Equipment Review: Canon EOS Rebel T6

I have been asked recently about the type of camera I use for the pictures on this blog. There are two answers. First is my iPhone, it is easy and is almost always in my pocket. The second is our Canon Rebel T6.

If you are looking to get into photography or just want a better camera with a better zoom for nature photos, this is a great camera. This review will tell you why with limited technical jargon because this review is for the beginner.

Price

Right now on Amazon you can get this camera in various accessory bundles anywhere from $400 to $470. That’s not a bad price considering that most of these bundles come with at least one lens, sometimes two, a camera bug, straps and memory cards. I understand that the price tag can seem large, but the quality of camera is worth it. Also, diving off into any new hobby is going to be a little pricey. Always remember, it is less expensive in the long run to buy good equipment upfront so that you are not spending more money replacing cheap equipment farther down the road.

Check out some of the packages here and here.

Quality

I honestly did not know much about Canon when we got this camera but it is the brand my boyfriend grew up learning on and so we decided to go with what at least one of us knew. This camera has traveled with us down to the humid Texas coast to Galveston and it has hiked with us up the Ute Trail to the Alpine Visitor Center in Colorado. My stepmom has a slightly older version that she let us take to Alaska and it did not let us down going up the Inside Passage or whale watching or taking pictures of Denali both from the ground and from the air.

The Rebel can handle the different conditions like a champ. Also, I’m a little clumsy and not always careful and I have bumped this camera into a few things. I’m not saying it can take a lot of abuse and I’m not saying don’t be careful with your Canon but a slight bump here or there won’t destroy it.

Usability

I feel that this camera is fairly easy to use. In Alaska my sister and I typically kept it on the automatic mode where the camera judges the shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. The exception being when we were whale watching and increased the shutter speed to catch the humpbacks as they were rising out of the water while bubble net feeding.

To check out those pictures click here.

Changing the shutter speed and putting it on continuous burst were things that are fairly simple to learn to do on a Canon. Which brings me to my next section.

Learnability

Taking pictures is easy. Real photography is an art and most things that you read or watch out there will tell you that to be a great photographer you have to understand shutter speed, ISO, and aperture without blinking. There is a lot of truth to that, especially for professional photographers. However, not understanding them like the back of your hand does not mean that you can’t take amazing photos.

Knowing those aspects and the potential does help you to grow your photography skills. The Rebel T6 gives you that opportunity. When you have free time play with the shutter speed. See if you can catch a still shot of a hummingbird’s wings, try to capture individual drops of water as they splash from a fountain. If you want to lengthen the shutter speed, I highly recommend getting a tripod to help stabilize the camera to get clear shots.

Take a moment and shoot some pictures of your pet or your kids while messing with the aperture. Try and get that shot with a crisp foreground and a blurred background. Take some low light pictures and test the ISO. If you have questions watch a couple YouTube videos. There are a ton available.

The Rebel T6 is easy to play with the settings on. One setting just lets you mess with shutter speed, another just aperture and when you get bold check out manual mode where you can try playing with all three in tandem. If you just want to take easy shots, there is always the automatic setting. The Canon allows you to take a bad shot without regret, all it take up is a little memory card space. Go mess up a few times.

Other Features

Just a few little things that are nice of the T6. You can do both a single shot or continuous shooting. There are different delay setting for if you want to set the camera up on the tripod click the button and run to get in your spot for the group photo. Rebel T6 will take photos in RAW file format which gives you a lot of editing ability, but the files are large and take up massive amounts of storage space. There are other things you can do and mess with as far as color settings and such but that is something that you can leave until later in the learning process.

A neat feature of the Rebel T6 is that it gives off a Wi-Fi signal that allows you to connect it to your phone. From here you can download pictures you have taken to your phone and use your phone to click the shutter button from a short distance.

If you want to learn more about Canon, you can visit their site here.

I know this has been a long review. There is plenty more information out there on the T6, but to not overwhelm you I’m going to end here today. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. I’ll answer as best I can and if I don’t know the answer I can find out.

---

All pictures taken by Keltin Wiens with Rebel T6 and edited in Lightroom.

Instagram│Facebook│Twitter│Pinterest│YouTube