DPreview samples comparison: 6D vs 5D3 vs D800 vs D800E

Was just going through the various samples and came across rather impressive comparisons between the 6D, 5D3, D800, D800E.

I'm blown away by the 6D's noise performance. Even at 25600 (RAW) it seems to do better. Comments?

Comparo Canon 6D vs 5D3 vs D800 vs D800E

The 6D crop isn't even the same as the others though. Tough to make comparisons when they're different.

I found that a little annoying as well. Doesn't look to be that big a difference in size though, so pinch of salt in hand and all that.

you can click anywhere on the page. There are all the same size. The 6D smokes the Nikons

I knew my eyes werent playing tricks on me. Ive had both cameras and I've always felt like 6D has better IQ in low light and numerous established and reputable testers have confirmed this, yet I still hear people say, the IQ is the same. It's really not, the 6D has the advantage.

Dunno to my eyes it seems there is no difference between the 6D and 5DIII till 3200, at 6400 there is a slight difference and 12800 and above there is a noticeable improvement for the 6D.

It is really hard to gauge how much different the D800 vs D6 is with such a resolution gap. How does the noise on the D800s look when scaled down to 6D resolution?

They've included links to download the RAW and JPEGs below the image for every setting right in that tool.

Try it out and post it here! It should make for a good comparison side by side using your personal workflow.

Heres what I found when playing with the raws of all 4 cameras.

ISO 12800, all images brought through lightroom and resized to 6D dimensions.

Interesting and thanks for posting that. I'll take a closer look when I'm off work.

Just out of curiosity are all the imports done using the exact same settings? What about the NR levels and Lens/Camera Profiles?

1st set no processing at all, just lightroom defaults, export with resize.

2nd set +100 shadows +1 exposure export with resize.

Cool. That's enough to qualify as a real world usage scenario.

There's not a whole hell of a lot of difference between them. They are all really good cameras.

davidc502 wrote in post #15983364
There's not a whole hell of a lot of difference between them. They are all really good cameras.

I agree. The proper way to make a comparison is to scale them equally. All these cameras perform similarly at high ISO. It's pretty much a moot point. If the comparison was for DR, the Nikons would certainly pull ahead.

jdizzle wrote in post #15983476
I agree. The proper way to make a comparison is to scale them equally. All these cameras perform similarly at high ISO. It's pretty much a moot point. If the comparison was for DR, the Nikons would certainly pull ahead.

Will give credit where credit is due, the Nikon has DR from 100-800 ISO. After 800 ISO, it's pretty much a wash against the Canon (1dx,5dx,6d). So it's not like it has better DR through the entire range. I'm wondering if folks really know that.

So for me the Nikon pulls ahead in DR in some respects, but not all.

davidc502 wrote in post #15983618
Will give credit where credit is due, the Nikon has DR from 100-800 ISO. After 800 ISO, it's pretty much a wash against the Canon (1dx,5dx,6d). So it's not like it has better DR through the entire range. I'm wondering if folks really know that.

So for me the Nikon pulls ahead in DR in some respects, but not all.

Agreed. At high ISOs, DR will certainly suffer.