p.1 #1 · ?: Canon EOS R5 vs. EOS R3 low light and high ISO comparison
Hello!
Longtime professional photographer here and going on 5 years shooting with Canon!
I shoot mostly weddings, events, graduations and headshots professionally and also love to shoot birds in flight for fun.
I currently have an R5 Mark ii and an R5.
When shooting in low light I see a little more noise on the R5M2 vs. the R5 which Im sure is a result of the stacked, BSI sensor. However, the R5M2, for me, has been an absolute joy to use!
I am considering trading in my R5 for a used R3 and am interested in your opinion as to whether or not I will notice a fairly big improvement with low light and high ISO image quality. In the low light shoots I have I will shoot as high as 25600 ISO but most of the time 6400 to 12800. Im hoping for a fairly large improvement if/when I switch.
Thank you very much for your input and I appreciate you time and expertise!
(For some reason, when clicking on the above link, the inputs are blank -- not sure why, but oh well!)
In terms of noise, pretty much the same (at the same display size, of course!) -- slight edge to the R3. That said, it looks like the R5.2 can handle a bit more NR with it's greater resolution, so that might equalize, or even reverse, the comparison. So I wouldn't choose between them on that basis. However, the R3 may focus better in low light, and that would matter more than the differences in noise, anyway.
p.1 #3 · ?: Canon EOS R5 vs. EOS R3 low light and high ISO comparison
According to Claff, the R3 is about a half-stop better than the R5 II in ES at high ISO, but that's hardly a difference since you are losing about half of the pixels.
p.1 #5 · ?: Canon EOS R5 vs. EOS R3 low light and high ISO comparison
EB-1 wrote:
According to Claff, the R3 is about a half-stop better than the R5 II in ES at high ISO, but that's hardly a difference since you are losing about half of the pixels.
EBH
That seems quite conservative. Back in the day, when I shot R3 and R5, the R3 was decidedly better for owls (12k+) than the R5. Today, the same is to be said for R1 vs. R5m2. What's worse, at very high iso, the R1 is noticeably worse than the R3. No test charts, just owls. That's something that Jared aka Fro also pointed out. To say that there's half a stop difference between R5m2 and R3 would not meet my experience at all given that I see that much between R1 and R3, and R3 > R1 > R5 > R5m2 by all measures at high ISO.
As another comparison, since switching to R1 and R5m2 respectively, I lowered max Auto ISO one stop on both cameras.
Nov 11, 2025 at 03:49 AM
AmbientMike Offline • • • • • • [X]
p.1 #6 · ?: Canon EOS R5 vs. EOS R3 low light and high ISO comparison
EB-1 wrote:
According to Claff, the R3 is about a half-stop better than the R5 II in ES at high ISO, but that's hardly a difference since you are losing about half of the pixels.
EBH
If you're referring to the high iso measurement on the dynamic range page, that measures how high of an iso you can get 6.5 stops of DR, IIRC. I don't think that measures high iso noise
Nov 11, 2025 at 05:17 PM
AmbientMike Offline • • • • • • [X]
p.1 #7 · ?: Canon EOS R5 vs. EOS R3 low light and high ISO comparison
greyhoundrick wrote:
Hello!
Longtime professional photographer here and going on 5 years shooting with Canon!
I shoot mostly weddings, events, graduations and headshots professionally and also love to shoot birds in flight for fun.
I currently have an R5 Mark ii and an R5.
When shooting in low light I see a little more noise on the R5M2 vs. the R5 which Im sure is a result of the stacked, BSI sensor. However, the R5M2, for me, has been an absolute joy to use!
I am considering trading in my R5 for a used R3 and am interested in your opinion as to whether or not I will notice a fairly big improvement with low light and high ISO image quality. In the low light shoots I have I will shoot as high as 25600 ISO but most of the time 6400 to 12800. Im hoping for a fairly large improvement if/when I switch.
Thank you very much for your input and I appreciate you time and expertise!
I'd expect a noticeable difference SOOC, since 45mp has smaller pixels and probably more noise. If it matches the R3 SOOC, that's a pretty big deal imo
Of course the big question is if you can clean it up. SOOC noise probably isnt meaningless but you can clean up a lot.
