It's no surprise that the inexpensive Rebel T6 is mainly made of plastic, making the camera very light. It's possible to carry it around in a purse on your shoulder for a full day and not curse the day you ever picked up a camera. That said, I don't like its chances should it suddenly meet a sidewalk by accident.
Canon keeps it simple with its entry-level class, and that's a very good thing. The camera's Quick Control menu is large and easy-to-read even in sunny conditions. For those who'd rather hand off most decisions to the camera, full auto modes pare options way back to the most basic. In more advanced modes, a single control dial on the camera's shoulder and the Av+/- button are used to control shutter speed, aperture value and exposure compensation. Beginners likely won't be intimidated moving into Program mode, and advanced users can quickly change most core settings.
Being a DSLR, the Canon T6 offers a real, live optical viewfinder for image composition. Plenty of photographers prefer the experience of an optical viewfinder over composing on a camera's LCD or an EVF, and the T6's viewfinder does just fine. However, it falls short of a 100% view so you might find yourself wondering how those little distracting details crept into the edges of your photo, but that's just the price you pay for a low-cost camera – very few entry-level DSLRs offer such luxuries as a 100% OVF.
The T6 does offer Live View shooting via the rear screen, but you might want to avoid that for a couple of reasons. Autofocus is painfully slow and the camera's interface isn't well optimized for shooting using the screen. Even if you were willing to put up with all of that, you'd find your battery draining a lot faster. The Rebel T6i and T6s above the T6 provide a more sophisticated Live View experience with faster hybrid autofocus and touchscreen control [for more money, of course].
Autofocus
The T6 offers a 9-point AF system which is now several generations old. It’s reliable, but it predictably slows down in low light, and continuous focus on moving subjects doesn't impress. Live view focusing speeds are downright slow across the board. AF point selection is a single button press away, but with the limited AF coverage, you'll probably resort to just using the center point. However, its competitors with touch-to-focus capability, face detection, 20x as many focus points, and faster focusing in live view will likely seem much more intuitive to someone who’s used to shooting with a smartphone.
Image quality
In good lighting, the Canon Rebel T6 takes very nice photos right out of the box. Colors are pleasant and punchy, albeit with a tendency to over-saturation that can look heavy-handed. In low light, skin tones tend to render a bit green as well, but that's easily corrected in post-processing software. Detail rendering at pixel-level isn't great, something not helped by a cheap kit lens.
The camera's metering system will pick a perfectly nice exposure in most situations, but when confronted with very high contrast scenes, the camera will tend to overexpose highlights quite a bit. T6 users would be well advised to get to know and love the camera's exposure compensation dial. Since the camera is capable of Raw capture, exposing to protect the highlights will give you more flexibility in post processing to bring back shadow detail.
The camera offers a 100-6400 ISO range, with an option to expand the upper limit to 12,800. Things look pretty noisy all the way up at the top, but it really doesn't do any worse than its competitors.
A shutter speed of 1/125sec was fast enough to freeze the lazy jerk pictured below mid-yawn. At ISO 1600 this straight out of camera JPEG shows the effects of noise reduction on said lazy jerk's fur. Is it purrfectly [SORRY] sharp and acceptable for sharing on Facebook? You bet. But you'll see a noticeable loss of fine detail if you examine it at 100%, or if you like making large posters of your pets. Which is none of our business if you do.
A savvy T6 owner could easily make more of his or her camera's capabilities by adding a lens with a wider aperture to the mix. The kit lens is just fine as an all-'rounder in good light, but when light levels fade you'll find its F3.5 maximum aperture somewhat limiting. The very affordable, barely-there Canon EF 40mm F2.8 or EF-S 24mm F2.8 would be great places to start looking as they're each under $200 new.
The experience of taking the shot below is one that I think sums up shooting with the Canon T6 pretty well. I liked how the shadows and colors at the 'blue hour' were looking on this particular night, so I stepped back from the festivities to take a photo. Did I mention I was at a beer tasting? I had tasted a couple of beers at that point, so I left a lot of exposure decision-making up to the camera. Sure enough, it got me the shot I was looking for, and the camera's saturation-happy processing serves the final image well.
There's obviously a lot of noise in the OOC JPEG, and noise reduction has done a number on the tree leaves in the background. I could tease out a better image from the Raw file if I wanted to, but I've also got a JPEG that I'm happy with and able to post to social media thanks to the camera's Wi-Fi.
Wi-Fi
The Canon T6's Wi-Fi connectivity can be used to transfer images from the camera to your smartphone, as well as operate the camera remotely from your phone. It's all handled through the Canon Camera Connect app, available for iOS and Android. Initial setup takes a minute or two, but after that you won't need to enter a password to get connected and the process is pretty quick. The app is intuitive and straight-to-the-point.
I would have liked direct access to the Wi-Fi function by way of a button on the back or top panel; as it is now, you'll have to dig into the camera's menus to find it. The T6 also offers NFC as a means of connecting quickly, but that function only works with Android NFC-enabled phones at the moment. iPhone users like me are out of luck.
Video
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Video resolution tops out at 1080/30p. Clip quality isn't great – colors look fine but detail rendering, especially in areas like the grass above looks a bit mushy. Focus is limited to single point AF. It’s possible to enable the shutter button to re-acquire focus while shooting video, but the camera will spend a great deal of time hunting for focus. Some lenses, including the kit 18-55mm, will also be heard on the audio track as they try to to find their subject.
Manual exposure options can be unlocked for video shooting, which is neat, but I can’t help feeling that an entry-level user interested in video would be better served by a mirrorless camera with continuous AF while shooting.