Canon 6D Performance

Generally good performance for a prosumer full-frame digital SLR, though autofocus and burst speeds could be better.

The Canon 6D turned in fast startup and shut-down times, fast enough that they were difficult to measure. The Canon 6D's buffer clearing times were quite good, but of course depend on the image quality and size, as well as the speed of the memory card. We used a fast UHS-I compliant card rated at 95MB/s.

The Canon 6D's Play to Record mode switching time was very good (difficult to measure), though Record to Play was a tad sluggish.

The Canon 6D's full autofocus shutter response was a little slower than average for a prosumer DSLR, at 0.29s using single (center) point AF mode. Full 11-point auto select AF mode was faster at 0.206 second on average, but we found it varied a lot, ranging from 0.1 to about 0.3 second in our tests. Continuous AF was somewhere between at 0.235s, but your subject may not be in focus in that mode. Manual focus shutter lag was quite fast, though, at 0.074 second. "Prefocusing" the camera by half-pressing and holding down the shutter button before the final exposure resulted in a lag time of only 0.059 second, which is very fast for a DSLR.

The Canon 6D's AF lag time in Live View mode was longer, as expected. We measured about 1.7 second using "Quick Mode" (phase-detect AF). Oddly, "Live Mode" (contrast-detect AF) was quite a bit faster in our tests, at about 0.7s. The speed of the lens' AF system has a bigger impact here, though. Prefocused shutter lag in Live View mode was only 0.066 second which is very fast, almost as fast as when using the optical viewfinder.

To minimize the effect of different lens' focusing speed, we test AF-active shutter lag with the lens already set to the correct focal distance. We also use the same Sigma 70mm f/2.8 macro with every camera (on all platforms except Four Thirds/Micro Four Thirds and Nikon consumer models lacking an in-body focus motor), to further reduce variation, and because our tests showed that focus-determination time with this lens was close to the fastest, across multiple camera bodies from different manufacturers. Being an older design with a non-ultrasonic motor, it wouldn't be the fastest at slewing from one focus setting to another, but that's exactly the reason we measure focus determination speed, which is primarily a function of the camera body, vs focus adjustment speed, which is primarily a function of the lens.

Shot-to-shot cycle times in the Canon 6D's single-shot mode were about average for non-pro DSLR, at just over 0.5 second no matter the file type.

Continuous mode speeds were a little slower than average for a full-frame model, at about 4.4 frames per second, but the camera didn't slow down for RAW or RAW+JPEG files.

Buffer depth was excellent for Large/Fine JPEGs (Canon rates the 6D's Large/Fine JPEG buffer depth at 1250(!) frames or essentially limited only by card capacity with a fast UHS-I card, so we stopped testing at 20). Buffer depth was 17 frames for RAW files and 7 frames for RAW+JPEG files, very close to Canon's 17 and 8 frame spec.

Buffer clearing times were good with a fast UHS-I compliant card, ranging from 2 seconds for a burst of JPEGs to 9 seconds for RAW.

Reasonable download times, though we've seen much quicker. (Note that this test was performed with a SanDisk Extreme Pro 95MB/sec UHS-1 SD card: Slower cards would likely show slower transfer times.)

Bottom line, the Canon 6D is generally a responsive camera with fast startup, shutter lag and buffer clearing, but autofocus speeds and burst rates are a little below average for its class.

Battery Life
Excellent battery life when using the optical viewfinder.

The Canon 6D uses a custom rechargeable lithium-ion battery for power, and ships with a charger. Although the Canon 6D's battery life is excellent when using the optical viewfinder, we recommend you pick up a spare battery and keep it freshly charged and on-hand if you plan on using Live View or wish to shoot movies.

The table above shows the number of shots the Canon 6D is capable of (on a fully-charged rechargeable battery), based on CIPA battery-life and/or manufacturer standard test conditions.

(Interested readers can find an English translation of the CIPA DC-002 standards document here. (180K PDF document))