Using Canon R6 in full frame versus cropped mode? (1 Viewer)

[Aliks]

Background, I use an EF 100-400 mark 2 zoom lens with the Canon R6, always shooting raw.

One of the R6 options is Full Frame versus crop at 1.6x (or other aspect ratios), and some articles suggest that choosing 1.6x is equivalent to adding a 1.6 telephoto converter. In theory this is an advantage for bird photography as the bird is normally centred in the shot and you don't really care about losing the edges of the photo.

I understand that you are just narrowing the field of view ie throwing away the edges of the image, and that the image you capture is "stretched" over exactly the same number of pixels in the camera sensor. So in a sense you are just doing an optical zoom in the camera as opposed to zooming in on your computer later.

However, the bird was likely some distance away so you want to severely crop the image anyway when you come to process the raw image. So in cropped mode, what you see in the viewfinder is "magnified" and maybe easier to line up, and maybe easier to choose the right exposure/ISO/aperture settings based on what the viewfinder shows you.

But is there a price to pay?

Are you losing contrast, losing light, slowing down the auto focus? If so, then why would Canon offer these cropping options if there was no benefit.

Apologies in advance if I am talking rubbish, but the key question is whether to shoot birds in full frame or shoot 1.6x cropped.

 

[stevo]

Your losing megapixels by putting the camera in apsc,which I believe in this camera your get a 9mp image.The lens you have supports a 1.4tc & I think you'd be better off going down this route(providing it's a fairly sunny day)

 

[Barred Wobbler]

Background, I use an EF 100-400 mark 2 zoom lens with the Canon R6, always shooting raw.

One of the R6 options is Full Frame versus crop at 1.6x (or other aspect ratios), and some articles suggest that choosing 1.6x is equivalent to adding a 1.6 telephoto converter. In theory this is an advantage for bird photography as the bird is normally centred in the shot and you don't really care about losing the edges of the photo.

I understand that you are just narrowing the field of view ie throwing away the edges of the image, and that the image you capture is "stretched" over exactly the same number of pixels in the camera sensor. So in a sense you are just doing an optical zoom in the camera as opposed to zooming in on your computer later.

However, the bird was likely some distance away so you want to severely crop the image anyway when you come to process the raw image. So in cropped mode, what you see in the viewfinder is "magnified" and maybe easier to line up, and maybe easier to choose the right exposure/ISO/aperture settings based on what the viewfinder shows you.

But is there a price to pay?

Are you losing contrast, losing light, slowing down the auto focus? If so, then why would Canon offer these cropping options if there was no benefit.

Apologies in advance if I am talking rubbish, but the key question is whether to shoot birds in full frame or shoot 1.6x cropped.

I tried using the 1.6 crop mode on my R5 the first time I took it out and not since - it's not worth the bother. The only 'gains' are a smaller file size to save a few MP in storage capacity and you are maybe making life a little easier for your eye detection if the edges of the photo might otherwise make it hunt..

As far as the image goes, you're effectively just doing a digital crop, excluding the pixels around the 4 edges of the photo, which you would probably be doing in post anyway, but not always, depending on what you want out of the composition.

Alongside that loss of pixels you lose flexibility in framing or cropping the subject in post, you don't have any increase in pixels on the subject, therefore you don't get any more detail. If you're photographing, for instance, highly active shore birds at close range on a beach or birds in flight, you're just making it harder for youself in keeping the subject tracked than it would be if you had the full frame in view. As Stevo says, the crop mode is no substitute for a teleconverter, which truly does give you more pixels on the same subject. It might have its uses, but they aren't very 'useful' in practice.

(It did certainly have one indirect use, in that it helped me make my mind up about buying the R5 in the first place, because the R5's 45MP cropped gives about 17.5MP, roughly equivalent to my old 7D Mk 1, therefore convincing me that the step from APSC to full frame would not be a noticable loss in useful pixels when compared to the 20MP of the 7D II I was coming from.)

 

[Aliks]

Many thanks, I went back to full frame on my most recent trip.