Canon EOS R Image Quality Comparison to Other Canon and Sony Cameras

The number one requirement of any camera is to produce good-quality images. It doesn't matter what other features a camera has if it produces poor-quality images. Tony Northrup recently posted a video comparing the image quality of the new Canon EOS R to several other cameras.

Northrup compares the new Canon EOS R to the Canon 5D Mark IV, the Canon 6D Mark II, the Sony a7 III, and the Sony a7R III. While I usually shoot Nikon cameras, I enjoyed Northrup's review since he compares the EOS R to not only other mirrorless cameras but also to different price range and styles of cameras. The EOS R faired well when compared to the other cameras, but like all cameras, some perform better in different ways. The video does an excellent job of describing how the EOS R stacks up to the other well-known cameras. Northrup addresses what he believes to be a significant flaw with the EOS R, which involves an aspect of the dynamic range of the camera.

Is Northrup right to be concerned with one issue he believes is a flaw with the EOS R? Is this flaw enough to deter you from purchasing the new Canon EOS R? Or is it an attribute you can accept in a camera that has many other strengths?

Douglas Turney's picture

Doug Turney is a Connecticut based photographer who specializes in non-ball sport types of photography such as motocross, sailing, and cycling. But that doesn’t stop him from shooting other types of photography too. Doug believes photography is photography and doesn’t like to be typecast. Doug loves to travel and often shoots when traveling.

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49 Comments

DR has always been a bit weak in Canon's offerings. The significance of this of course depends on how important DR is for any given individual, so the word "flaw" is perhaps a bit click-baity.

agree.. I rarely see people who actually use it make that (canon's DR) as a problem

If you need 5 stops of recovery the serious flaw was your exposure.

But I'd also like my shadows to not have lines in them.

It's easier to get to (need) 5 stops than you think. Say I'm shooting with the 16-35 mk III wide open at 16mm and correct the vignetting. That's 4.6 stops in the corners right there.

Or just any vignetting at all. Canon shadows are just the worst on the market.

Not always that simple. Sometimes you can expose a high-contrast scene as bright as possible before clipping highlights but the shadows are far too dark due to the lighting of the scene. As before, i'm in situations where I need 5 stops all the time. Canon's DR definitely needs to catch up, its almost 2019

The banding when recovering shadows make the pictures almost unusable, nail your exposure with this camera

Just don't underexpose by 5 stops and you're fine. But it's inadequate for Sony users who like to turn off all the lights and shoot in complete darkness.

Don't you know all modern photographer are natural light bat photographers??

As wedding photographer, a >5 stops of luminance between light and dark parts of a single indoor scene is NOT uncommon.

You do realize there are another 5+ stops of dynamic range above middle grey as well right?

*spits coffee everywhere*

Good one.

Jared, I DID say ">5 stops" or did I stutter?

Agreed, Jared Wolfe really doesn't understand what happens in reality

missed focus on a few shots, 6mp is not enough to account for such a big difference

I don't get it. He ranks image quality based on megapixels. A7m3 24 megapixel not as god as Canons 30 megapixel, but best A7rm3 with 40 something megapixel. I understand a larger file will have more resultion then a smaller file, looking at same size in Lightroom. But so what?
Printing at 300 PPI, who can tell the difference? Or on a web page?

Can anyone please explain?

Nothing to explain. It literally shows the amount of detail you can get when moving up in MP count. Which I think you understood. So ranking by MP for overall Image Quality is correct. Oh, and a larger file doesn't mean more resolution.

I understand a larger file have more information and I understand if I make large prints at one point the smaller file will fall apart, but in smaller prints I actually presume it does not matter. I don't think a 10x8 from A7Rm3 is better then from A7m3.
If it was as simple as bigger pixelcount creates better images, would we not all go for that?
Thanks:)

"larger file have more information" No

Ex. Nikon d850 gives you the benefit of uncompressed or compressed RAW files. Though you will have no advantage in choosing uncompressed. Each one will retain the same resolution for both files but one will be a smaller file size (compressed). You would never be able to tell the difference at 8x10 between the two cameras.

By larger files I am referring to more pixels.
Somehow I don’t think his rating of cameras after pixels are relevant.

Its valid if you're talking Image Quality and the results show. 42>30>24 nothing you can do about. All the cameras a super similar and will get the job done. How much detail are you wanting?

Yes I think they all are good cameras and I think 24 MP gives plenty detail. Thanks.

Nice try Sony! Disguising Fred Armisen with contacts and a platinum wig may trick some people into buying an A7, but not this guy!

I think the Dynamic Range issue is a bit overblown. It's one of those things that obviously you would always like to have more of if it's available, but how many of us would really need 15 or whatever stops of DR in a single shot without bracketing? I would imagine the answer to be very few. The same can be said of megapixel count, FPS burst, buffer size, etc.

If DR is super important to you, then the chances are pretty high that Canon has not been your choice of camera system for quite some time now and it looks like this will continue to be true.

Anyway, I guess take stuff like this with a grain of salt and ask yourself, "Yes, Camera 1 has more ______ than Camera 2, but will it actually matter?" In some cases, the answer might be yes. If the answer is no, compare the aspects of the camera that do matter rather than getting hung up over a detail that won't make a difference in your shooting.

Also, so many people freak out about losing the shadows or blowing out highlights, but I don't get where all of that paranoia comes from (Maybe from school where they're constantly driveling on and on about shadow and highlight detail during critiques?). Expose for what's important and place that where you feel it needs to go. If that means you lose some insignificant part of the photo in doing so, then so be it.

Unless you're submitting to stock or something, nobody is realistically measuring your photo to see if some whites in your photo are registering as 255 across the board or if you've got 0's across the board on your blacks and if they are, they need to get a life because they're missing the point. It's really only photographers themselves that worry about stuff like this. For better or worse, nobody else in the real world cares.

sure .. I agree. In most cases those few stops lower DR is not an issue yet it is nice to have it
Where I do the exposure jsut fine with something like D810, D850 on more dynamic scene I have to adjust and recover in post with Canons or go for backeting.. but 5DmkIV is fairly close to competition ..

I am in total agreement with Tony here. I don't have the fancy 5Dmk4, but a lowly 6D. While great in good light, the camera fails me when I have to pull shadows, like in HDR, or extremely contrasty shots (not as rare as you might think!), Like a bun ch of unusable shots of a redwood forest including the shadows and the sky. Or, if I just screw up and underexpose. Then, when I see similar (but not as severe) issues in the 5Dmk4, I cringe. When those problems seems worse in the EOS R, I am just mad! This is something I know will bite me right when I absolutely need it clean in the shadows. The noise usually means lots of time in post fixing what should be good to go. But that banding is just not worth fixing. So as a result, the Sony A7r3 is extremely attractive to me--more so now than when the Canon EOS R was revealed. I want to yell at Canon..."It's the sensors, dummies!"

If it's landscapes, then why not bracket and exposure blend? I would think that it would be a better way to get clean shadows than bringing them up in a high DR camera, anyway.

I did, but the shadows are too noisy with even a little pulling. And HDR software usually makes my 6D image look bad when there are deep shadows. I know much more work will likely yield some better results, but I don't have time to work so hard. I would much rather have a more resilient image to start with.

Better? Maybe. Practical? Not always. When in doubt, I bracket but try to work with the best exposure if at all possible.

If you necessarily have to do HDR ( I hate it, especially when overdone creating the silly white halos around everything ), do it properly.

DO NOT TAKE UNDEREXPOSED shots.

Just 0 ( nominal ) exposure and over-exposed.
Create the shadows by deepening them in the 0 exposure.

No noise, and not a single bad thing that comes with the underexposed frames inserted into HDR.

A lot of times you need an underexposed shot for the sky and/or other highlights. Also, I almost never use HDR software, for the reasons you state and increased control. Exposure blending is the way to go!

Use a ND Filter?

Assuming you mean a GND Filter, that often works for landscapes but not always and far less often for other types of photography.

That's not an underexposed shot practically.
It's a properly exposed sky exposure.

And yes, exposure blending is the way to go.

I thought we were talking about the scene as a whole, not specific elements.

I do a lot of industrial photography and, depending on lighting, equipment materials and angles, there'll be blown out highlights throughout the scene so, I'll often have to underexpose the scene by a LOT, in order to get any detail at all.

I'm 100% with you on the "HDR" look! :-)

A polariser will cut down on a lot of that glare. It's what I use to photograph cars.

In my case it's not glare, just hot spots.

Which is best for a new user???

None of these.

The same could be said for most of the photographers having commented. :-/

Gosh people are obsessed with the most minute details of image quality. All the mentioned cameras in this video are great and if you were to hold an exhibition featuring an image from each one no one would even know or care. They would simply admire the photos for what they are and enjoy the photography. For me it's largely about the ergonomics and the lens choice. After that I can get on with being a photographer.

I think Tony missed a crucial metric. Which camera has the easer to use user interface? Do you have to trawl through menu after menu to change something? If you are a professional on a shoot that could increase your stress level.

My Sony A7riii has many custom buttons, a function button where you can have any function on a single menu. PLUS, a favorite tab in main menu. I have yet needed to fumble thru multiple screens, etc on a shoot.

I say this every time someone says the menu system sucks. I have 6 custom buttons and a menu of 12 (or 10 I can’t remember off the top of my head) custom options I can access at any time without using the massive menu. If I can’t change one of the 18 options I have set in three separate custom setups I have the ability to customize, it’s not Sony’s fault - it’s mine.

I’ll admit, it’s a massive menu system but it’s not difficult.

This was a stupid comparison. The sharpness depends on the glass as much as the sensor.

Ok, after en overwhelming and very enthusiast first contact, EOS-R is plagued by the 'one slot only EPIC failure' and poor DR flaws !

Wow ! Really hope Canon and Nikon stop making cameras, because since SONY released their FX MILC, all Canikon cams are no more worth the money...

Or whiners have too much money or too friendly contacts making them able to swap system at will, maybe they are just too much bored by devices and should make something else, don't you agree ?

Seriously, it become childish and useless each time I see such personnal feelings set as absolute proof of professionnal and universal features.

Seriously? Don't you believe that a sharpness comparison should also involve the lenses that are being used?

One thing that people need to remember here is that Tony used two different lenses on the A7iii vs the A7R3.
The A7iii used the GM OSS (which Lens Rentals took issue with that lens), and the A7R3... I'm not sure. The metadata makes it look like he might have used an adapted lens or a 3rd party lens for the shoot.
This explains some of the issues with the A7iii image.