Time to upgrade, but there are so many good cameras... (R8 vs R vs R6)

[goudd]

Hi all,

I have been enjoying photography more and more over the last few years and I am thinking it is time to upgrade. I spend a lot of time hiking, offroading, and taking some water sports photography. I really enjoy adventure photgraphy and this is a hobby to me, but I want to upgrade from my Canon t4i. I want to stick to Canon as I have a 70-300mm EF 4-5.6 II USM lens I like, EF 16-35mm F4L, and hope to find a second hand EF 24-70 F2.8L II lens soon.

I was looking at the Canon eos R (30MP), R8 (24MP), and R6 (20MP) for a body upgrade. I am primarily a landscape photographer with sports photography (for fun) making up 10-20% of my still shots and a very small portion being video. I understand that coming from the Rebel T4i any of these are going to be a great upgrade, but I'm looking for help trying to figure out which body may suit my style of photography a bit better.

Some common arguments seem to be the R has an older sensor and not as good autofocus plus heavily cropped video, but has a nice amount of MP plus good bang for buck. R8 has a newer sensor/processor, solid video capabilites, but has a tiny battery and a poor control setup. The R6 has dual card slots, a bigger battery, IBIS, solid ergonomics and controls, but is older and has an older sensor and less pixels. Hoping to find some real world experience and get pointed in the right direction. Trying to keep the budget under control when finding bodies secondhand so looking at these 3 mirrorless full frame cameras.

[shadowsports]

Greetings ,

Welcome to the community. We will do our best to help.  You mentioned, "keep the budget under control".  

There is a pretty large price disparity between the three cameras you're considering. Can you please provide an actual dollar value for budget?  Between those three, I would be considering the R8 or R6 based on the type of photography you're looking to do.  Landscape, some action and 10-20% video.  

[justadude]

Adding to Rick's advice...

I've owned a number of Canon bodies over the years.  The five bodies that had the larger LP-E6N batteries were not necessarily "better" than the three I've owned using the smaller LP-E17 batteries... but the larger batteries and their extra shooting power made a big difference at times.  I'm also mostly a landscape photographer, but I also shoot sports from time to time.  On the sports outings, we were expected to shoot at least 5,000 images for the events, and often closer to 10,000.  The little batteries just didn't hold up as well.  I would go through 3 times as many of the E17's as I would the E6N's.  Same holds true for hiking around for the day doing landscape work... but of course not as many shots.

Also, is any of your landscape work done on cold (winter) days or nights?  It wasn't uncommon to only get 200 shots on the small batteries when shooting on a 20 degree day.  Of course the larger batteries would still be affected by the cold, but I could still get 500 shots out of each.

Let us know your budget, please.  In addition to used second hand... be sure to check out Canon's refurbished bodies.  I bought my R8 back in January for $999.  It's basically a brand new camera, same warranty and everything.