LearningCameras.com now with Product Reviews of the latest camera gear, bodies, and lenses

Jan. 10, 2013 - PRLog -- Learning Cameras is now releasing new Product Review sections to help potential buyers with their photography, videography, and media related purchases. With a shopping adviser tool to help narrow down your choices further based on category and needs, as well as a forum for you to discuss your goals with other photographer, LearningCameras.com has the latest tools to help you obtain your gear. Product reviews, news, and deals are our primary focus and these new tools will greatly help your business or hobby take shape. Knowing what to purchase, where to purchase, and when to purchase will help you save time and money by finding you the best deals and reviews to back up the products.  
Our latest product reviews are from the newest equipment such as the Canon 24-70 f/4 IS. Excerpts include the following. While the 24-105mm f/4 IS needed an update due to its lackluster performance, the change to a 24-70mm focal length was not what was initially rumored though it is consistent with what Canon does with the 70-200mm series. Also part of this new upgrade was a hefty price upgrade, not so much from the retail price of the 24-105mm f/4 IS, but because the 24-105 can be found at greatly reduced prices due to the packaging of this as the kit lens in so many Canon cameras. Either way, this lens is now here and here to stay so let's take a look at the performance this has to offer. All shots were taken with the Canon 5D Mark III.
A Canon 6D Review also stated: It may have been a little behind the Nikon D600 but it is here and here to stay. With Canon discontinuing the 5D mark II, it is clear that the Canon 6D is here to fill the cheaper full frame void that the 5D mark II is leaving behind. However, can this new smaller, cheaper body fill this void successfully or will it merely leave you wanting more. When Canon first announced this camera, the spec sheet was mostly a disappointment. Many specs fell way behind the rumors and even fell behind the Nikon D600 in some areas. However, the spec sheets are now a thing of the past and the real camera body is here to use so enough with the specs, let's find out some real life results. All tests were performed using the newCanon 35mm f/2 IS which was also recently reviewed.
Canon has definitely developed a theme with controls for its bodies, however, some items have always been subject to change. For the Canon 6D, much of the inspiration appears to have come from the smaller, cheaper Canon 60D. The 1/4000 shutter speed limitation, the 1/160th sync speed, and the 97% viewfinder coverage are examples of the 6D failing in the spec sheet compared to other pro cameras. The layout is similar to the 60D with a D-Pad combined with the scroll wheel to replace the thumb joystick in the 7D, 5D, and 1D bodies. However, some things are still missing even from the 60D. The no longer present articulating screen will be missed in this style of camera. I loved being able to shoot from low or high angles with flip out screen and there is really nothing better than this style screen when shooting video. However, the 6D also did not get the new larger 3.2” screen of the 5D mark III and was instead given a smaller 3” model.The other most upsetting missing option is the lack of a white balance button or programmable alternative. The 60D was also missing this button, however, the ‘SET’ button could easily be programmed to fill this void yet this option was unfortunately removed from the Canon 6D.
Changing the white balance required entering the Q menu and navigating to this setting. Build quality however has been improved. Much of this camera has a metal chassis and the overall fit and finish feel great. Not quite to the quality of the 7D and 5D3, but very close. Also unfortunate is how little is upgraded from the 60D in a camera more than double the price. The camera operation gains a bit more features for AF in the menu, more like the 7D, and also adds micro focus adjustments and magnification options. I was glad to see up to 7 shots of auto bracketing which HDR lovers will appreciate. These are definitely helpful but are merely settings upgrades. There is still only 1 card slot, no programmable function button, an almost unusable programmable DOF button, and no additional video controls such as live volume adjustments and headphone out. On the SD card slot, i’m not going to let Canon get away with this. This should have been included in this model for several reasons. The first is that files on these cameras are getting large. Video files over a couple of minutes are 4GB files with each RAW photo ranging from 20-35MB. These large files can easily fill up cards in a single shoot and having overflow or better organization (pictures to 1 card and video to another) are invaluable. Also, some events such as weddings, some vacations, birth of a child...things of that nature warrant backup and I cannot describe how much better it is to have backup copies on separate cards for such events. Nikon offers this in every camera from the D7000 up and it is about time that Canon makes this a standard feature in a $2,000 camera. The menu layout for the 6D is an interesting one. For the 5D mark III’s complicated menu option, canon adopted multiple tabs for each setting and organized it in a clean way to make it less confusing. The 6D unfortunately splits the menu tabs into single tabs and had so many tabs it looked daunting from the 1st look. Also, some of the tabs contained as few as 2 options leading me to wonder why Canon did not try to combine some of these. Everything else about the menu worked well. However, there were no options to program white balance into any of the custom controls and given the lack of a physical button, this was a huge minus. We had this ability in the 60D so i’m not sure why Canon left this out. Also, we could not use custom file naming which can be a needed feature if you have multiple of the same camera bodies.
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