At the end of November last year, I picked up the Canon R6 Mark III (you can read my review here).  Since then, I’ve been continuing my long term testing and getting better acquainted with the camera.  Historically I’ve found photographing high school athletics a great way to push performance boundaries and test limits.  So I’ve taken the R6 Mark III to a couple of varsity basketball games at my local high school.  Coupled with my RF 70-200 f2.8, I’ve been pretty impressed with the R6 Mark III.  Here’s some samples from last nights game – all taken at ISO 5000 and a shutter speed north of 1/1200.  I also took these in the R63’s fastest possible electronic shutter shooting mode (with pre-continuous mode active) which effectively reduces bit depth to

READ NOISE VERSUS SHOT NOISE

Experimenting with the R6 Mark III and it’s dual gain ISO capabilities has helped me better understand the difference between read noise versus write noise as it pertains to ISO.  The mistake here is thinking that a dual gain sensor like the R6 Mark III will make images look cleaner at higher ISO settings – it won’t.  I’ve shot games at both 5000 ISO and 6400 ISO and the 6400 ISO images were noticeably noisier.  Where the R63’s dual gain sensor actually helps you is with shadow recovery.   At ISO 100–400, modern full-frame cameras have great image quality… as long as exposure is correct.  But if you underexpose at low ISO and try to rescue it later, you’ll run into:

• rough shadow grain

• “crunchiness”

• banding / pattern noise

• ugly color blotches in dark areas

That ugliness is mostly read noise / downstream electronics noise.  Dual gain (high conversion gain mode) is designed to reduce that.  Think of it this way:  Dual gain doesn’t help reduce noise in a well exposed high ISO shot.   It changes the penalty for being underexposed.  So if you have to:

• Push exposure +1.5 to +3 stops
• Lift shadows +50 to +100
• Raise blacks
•  Apply strong color correction in dark tones

The dual gain sensor will help you above above ~800 ISO, per testing by DP Review.

The noise in these photos at ISO 5000 was prominent but quite controllable using Noise Reduction in Lightroom at about 35% – about the same as I see with similar images taken with my R5 Mark II.