Canon EOS R6 Mark III Review | The Perfect Midlevel Camera?

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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here at last to give you another Canon review and I want to start off by
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saying a big thank you to two different sources. First of that being Jim from Canon Canada for
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getting me a loaner of the Canon EOS R6 Mark III along with the new RF 50mm f1.4 L VCM lens
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which I will be doing a review of as well. So I also want to thank Kedar from Camera Canada who
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set me up with Jim and got me that connection point and so hopefully now I will be able to give
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you a little bit more Canon reviews moving ahead and so I'm really really appreciative of that
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To the matter at hand, today we are looking at the third generation of the Canon R6 line
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which is Canon's mid-level camera, but has been steadily creeping up into an increasingly
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full-function camera that can really do a little bit of everything. This is a jack-of-all-trades
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camera, and at a price point of right under $2,800. While that is $300 more expensive than what the
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previous generation was. We have moved to a camera that has jumped from 24 to 33 megapixels of
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resolution that now has the kind of video feature set that previously we've only kind of seen on
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cine level cameras. And on top of that has an extremely robust autofocus system that will allow
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it to do tracking and now vastly improved buffers that allow it to stack up a whole lot more images
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and become much more useful even as a dedicated sports camera. This is a camera that does pretty
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much everything quite well. And today we're going to dive into the various aspects of performance
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and see whether or not this should be your next camera. So let's dive in together and let's take a
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look. So taking a look at the camera body itself, very, very similar in terms of the overall size
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and layout compared to the Mark II. Again, we have a grip that fits very nicely in the hand here
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Big thing here is that because the camera is a little bit wider than Sony cameras, You have room for your knuckles to actually fit when you have lenses on there as opposed to rubbing up against it
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So I do like the way that the grip fits my hand here. The grip is 88.4 millimeters deep
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The camera itself is 138.4 millimeters wide and it is 98.4 millimeters tall
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It weighs in at 699 grams or 25.7 ounces. That is with the battery and memory cards inserted
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And so it has gained 19 grams relative to the last generation
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but I think that with the advantages we've gotten here, that is 19 grams that is well spent
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Now, as far as some of the basic specifications, there's not a lot of difference here when it
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comes to either the LCD or the viewfinder itself. The EVF is a 3.69 million dot unit, but it is nice
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and clear, and it's got a refresh rate of 120 frames per second, so that makes it very useful
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Our touchscreen here is fully articulating and it is a 1.62 million dot unit. It is three inch
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touchscreen. Control scheme here is the same. We've got a total of three control dials or command
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dials here, here, and then around the set button at the back. We do have a joystick that has the
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same kind of feel as the one on the Mark II. It is clickable to give you one more, you know
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kind of customizable point in terms of a function. Up front, we do have one, the depth of field
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preview button, but it's a customizable button that can be assigned any kind of value that you like
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You can see here, we do have the shutter that comes down that protects the sensor itself from
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getting dust on it. I find this to be a very effective thing. And I also appreciate the fact
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it works a lot faster than what Sony cameras do. Just to give you a quick look at that
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on, and then when going off, it clicks down quicker and not quite as much pause as what we
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see on Sony there. I appreciate the fact that we have dual setup options, and so we can switch
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between stills and video setup. The back is very, very familiar. If you're familiar at all with
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Canon cameras, button placement, and quantity of buttons, pretty much the same. Not really any kind
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of difference there. I complained about the swapping, putting between the stills and video
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toggle over here and moving the power over here because, you know, my camera that I'm most familiar
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with is the R5 and, you know, it was opposite on that. But at least Canon is sticking with this and
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this does allow for one-handed operation. So, no complaints so long as they stick with it, which
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they have been doing here. Up front you have or on top we have a mode dial. There's no top-mounted
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LCD, but I actually really like a mode dial. It's just the most logical way to access things
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we do have our video record button placed here and then there's another kind of custom button
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that is up there the shutter itself is nicely responsive no issues with that on the side we do
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have one significant tweak to the port structure here and one thing I'll make my complaint about
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and that is that rather than nice clean opening ports we have these kind of flaps that I just
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I don't particularly like. I prefer actual port, a door that opens up, and so it's just neater
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but that's me. Big upgrade here is that we go from the micro HDMI to a full-size HDMI. Much
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better for regular video use, so I appreciate that. We've got USB-C, which you can do communication
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through. You can also use this for live streaming or as a webcam from the USB-C, and you can also
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charge the battery through that port as well, so long as you have a proper power delivery source
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which those become increasingly ubiquitous. We have a mic input, we have a headphone monitoring
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jack, and then we have a remote release port there. And so if you want to use a wired release
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you can do that there. Over on the other side, one other major improvement, and that is that
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rather than two SD slots, we now have a CFexpress Type B, and then we have the UHS-II compatible SD
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slot. That gives us some real advantages in terms of buffer depth. Buffer depth was, to me, the
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limiting principle with the Mark II, as to while you could get up to 40 frames per second in the
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electronic mode, that buffer would fill before two seconds passed. Now we have the ability to
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get 150 full-size RAWs at 40 frames per second. If you go to compact RAW, you can get up to 280
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or 330 JPEGs And if you shooting with the mechanical shutter at 12 frames per second you basically don have any kind of buffer limitations at all So here a look at the mechanical shutter and what it sounds like
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It is rated for 500,000 actuations, which is definitely a pro-level figure
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And then, of course, the electronic shutter is... there's no there's no shutter going down and so you'll just it's just very very quick 40 frames
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per second it also gives you a higher shutter limit up to 1 16 000th of a second at top and
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we have reduced rolling shutter down to about 13.2 milliseconds versus the 14.5 or 14.7
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milliseconds of the mark ii which means that there is less rolling shutter here battery has changed
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to a new standard. It is the new LP-E6P battery. Now, this is backwards compatible with the older
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batteries. However, there are a couple of functions that won't be available, mostly
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communication-based functions. And so you might want to get a second one of these batteries though
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In a pinch, you can use your old batteries as well. There's also a new battery grip that is
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available. Same kind of battery grip. It's like for the, I believe the R5 Mark II, but just be
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aware of that as well. In-body image stabilization has also been improved a bit up from a rated
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maximum of eight stops up to 8.5 stops. And so that is measured with the 24 to 105 F2.8 LIS
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However, I tested with the 70 to 200 F4 LIS and I got this one second shot at 200 millimeters
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which is pretty close to eight stops. So very, very impressive. Overall, our wireless
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communications are slightly improved just in terms of just a little bit faster Wi-Fi. It is Wi-Fi 5
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not Wi-Fi 6, but definitely improving there. This is a nice, tough magnesium alloy body with a
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thorough weather sealing. One other thing that I will note is that while I don't love that on Canon
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we are really restricted when it comes to full-frame first or third-party lenses, I will note
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that my two contraband Samyang RF mount lenses, 85mm f1.4 and 14mm f2.8, they do still work
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fortunately, and they're still pretty nice lenses. And so I do wish that that would change. But
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overall, this is a body that feels nice in the hands. It's got good touch responsiveness
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It has fast shutter, has very good buffer depth. Overall, nice. So let's talk autofocus
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Now, the Mark II of the R6 already had a really outstanding autofocus system
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For that matter, for its time, the R6 was impressive as well. But in the R6 Mark II, essentially it was upgraded to the autofocus system that had previously been found in the R3
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However, it didn't have the same kind of processing speed and power, and so tracking wasn't quite as capable
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And of course, there was also a limitation when it came to the buffer depth, because it was relying on just SD cards for storage
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on the mark 3 we have on paper the same autofocus type system but now there is more processing power
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and and while it is technically the same processor it is the newest version of that processor and has
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more processing power generally and on top of that it has improved storage medium that allows
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the buffers now to be a whole lot deeper so what i find is that tracking here is it's a really
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fantastic experience. When tracking, not only is the whole thing effective in terms of moving all
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across the frame, because of the Canon's dual pixel technology, essentially there is the ability
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to sense or focus point, if you want to call it that, which is not hardly relevant at this point
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but essentially every pixel in the frame is able to sense movement. And so what we have is the
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ability to track all across the frame, basically with no exception. And so what I found is that
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not only is it effective, no matter kind of where the subject is, and of course when you're trying to track action
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I use Nala here for my test, and so as she moves, I'm trying to adapt to that, but she's able to
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I'm reacting after she's already moving, so that means she's not always staying right in the center of the frame
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And what I found is that shots were well-focused, even if she was right off near the frame
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I also really love the interaction of Canon's focus process, where you can see the focus moving around
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and so it gives you confidence that you're staying locked onto your subject. And of course, the results back that up as well
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Now, you have two different options when it comes to your burst rate. You can use the mechanical shutter and get 12 frames per second
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which is fine, you know, about average for a camera like this. But if you switch into the electronic shutter, you're getting up to 40 frames per second
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which is exceptionally high for a camera in this class. Now, the overall quality of those files when you switch to that electronic shutter
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You're moving from 14 down to 12 bit and so it's not quite as good but still very very usable, still very good files
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So what that means is that not only can you now track action but you can track it long enough to get the shot that you want
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Making this a very very high quality camera when it comes to actually working as a sports camera or a wildlife camera or all of those various things
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On top of that, we now have the ability, it's inherited another bit of technology, and that's the ability to register faces, up to 10 faces
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And so that means that it's going to give priority to those. So if it's someone that you're wanting to shoot, even in a crowd, it's going to prioritize focusing on their face once you have set that up
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And so obviously that is extremely useful as well. You also have a pre-capture option now to where as you get about a half second of, which will give you 20 frames of recorded, even before the shutter is fully depressed
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Again, helping you to make sure that you get the shot and you don't miss it. And I feel like there's less of a penalty now that there's a deep enough buffer to where you're not wanting to waste that pre-capture on, you know, and then not having enough time to hold it down the shutter to actually capture image later on
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And so just in so many ways, this is a wonderful evolution of what we saw in the Mark II
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And now this is a fully functional camera that I think is going to be very useful for basically any type of photography you want to do with it
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Fantastic. All right, let's talk video specs for a moment because this is an area of massive improvement over the previous generation camera
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Kind of the headline big ticket item here is that now we have access to 7K open gate video
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Open gate video has become very popular because it is shooting the full 4.3 frame, which gives you a lot of different cropping options while still maintaining a very high resolution
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And so you can go to that 16 crop but you can also crop into a vertical 9 and still get very good resolution or whatever other crop factor you want You basically have just a lot of potential for cropping it down
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And so as mentioned, you can shoot up to 7K there. Then you can shoot in a more typical MP4 format at 7K up to 60 frames per second
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You can shoot 4K oversampled, which is becoming increasingly popular because it gives you such
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very high resolution, great looking footage. You can get that oversampled up to 4K60
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And then if you go to a regular non-oversampled 4K footage, you can get all the way up to 120 frames per second for that slow motion
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So a lot of really useful things. There are tons of codecs and bitrate options here
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You have options between a UHD or 16.9 or a DCI crop, which I think is a 17.10
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And so there's a lot of options there. there is full raw options and then there are light raw options and so just be aware that if
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you're shooting in some of those modes raw mode for example you're going to need a big memory card
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because it's going to fill really really fast that footage is very very high bit rate but it's there
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and so that you can use it if you need obviously as always there are going to be APS-C modes
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available as well which can be useful to allow you if you want to shoot you know APS-C lenses
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on there, maybe to get an extra wide angle of view could be useful there as well. Now, practically
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there is no recording limit. That used to be a limitation on Canon cameras, the 29-59 limit
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but that's no longer the case. Now you're going to be limited essentially by how much storage
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information you have, or in a rare case, maybe by overheating. Though, if you're shooting in a
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climate-controlled environment and not an already hot environment, it's more likely that you'll run
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out of storage room before you hit any overheating issues. Essentially, when you're shooting at
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you know, typical 4K, there's not really any limitations. If you're shooting up at, you know
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those raw formats, that open gate footage, you're probably going to run into a heating issue after
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a while. But again, it's just as likely that you're going to run out of storage space. So
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it's doing quite a good job of solving a lot of those heat related issues. I certainly didn't run
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into anything during my test, but then again, it is winter in Canada. So not exactly overheating
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territory here. You've got, of course, all of the log options now that's become fairly ubiquitous
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but what is changed now for this is that you have the ability to input LUTs in the camera
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including uploading and registering user LUTs, and then even having those LUTs applied to the
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footage coming off the camera. And so it could save you a grading stop, you know, moving ahead
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And so all of that is useful. Focus breathing compensation is there. And even a pre-record option, kind of like the pre-record for burst rate. And even when it's kind of partially depressed, start recording and so that you can help to not miss any kind of shot
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And so there is a ton of video options. And if you want kind of a deep dive into the actual video side of things, you know, watch
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someone like Gerald Undone, who that's kind of his focus. I'm more stills into the spectrum
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And but suffice it to say, this is a remarkably robust, even cine camera for someone that
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doesn't want to spend the big bucks. Very, very impressive. Everything that Canon has loaded into the R6 Mark III
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All right, let's take a look at the sensor performance here. And so first of all, we're going to take a look at dynamic range
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So this is the scene setup that I use for testing dynamic range
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So basically what we're trying to do is we're trying to see how close to this base ISO and basically perfect exposure that we can get as we begin to overexpose and underexpose and then recover the image
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Now, modern cameras are quite good at shadow recovery. So here we're underexposed by four stops here on the left
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But and then I have added those four stops back in at post. And so if we take a look here, we can see that we've recovered colors, all look good
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There's very, very little noise. Even here, there's not much noise out in the shadow area
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Detail looks good. There's no color cast, no real issues with color blotching or anything
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And we've recovered all of our color swatches. Now, if we push it one more stop, and so in this case, we are recovering from five stops of underexposure
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You can see we're starting to get some noise here, a little bit of discoloration here in the camera grip
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You can see kind of some green and magenta blotches. And we can also see some additional noise that's popping up here
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The shadows aren't as inky or consistent. So, I mean, that's still probably acceptable in some situations
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But four stops is kind of the practical limit if you want to get like a perfectly clean recovery
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Now, we have less latitude as per usual in the other direction. So here we're overexposed by two stops
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And you can see that right now it looks like information has been lost from this timer face
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Some of the color swatches have faded, disappeared. Here when we recover by reducing this by two stops, we can see that it's actually done a nice clean job
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All the color swatches are back. If we look here in the timer face, we can see that it looks as it should
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And so we've got proper color. It's consistent there. There's not really any hot spots that are left
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the texture of the metal, all of that's been recovered. Here, the print on the book, it all
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looks fine. There is a more radical drop-off here though, between the two and three stop metric. And
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so we can see looking at the timer face, we just didn't get that color information back. So this is
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two stops. This is three stops. You can see that only in the shadow area do we get the proper color
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back. Some of these color swatches, they're not fully recovered. This green, for example, you can
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see again, just in the shadow area, did it bounce back? And some of these other swatches, they're
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just they're not quite there and so that is our practical limit some of these other colors are
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gone and then we have some hot spots where just like for example on the the slr face the texture
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is gone that's in a way that it was recovered at two stops so there's your practical limit there
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so in real world shooting if you're going to bias anyway do it towards under exposure and so here
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you can see i purposely under exposed by three stops but i could recover everything beautifully
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clean no problem similarly in that same scene if i overexpose by three stops you can see that it did
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not recover perfectly you can see there's this weird some weird colors there in the shadow there's
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lots of blown out hot spots here in the surface of the snow just information that we're not going
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to get back at the same level so the bias here on this sensor is towards under exposure it is a very
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useful amount of dynamic range here though it's not exceptionally good but it is it is very
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competitively good and so we can see in a shot like this I'm able to get a much more pleasing
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end result by recovering information in the sky while still retaining nice information in the shadows and just kind of generally brightening the image up And so there a very usable amount of dynamic range there
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So let's take a look at the resolution here. And so now at this, we have a 6960 by 4640 pixel resolution here
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So roughly 33 megapixels. And so that is obviously much more useful than the 24 megapixels before
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And what it means is that you just have more latitude for cropping. I could do a 16.9 crop here. I could go to a 1.1 crop
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And still in these images, there's a nice amount of information that is there
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You can see here that after this deep crop here, I'm working with about 17 megapixels
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which is still very usable, as you can see, a very decent amount of resolution
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And considering that the original 6D was only 20 megapixels, I've cropped fairly deep, and I'm not far off that resolution point
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So let's take a look at how it handles high ISO. And so starting off with our base ISO, this is obviously going to be our standard we want to keep as close as possible to
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So first of all, we'll take a look at how well it's holding up at ISO 800
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We would expect it to be pretty much identical to the base ISO in these shadow areas, you know, the darkness
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And then in these color swatches, we're not wanting to see any kind of noise popping up there
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This is one of the places where you'll start to see shadow noise. And then sometimes I'll see some pattern noise in this grip where it should be staying uniformly black
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But at ISO 800, no problem. How about if we jump up to ISO 3200
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If we look in here once again at the SLR face, you can see it looks largely similar
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Maybe not quite as much contrast, but we're not far off in looking at the shadow information
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It's still looking pretty inky out there. A little bit of additional noise, but not too bad
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up here in the color swatches. Looking pretty good other than just some fine pattern noise there
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so no big deal. Now, from ISO 3200 to ISO 6400, again, it's still quite clean. I have no real
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complaints here. A little bit more noise inside there. You can see in the color swatches
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very slightly more noise. Shadows are still pretty black, but you can see we're getting a
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little bit more noise pattern starting to show up here. That becomes more obvious at 12,800
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and now for the first time I feel like our shadows are starting to lift a little bit
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You can just see there's more kind of hot or uneven pixels there. A little bit of like white noise out there in what should be a black area
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By 25,600 that noise pattern is increasingly rough and the shadows are much less dark than what they were again
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because of that kind of snowy look in there. Now as we get towards the upper limits of 51,200 and then 64,000
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which is the highest in the native range. You can see that now, even at a global level
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we're seeing some of that noise pattern. We're seeing that the contrast is raised a little bit
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And if we look back in this zone, you can see it. It's too rough. It's not usable
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And what we're also seeing is some color blotchiness. You can see it, a little bit of pattern
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some green and magenta here in the grip. But over here at 64,000, it's quite bad
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And so I would not recommend going to these settings. To me, that's not really usable anymore
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Once again, I would say we have a sensor that has nice color rendition here
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This is no particular editing done to it. You can see the color saturation is nice and rich
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Here in this shot, here again, we've got, this is with the 50mm f1.4 LVCM lens
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Good contrast in detail, nice out of focus rendering. Once again, here we've got very nice looking colors in capturing this scene
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with accuracy, but also a little bit of panache there. Once again here, I kind of really like Canon Color for these kinds of scenes
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It's just kind of this rich palette that I'm really quite partial to
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And so, again, I'm quite happy with those colors. And again, here this looks accurate to me
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Also good detail from this sensor. And so in general, I would say that I am happy with what I'm getting out of it
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Once again, we see some good dynamic range here. but also we've got good details showing up, the whole image, it looks good
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So what's my conclusion? I continue to be very impressed with the cameras that Canon is producing
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And if they had an open policy when it comes to third-party lenses
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and the way that Sony and increasingly Nikon does, it probably would be the platform that I would be recommending
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because the cameras are really fantastic. And the R6 Mark III is really, I think, kind of encapsulates that beautifully
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It is that sticking point with the third-party lenses that I think is really the limiting factor with the Canon ecosystem generally right now
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And so if you're one of the people who doesn't like third-party lenses anyway, then Canon is a great option for you
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And if you're a Canon shooter already and you're already invested in this platform, the R6 Mark III is a fantastic camera
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For those of you that already own the Mark II, I would say that the primary reasons to upgrade would be
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if you're looking for more resolution than what you have right now. And then, of course, if you shoot video
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this is an incredibly fully functional video camera platform now at this point
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And I think that that's another compelling reason to upgrade to it. Outside of that, I mean, the Mark II is already a very effective camera
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And if 24 megapixels is enough for you, I think it remains a really great camera
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But if you're looking at this compared to other options, the Sony A7 Mark IV, which of course, as of today, the A7 Mark V has just been announced
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I haven't yet reviewed that camera, so that could be a compelling option. And then on the Nikon, you've got the Z6 Mark III
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Again, a compelling camera there, but I feel like the R6 Mark III definitely is going to stand perfectly tall amongst those options
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It is really an exceptional camera. and while the price point of $2,800 is more expensive than the previous generation
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you're also getting a lot more camera. And if you're looking for a budget sports camera
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this makes a very compelling argument for itself. And so I think it's certainly worth a look at that
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And again, as long as you're happy with the Canon policies when it comes to the lenses that are going to be available to you
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I think you're going to be delighted with the camera itself. If you want more information, you can check out my full text review
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which is linked in the description down below and it goes a little bit deeper into some of these areas
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so check that out. And of course there are some buying links down in the description as well
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if you're interested in looking at that. As always, thanks for watching. Have a great day and let the light in

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Canon EOS R6 Mark III Review | The Perfect Midlevel Camera?

Dustin Abbott