i was debating from wednesday to friday like am i going to use this am i going to shoot a whole wedding day with this is that too risky but then i quickly found that i was excited to pick it up i found myself i shot more photos that was like three days of my kids in the house outside because i i really liked using it and i liked trying to figure it out which i wasn't expecting um so i started paying attention to different things that i knew i felt maybe a little uncomfortable with and mastering those or at least getting more comfortable with the way the camera was set up so that i felt confident going into a wedding day knowing that this was going to be my main camera body so as soon as i got it out of the box i was literally sitting in my office i started taking pictures of things on my desk and then the kids came upstairs it was the end of the work day i started taking pictures of them and i could immediately tell i actually posted this on instagram i could immediately tell that something was different about this camera it was faster it was sharper and these lenses that i have kind of been frustrated with on and off just because of norm thought things i thought were normal about prime lenses were gone these lenses felt brand new to me all of a sudden and so i was excited i went from being like i don't know should i have invested in this to oh my gosh this is amazing let's take a picture of something that's really hard to focus on like um amy she's hard to focus on let's see now that is crisp i'm most excited about that it's supposed to this the focus is supposed to be amazing picture michael wow just tapping on your face wow it is nice i i'm not afraid to well yeah let's try to focus my 50 has not been this sharp in a very long time which is so interesting because it's like was it is it the 50 or was it the camera but i i was really excited to use it and i was pleasantly surprised with the adapter and the way it felt so i actually felt like sure it's really lightweight but with the adapter plus the normal lens it kind of feels a little bit identical to the weight of the mark iv without the adapter just because the mark four's body is a little bit heavier than this so um weight wise it kind of feels um the same but it is a lot smaller in my hands um and so i did notice that i was missing the screen up here at first and i worried about that but honestly i didn't think about that once on the wedding day i really didn't i never missed that and i'm not sure why that was maybe i just found the back end of the screen and looking through the viewfinder enough getting ready for this wedding day i realized the biggest difference from this and the mark iv is the focus system and that's what i really wanted to pay attention to the most before the wedding day to make sure i figured out the mechanics of how do i want to set this up to be able to use um and maximize like what this camera is capable of i mean you can literally put your focal point anywhere and it will be tack sharp so how do i set this up to be able to shoot fast pace on a wedding day in a way that i would be comfortable with and that would really allow me to use that feature to the best of my ability so one of the things i realized is that when my kids were running around the house the facial recognition like that part of the focus system that's amazing it works great i would say 99 of the time it was accurate but the more that i used it chasing the kids around the house the more i realized this is great for kids but i don't know if i'm gonna like this on a wedding day because the tracking made me feel a little bit out of control and i like being in control so what i actually did was i realized i still like shooting with one af point and normally on my mark four i would toggle and move that point all around and that's what i'm used to i found myself on the wedding day trying to do that just because it's out of habit but the system that i went with with r6 my first time shooting a wedding day was i ended up using the touch and drag feature on the back of the screen from the right hand corner which basically means that as i'm shooting i'm using my thumb as i'm looking through my viewfinder i'm using my thumb to move my focal point all around the screen to any place that i want and i was actually pleasantly surprised how well i adapted to this and how much i loved it i loved it because i've never been able to quickly just point and say hey focus here and it be tac sharp so i love that but there was a little bit of a hurdle getting used to doing that instead of using the joystick to move the point the af point all around so i showed up on the wedding day not sure if i felt confident enough like am i going to use this the whole day i don't know so i had my mark for in my bag it was ready card in it battery in it ready to roll in case i freaked out um so i carried that body with me the whole day but i never pulled it out super proud of myself and um i never really had any moment where i considered switching over ever even in moments where i felt like i need to make sure i know what i'm doing with this camera i was able to figure it out and i had a really great experience i never felt stuck or hindered or overwhelmed i was more excited to use this camera than anxious to use it so here are a few things that stuck out to me that were a little bit challenging uh there were a lot of differences and i had to keep reminding myself every time i put this up to my face i had to be like okay this is what you're doing now don't default to what you've done for 10 years that was challenging another challenging thing but in a good way is that i was fine-tuning i mean i'm i'm looking through this viewfinder and i can see if like oh i want you know to brighten this by two stops so oh i can see i want my aperture to be a little bit wider here and sometimes when you're shooting with a mark iv in order to get to those setting changes either you don't do them and you just brighten it later or you take a shot and you look at the back of the camera and you make some setting changes um obviously the more technical professional ways to just look at your meter but if we're being honest a lot of photographers take a shot make sure you're good and then you keep shooting i rarely looked at the back of my screen the entire wedding day so i'm guessing that was a time saver but i found myself i'm seeing what the image will look like before i even take it and that was bizarre to me just weird to be like it's almost like i'm editing in camera which is great but like i was shooting this and i just realized like i need to change my my aperture changed it got too bright changed my shutter watched it it's like just feel i i'm editing while i'm shooting it's really wild which i i tried to do that before using my meter but now it's like right in front of you and there's not a lot of guessing so i think it's a game changer something else that was interesting that was a challenge is that i didn't realize and i haven't fixed this yet i need to research it um but when i was shooting the ceremony i had like 500 shots but the ceremony was longer than i thought and so i thought 500 shots is probably fine this camera did not warn me when i ran out of space on my main shooting card that was set to raw it automatically switched to shooting an s2 file format which is significantly smaller thankfully it was only about 50 images i kept probably um i don't know about like 20 of those and they're still big enough to be like full spread and album it's fine but that's something i realized was like unexpected i had no way of knowing that it was going to do that and so i've got to figure that out for our next wedding coming up somehow gone in and clicked it to the right no i think there's an automatic setting but it drops to that if you're running out of space or something but but it i mean it's still three-point it's still a it was i think it was oh well i don't actually don't know when it switched 20 megabytes versus three what is a your large jpeg it's big i can use those but it's very interesting yeah so you're back to raw yeah oh there's some of them i did notice that the only parts of the day where i had some soft images were in the processional or the recessional or walking in um to the reception i had a few soft images however the amount and percentage like the ratio of uh tack sharp to soft-ish images with this camera it was still better than my mark iv and i know my mark four like the back of my hand so to me that wasn't a negative thing it's just something i need to figure out because i think there are probably some different settings and different approaches i could use to have a better setup for those type of situations and i just need to figure that out uh so this is embarrassing but i'm just gonna be honest so i set up everything i i changed my kelvin with this style now my shutter my aperture everything's pretty easy i didn't realize and i should have that the multi-function time made me aware of this the multi-function button um i probably should have used that for changing iso but i had just been tapping here and sliding with my finger because it was so fast [Music] but in the rush of the final shots like the exit of the night it was like chaos people have been drinking there were sparklers sparklers were almost running out we finally get the bride and groom lined up and so i'm like changing my settings really fast and the sparkler shots were amazing they were tack sharp it was pitch black i'm like there's no way these turned out great and they were amazing i looked back later i accidentally shot these sparkler shots at 12 800 iso but cool thing is you can't even tell because there's little to no noise i used a little bit of noise reduction in lightroom you can see this image on the screen i think it looks great so that was a whoopsie on my part but hey if that is the worst thing that happens on a wedding day shooting with a brand new camera i mean that's it's not that bad something else that was a challenge and not a huge challenge but it it was problematic in some ways my batteries died like three times more than normal however we only had one like brand new version of the battery that came with the camera and we realized it's probably best if we get new batteries in general and don't use just the old mark iv batteries um they did work they worked just fine but they just didn't last as long so that's something that we recognized um it was a little bit of an obstacle so when it comes to cards we're still kind of figuring out what we love i used to shoot with 32 gigabyte cf cards because i didn't want to use 64 gigabyte and have like a whole half a wedding day on this one card it scared me but it was really nice shooting this wedding day with a 64 gigabyte sd card and only changing my card like once so i believe i shot with a 64 gigabyte card i filled that up by the end of the ceremony and then i switched to 128 gigabyte sd card so we bought two 128 gigabyte sd cards and two 64 gigabyte sd cards um and so we're just trying to figure out um what our system is going to be but that was different but it wasn't a negative i love just having a tiny little sd card reader instead of like our bigger cf card reader with a cord an adapter to the macbook pro so we are using this is my my new family card um this is the sandisk 128 gigabyte 170 megabytes per second extreme pro card and we just have this in the 64 version 64 gigabyte version that's what's in the second card slot so some of the great things that i experienced on the wedding day were that um i feel like i have a whole new collection of lenses i haven't loved my 50 millimeter this much in a really long time there was absolutely no issue with the adapter i don't even think about the fact that i have an adapter on and i also even though it'd be fun to try out like the new r lenses i have no need to buy them if if i continue to get images like what i shot this past weekend at this wedding there's no need for me to buy these new lenses it would just be like this luxury business expense but i it did great i was confident shooting on this wedding day like 95 of the time i just knew my images were sharp which resulted in i actually shot about 2 000 less images now before you judge me and leave a crazy comment about how many images i shoot shooting with the r6 made me realize just how much i was overshooting with the mark iv to compensate for the fact that i sometimes a lot of the time did have soft images it just became a natural part of the way that i was shooting and so i got home i uploaded all the cards from the wedding and i'm like am i missing a card i shot a significant less amount of less amount of photos than i normally do and then i just realized i even said this during brattle details i'm not shooting as many images because i can take an image see what it looks like and know like that ring shot's tack sharp i just know it is and i would check it to make sure and i'm like okay well i'm just gonna i'm gonna move on to another detail no reason to shoot this eight times i know the first one was great another pro of the r6 is that the focus is just fast it is super fast i i didn't think about that as being like oh that's going to be so great it's faster but i really did notice on a wedding day how much i appreciated that and so i was able to continue even with a new camera and learning like a new system and not being super fast with the focus by the time like i got to bridal party portraits i'm like oh i've got i'm shooting at the same speed i always shoot which is awesome so um the speed was amazing something else that was amazing is the fact that like i was during the wedding day i was photographing the flower girls were kind of playing but the person that was watching them was like really close to the right side of them and so i put i like you know i'm looking through my viewfinder took my thumb i put the af point like all the way to the side of the screen which like you could never focus like that with the mark iv and i thought to myself there's no way this could be in focus and i literally blocked the image because it was so it was so sharp i loved it it looked great and i just realized from a compositional standpoint as someone who loves composition and loves being able to be creative with composition it's like the r6 has removed this kind of hurdle of set af points in certain locations like i can compose however i want and feel confident that it's going to be in focus so as someone who wants creative compositions that's probably my favorite thing about this camera so essentially what i'm saying is that i am no longer going to be focusing and recomposing ever i don't know why i would ever need to and so as someone who like i have trained myself to know how to focus and recompose effectively with a lot of different lenses but with this camera i just i won't be doing that anymore which saves time obviously when you're shooting but also it allows me just to feel like i'm creative in a whole new way when i went outside for portraits after i'd shot the first dance i had my flash still on um on camera and it was still turned on um and i was looking through the viewfinder and i'm like something is crazy and i realized you got to turn the flash off in order to see what your image is going to look like you know before you take it um so you just it that was a little different experience to kind of look through and realize like the whole day i've been able to see what the final image is going to look like before i even shoot it but that's not true with flash just because you need you know that additional light has not been added to what is coming through the viewfinder so you gotta fire the flash to be able to see so it's kind of like you go through the whole day with this new system and then you kind of revert back a little bit to what you're normally used to seeing everything somewhat dark until the flash fires and you see the final image on the back of your screen so that was a little bit different but from a perspective of using flash we tested it the night before to make sure they would talk to one another and that firing was good and we literally put it on michael was standing on the other side of the kitchen table we took some test shots and i'm like well that was easy and we just put it right back in the bag and we had no trouble on the wedding day from the perspective of editing i will say that the bride from this weekend's wedding had an intense spray tan and so editing and color i need to do a few other shoots with some different skin tones just to make sure i can adequately say what's different about color in this camera i noticed maybe a little bit more some blue undertones maybe magenta undertones slightly but overall i literally just vlogged the wedding like two hours ago and i think i was able to replicate my style pretty easily even with a spray tan issue so editing was not significantly different i'm using the adobe creative cloud lightroom version the classic and when i first tried to import some sample images which i highly recommend doing before you use it for the first time just because i wanted to make sure like i don't want to get back from this wedding and not be able to load these in the lightroom and sure enough i tried to import them in the lightroom and it didn't recognize the file type and so called tyler but i'm proud of myself i fixed this myself um there was a slight update that i thought everything was updated but i refreshed my computer and creative cloud resynced to the internet and basically i just did a simple update to lightroom and it recognized the cr3 files so i haven't had any issues with that but at first it did scare me so if you have that problem make sure that your lightroom is up to date to the latest version i did have a really established film photographer that also shoots some digital she has this camera she's a recent convert she loves it and she told me before i shot this wedding she said because the dynamic range is better it's actually a little bit harder to get those bright whites and i did notice that a little bit in editing so again i need more practice editing from another scenario not just this one wedding but i did notice that a little bit to wrap this up i just want to say if you're on the fence about what camera to buy next and you're in a situation where let's say you've never had a full frame camera and you're wondering do i save up to buy this i would say yes i'd say yes because you're kind of backstepping to invest in an a camera body that's not mirrorless merely for the fact that this is this is the future so if you're trying to grow your business you're trying to make a smart investment i think it's smart to save up and to invest and to move into the mirrorless direction especially because i have found that the lens situation you don't need to buy all brand new lenses i definitely am not buying all brand new lenses at least not right now and so i think that's what i would recommend to someone who's in a situation where they don't own a full-frame camera body and they're wondering what should come next if you're in a situation where you're like do i sell my mark iv do i i it's hard to give advice not knowing your personal situation or your personal financial story i wouldn't put yourself in financial distress in order to upgrade to a mirrorless canon camera so let's say another situation you have like a mark iii and you've been thinking about upgrading to the mark iv i think you should go mirrorless and i never would have said that without my own personal experience but i can see how this is a smart investment because it's where we're going to move in the future and it's smart not just because it's the wave of the future but also because i have i've had a great experience with this i've only shot one wedding with it but it made me feel like a new photographer overall um i've been doing this for 12 years and there was an excitement to the way i was getting to shoot at this past weekend's wedding um that i haven't felt in a long time we came back from this wedding michael has already ordered his own r6 because he was jealous of me on the wedding day um i think overall this is it was a smart decision it was a smart investment i'm really glad that we took the leap and i would encourage anyone who's been considering it and can afford it and is not going to put yourself in financial distress to pursue it because investing in this is something that i think is going to allow me to be a better photographer i feel more professional because of its ability to focus accurately and effectively and it doesn't cause me i don't have to buy a whole new slew of lenses i can literally use the adapter and it works great so overall we know there are a lot of questions about the new mirrorless cameras we know that there are going to be a lot of questions about what you should do personally questions you have technically that maybe we haven't answered like settings how do you set up what are the actual things you change before you shot this wedding so we're gonna do another video that answers some of those questions but i'd love to hear those questions so we can answer them thoroughly so leave a comment below let us know how we can help you we want to create content to help people make smart decisions because this is not a small investment it's a big deal and so for us to be saying like hey we think you should go for it we we want you to feel well educated so leave comments below and make sure you tune in next time for our next episode bye [Music] you

Channel: Katelyn James

Views: 191,763

Keywords: canon eos r6 wedding photography, canon r6 wedding photography, canon eos r6, Katelyn James, Katelyn James Photography, canon r6, eos r6, mirrorless wedding photography, canon r6 review, canon eos r6 review, canon eos r6 specs, Photography tips, Wedding photography, best mirrorless camera for wedding photography, canon eos r, Wedding day behind the scenes, Canon mirrorless camera 2020, kj education, Wedding Photography Education, canon eos r6 vs r5, canon r6 low light

Id: dr4jqs0_05U

Length: 23min 10sec (1390 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 17 2020