When you use DPReview links to buy products, the site may earn a commission. The Canon EOS R6 III promises 33MP resolution and decently fast readout speeds from an FSI CMOS sensor. Photo: Mitchell Clark We've received a production standard Canon EOS R6 III and have put it through our standard studio tests.
As we work on our final reviews of 2025, the Canon looks likely to be the last camera we'll be able to complete testing on.
Our test scene is designed to simulate a variety of textures, colors, and detail types you'll encounter in the real world. It also has two illumination modes, full even light and low directional light, to see the effect of different lighting conditions.
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As you might hope, the Canon captures more detail than its 24MP rivals, and comparable amounts to its 33MP Sony peer, while also matching the color response of the EOS R6 II. The slightly richer, more yellowy pinks than the Sony and Nikon suggest it'll give the skin tone response that many Canon users have come to enjoy.
The detail difference is more apparent in the processed Raws, where the Canon and Sony present the horizontal lines in the doorway in a similar manner, whereas the R6 II and Nikon Z6III can't. Interestingly, the Nikon presents a convincing but completely spurious representation of the vertical lines above the door, while the EOS R6 II represents similar thick lines horizontally: both the result of aliasing.
At mid-to-high ISO there's little to choose between any of these cameras in terms of noise. As you creep towards the very highest ISOs the gap starts to open up, but it's only in the camera's extended 102,400 setting that the difference becomes clear. Even then, this is unlikely to be the difference between the images from some of these cameras being usable and others not: they're all going to be pretty hard to salvage.
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In terms of dynamic range it peforms exactly as we might expect. There's plenty of scope to lift the shadows with all these cameras. There's a tiny bit more read noise coming from the Canon, which makes itself known if you delve really deep into the files.
It's also worth noting that the noise that is visible appears slightly smeared, rather than as individual points, which could be indicative of noise reduction. Our scene has plenty of fine detail, much of it with low contrast, if you want to download the files and see if you think it'll have any impact when processed with your preferred workflow.
Switching to electronic shutter mode sees the camera drop to 12-bit sensor readout, which has the predictable effect of curtailing the dynamic range of the Raws (the reduction in available values to encode the shadows presents as quantization noise).
Our ISO Invariance test suggests this is a dual gain sensor that switches to its higher gain step around ISO 800. There's very little benefit to raising ISO above that point, but opportunity to keep ISO down to protect highlights.
Overall, there's no sign of any nasty surprises to undermine the R6 III's performance promises.
. dpreview.com2025-11-25 18:00