The Canon EOS R6 Mark III, R6 Mark II, and R5 Mark II sit closer together than their price gaps suggest. It comes down to how each body handles skin tones, missed exposure, and edge cases that appear mid-shoot.
Coming to you from James Reader, this practical video puts the Canon EOS R6 Mark III, Canon EOS R6 Mark II, and Canon EOS R5 Mark II on the same scenes and settings, then forces the files to reveal what’s real. Reader starts with color, because that is where many people quietly lose time. In side-by-side portraits and a landscape with strong blues and greens, the differences are subtle, but the direction of the differences matters. He describes the R6 line as more neutral and easier to live with, while the R5 Mark II trends punchier with more saturation and contrast in-camera. If you rely on a consistent skin tone baseline across shoots, that small bias can mean fewer corrections and fewer surprises across mixed lighting.
The next section is the kind of “boring” test that saves money: resolution and how much it actually buys. Reader calls out that the R6 Mark III’s 32 MP jump is visible when you zoom in hard, but it is not a new world for portraits. He shows an example where tiny lettering and distant detail clean up a bit on the newer sensor, then admits you have to go looking for it. That is useful if cropping is part of the job, but it is also a warning not to upgrade on megapixels alone. He also stress-tests dynamic range by crushing shadows and pulling highlights back, and the takeaway is not that one camera collapses, but that they all give you more recovery than your instincts might assume, especially in stills.
Then the video pivots to the upgrades that change what you can capture, not just how it grades. The R6 Mark III adds a CFexpress Type B slot next to an SDXC UHS-II card, and Reader ties that directly to burst reality: deeper runs before slowdown, plus a buffer that behaves differently than the other bodies. If you shoot action, the pre-capture feature is the quiet headline, because it changes the timing problem you fight in real life. He also notes a trade-off in electronic shutter bit depth at top burst rates, which is the kind of detail that matters when you push files and wonder why they feel slightly less elastic.
Video is where Reader gets most opinionated, and it’s worth hearing the specifics from him rather than reading a checklist. He highlights Canon Log 2 as a meaningful jump for the R6 line, and he demonstrates what that flatter starting point does to skies and shadow recovery before grading. He also covers open gate 3:2 recording, which is a workflow unlock if one shoot has to feed horizontal and vertical deliverables without re-rigging. There’s an image stabilization segment using the Canon RF 24mm f/1.4 L VCM that calls out corner wobble on wide angle walking shots, plus a note that pairing stabilization with a lens like the Canon RF 24-70mm f/2.8 L IS USM can shift what feels usable past roughly 35mm. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Reader.
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