Canon Announces the 6D, Its Smallest, Lightest, and Cheapest Full Frame DSLR

The leaked photos were authentic and the specs were spot on: Canon announced its new 6D DSLR this morning, the smallest, lightest, and cheapest full-frame camera in its lineup. At 690g, it’s 20% lighter than the 5D Mark III. The camera is Canon’s entry in the emerging “affordable full-frame” DSLR segment, which Nikon entered last week with its similarly named and similarly priced D600.

The Canon 6D features a 20.2 megapixel full frame sensor, an ISO range of 100-25600 (expandable to 50-102400), an 11-point AF system with a high-precision center cross-type point, 63-zone metering, 1080p HD video recording, 4.5fps continuous shooting, vibration-based dust removal, a shutter rated to 100K actuations, and a 3-inch LCD screen.

As the rumors stated, the camera offers built-in Wi-Fi and GPS. The wireless transmitter allows the camera to beam images to wireless devices, whether it’s another Wi-Fi-capable camera, a smartphone, or a computer. It can be paired with a new Canon EOS Remote app for iOS and Android devices for remote operation.

The GPS unit inside the camera allows photographers to geotag their photos, recording the longitude, latitude, elevation, and UTC time inside the images’ EXIF data.

For non-traditional photographers, the 6D offers some interesting creative modes. One is the built-in HDR feature, which lets you easily create HDR photos by shooting three bracketed exposures and then combining the images in-camera.

Want to shoot clone photos without Photoshop? No sweat. There’s a Multiple Exposure mode that lets you quickly shoot composite images, capturing 9 separate photos and stitching them into a single photo. It offers four different compositing modes: Additive, Average, Bright and Dark.

Here’s a video introducing the camera, which Canon calls “your entry into the full-frame world”:

The Canon 6D will cost $2,099 when it hits store shelves in December 2012.

As we stated yesterday, although the 6D is a whopping $1,400 less than its older sibling, the 5D Mark III, it’ll face fierce competition from its outdated older sibling, the 5D Mark II. The Mark II is still in production, and costs a couple hundred less. The 6D’s advantages over the Mark II are its portability, its faster speed (better processor and fps), its wider ISO range, and its special features.

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