Best High ISO? Canon R5ii vs R3 vs R5 in-depth Test

Today we are testing the High ISO of the new Canon R5 mark ii and comparing it to the R3 and the OG R5. If you don't have time to watch, comment below with you questions and I'll summarise my findings for you.
Also, if you want access to the RAW files ask me below and I'll figure out a way to make them available.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be putting it head to head with my favourite camera, the R3, and my old first-gen R5. Subscribe to see what's coming, and comment if you would like me to test something specific!

Day 25 of the 30-day challenge. Video myself taking photos every day and upload the video and photos the same day!

These are the camera straps we make (use code JUSTIN)
This is the one I use:

[Makta]

The R3 is so underrated. Best Canon Camera imo

[hrw]

thanks for the vid... saving me money for the moment... staying with my 1dxIII

[darinl]

with most thigs, there are trade-offs. stacked sensors are known to have faster read-out speeds and less rolling shutter and the trade-off is they have more noise and less dynamic range. some people are saying the Mk2 has better high ISO performance for some reason.

[nip.pon]

Would it also be possible to compare the ISO with the Canon R6 Mark II compared to the Canon R5 Mark II??

[AdamBotond]

Great test! What you concluded is one of the reasons why I will go with the R3 instead of R5II. The other is the R3's 4K60 quality, which is oversampled.
Thanks for sharing!

[mareklesniak]

Thanks for comparison. Any chance to get those RAW files?

[howardholtzman]

Excellent tests. I'm going to wait for the R1 test before I buy.

[andycollins]

It would be interesting to include the R6 MkII in this test.

[ThePhotographerGuy]

Great comparison. Love the real-world shooting.

[mikede]

Wow...surprised the R3 did so well against the downsampled R5ii. I hope the R1 I preordered does as well as the R3 did in this video. Thanks for putting it together.

[TheBigBlueMarble]

Would it be a reasonable comparison to shoot these three cameras in absolute darkness and then compare the noise?

[dscottstoness]

How do you know that it's not that R3 LR converter is better than R5's ? I have done lots of testing and found R5 better than R5ii at 25k iso. But after applying denoise they are very close. Maybe the converter for R3 adds some denoise? I am also wondering whether the LR raw converter is tuned yet.

[evilZardoz]

Awesome! I've got the R5 and I've been disappointed with the high ISO performance for events (even when delivering low res exports from LR) vs. my 1DX II....

Had an R3 on loan for a weekend and shot an event with it and was blown away with how useful ISO 12800 and even 25600 was again. Was hoping for better results from the R5 II - I do notice that the high ISO images appear to retain more detail, and - the way they expose blue LEDs as shown from your images suggests they tend to be less purple than the R5 - a huge problem I've had in the past has been when shooting live events with blue LED lights that tend to expose as purple. I felt my photo skills went down the toilet ever since I moved to the R5...

I've been on the fence as to whether I pick up the R5 II (gripped is around 7200) vs an R1 at 10.5k - I'm already most of the way there, so I'm tempted to just go for the R1 at this point. After my recent experience with the R3, I would not be disappointed by moving to the R3 from the R5. My keeper rate and results for that event were back to where I was expecting them to be, and the camera was far more enjoyable to use. Still haven't heard much about the R1 vs R3 in terms of high ISO, but if there is any improvement at all on the R3, then I'm sold.

A secondhand R3 looks like a great deal right now for those low light situations such as bars and clubs. I just wish I had better blue colours vs. the R5 II (or the Sony cameras, which do blue very well).

Thanks for putting this together!

[artofwomenphotography]

just wondering when the limited strap will be available to those who preorder the R5 MK II. Still waiting to get mine

[TheBigBlueMarble]

As post-processing software becomes more and more powerful, and AI gets better and better at removing noise, sensor noise becomes less of a concern. An interesting offshoot of this is that more and more photographers are moving to shooting manual with auto ISO.

[JGZphotography]

Next time, please conduct the test without any Lightroom (LR) or Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) adjustments, and shoot in RAW format. This will allow us to make a true comparison. I have both the R5 Mark II and R3 cameras, and at 12800 ISO, I would estimate that the R3 performs about 1-stop better in terms of noise. However, when using a noise reduction application like Topaz Photo AI, the noise results are much closer together, and the detail is better on the R5 Mark II.

[rokg]

did you use mechanical shutter on all or electronic shutter?

[MilmidStudios]

The R5 looked better than the R5mkii at 3200

[johnykw]

I suggest don’t move very fast action when compare the photos, maybe freeze the screen around 2 second still shot compare the photos with 3 camera

[nevvanclarke]

It is always a compromise for the newer sensors that they are bringing out that with faster speeds. You are going to get some trade-off and that trade-off is the noise ratio which I'm not a scientist mathematician kind of guy but I do understand it but I don't think it's that bad to be honest and a lot of noise these days he can clean up with either Program separately that you can run or Lightroom denoise.... Other thing I do is just run a gradient over the areas that are dark noise tends to show up in dark areas more than it does light and coloured areas but I don't think it's that bad. there's also other gradients that I run as well like in Lightroom I reduce grain and reduce texture and clarity in certain areas that are just darker that don't have anything in the photo like a background area and there are so many tools we can use now that do take a little bit of time but you can get images that have been shot at 10, 000 ISO to be quite usable if you prepared to be patient I remember shooting a funeral which was a really challenging thing to do because of the lowlight. It's funny isn't it? Because I think editing used to be seen as a bit of a bad word now it's out thing that can rescue it. Our images from noise and the noise reduction tools are amazing.. thanks for your video even though I'm not in the Canon ecosystem I still enjoyed it. The other thing that I always remember about lowlight images is to get our exposure right that's critical. I know that there's a tendency for some people and I know you didn't do that in this test but they try to under expose in certain situations and then try to rescue it impost and that's when it becomes a problem. Correct exposure will always help in this instance.. I remember watching the review for the Nikon cameras that were released recently and they had similar levels of noise as well.