6D vs 70D High ISO performance comparison

Ok, many people are willing to pay lot of money for top equipment with unlimited budget, especially pros, which is absolutely understandable, because they need it as working tool, there are certainly differences in IQ, but is it really worth of money for hobbyist/semipros, who wants best price/performance ratio and not planning to sell their organs for FF body and EF lenses? Is the difference really that huge to justify the price of FF camera and EF lenses for normal mortal person?

Few words about tested cameras..

6D is considered as Canon HIGH ISO monster Full-frame camera with TOP IQ, but lacks advanced AF system and AF points density, which can be deal-breaker for many sports shooters and good argument to skip and buy 5dmarkIII instead...


70D is APS-C crop camera with 1.6 crop factor and advanced AF system borrowed from 7D, just without two particular modes.


I was always very interested in high iso lowlight shooting, sports and wildife, 6D was my first choice next to 7D thanks to premium IQ quality in bad light conditions. I wanted overall flexible camera for everything, especially for fast-oriented shots, so i was little bit disappointed by focusing system. (which is in my eyes very similar to 600D rebel series except better low light capabilities of center point)

Then 70D came out ..

I was still hearing from all corners around the world - take FF camera, even old one, it is much much better than any APS-C camera, but i noticed most of people shoot SOOC jpeg anyway no matter FF or APS-C....

This fact is really confusing me - paying for expensive camera and super expensive L lenses and shoot in SOOC jpeg afterwards, which clearly degrades the quality even on low ISO numbers... why bother buying super sharp lenses, when jpeg engine just smudge everything... I understand many people don´t have enough free time for proper post-processing, but still... to me, postprocessing is a part of entire creativity process, if I, accidentally i must say, take very good picture and my camera destroys all details just during in-camera jpeg conversion... oh well... I would cry... Jpgs are great for sports, because it´s really hard to fill your buffer, but that´s all...
I wouldn´t waste money on better camera body in these days, i would rather invest money and time to PP software, shoot in RAW and squeeze the maximum quality from the image and equipment.

Enough cry talk ...

I did few tests between 70D and 6D, tried to maintain same lighting conditions, but it´s not always perfect, sorry..

70D 6400ISO - NO NR

Do it again and let's see what they look like at 25600

70D crop ISO6400 NO_NR (RAW)

70D ISO6400 100% crop JPEG - standard NR

RogerC11 wrote in post #16780216
Do it again and let's see what they look like at 25600

70D has 12800 regular ISO, 25600 is only boosted ISO 12800 by in-camera software to 25600 equivalent, 6D is clearly winner in ISO 25600...

1.5 stops is roughly the difference on average in RAW, and about 2 stops in jpeg.
That, to me, is a pretty significant difference in most situations I shoot. I am not biased towards or against either cameras, I own both and use them equally often for various tasks.

You can do the same here too:

http://www.dpreview.co​m/reviews/canon-eos-70d/17

70D ISO 6400 RAW_NR

I have a 60D and a 6D. The 6D is a bit more than two stops better, in my opinion. Factor in that the 70D is a tad better than the 60D and I am right at agreeing with Gabe. Here are some shots at 102,400 with the 6D. They are a bit soft at 100%, but I'd have no problem using 102,400 and printing 8"x10". This is extreme territory, though. I usually don't use my 60D over 6400, or the 6D over 25,600. Nice to know it's there if I need it.

palad1n wrote in post #16780285
My summary : Don´t rely on camera body too much, IQ is almost the same across all current bodies and these minor differences can be fixed later in PP anyway...

Lukas, remember, even after NR, the camera that started out with significantly less noise will still look much better at the end; even less noise AND much better preserved detail (since you don't have to go crazy on the NR slider). Of course I only mean that for high ISO shots.

try underexposing and see how well the 70D recovers compared to the 6D underexposed. btw, IQ quite noticeable even in small web shots.

On it's own, the 70D's image looks good, just dont set them side by side or give them to trained eyes.

Thanks Lukas for the photo samples
but the 6D still far away from the 70D in image quality
you will notice that when you crop from the 6D photos
macro photos can show you the more details from the 6D than the 70D

I posted this in another thread. You might wish to consider the comparisons and the results. The comparisons were done at ISO12800 which is the last physical ISO the 70D has. There is no sense in comparison of software boosted ISOs to physical ones (i.e. ISO 25600 for the 70D).

There have been numerous discussions in the forums, about IQ advantage, high ISO performance, this vs that... with examples!

I always wanted to do a side-by side comparison of identical shots, post-processed with my own standards/actions.

I found this page in DPReview that offers this kind of shots:

http://www.dpreview.co​m …ion=full&widget​=1&x=0&y=0

I chose to compare the highest ISO the 70D can reach with no software boost, that is ISO12800.

Here is a view of the complete sample photo:

IMAGE LINK: http://s37.photobucket​.com …0FOV_zps2eea200​a.jpg.html

I use different software than most members of the forum. This allows me to use a different input profile, using less saturation, which produces more detail. I find that the lighting conditions that require high ISO, can live with less saturation.

The DPReview site states that they use a 'standard' ACR RAW conversion. I don't have access to it, I assume that the results would be better than the in-camera JPEG engine, otherwise why do it?

Here is a comparison of their JPEG to my conversion at 100% crop

IMAGE LINK: http://s37.photobucket​.com …comp_zps4e0006e​2.jpg.html

The upper one is my conversion, the lower one is DPReview's. As you can see, my conversion may have a bit more noise, but it retains much more detail. I stop the NR when I think that I start loosing detail. The noise (don't forget this is 100% crop) to some extent I can live with... I chose to compare the 6D because it requires slightly less effort to get there.

Here is a comparison of the 70D, 6D, 5DIII using my actions.

IMAGE LINK: http://s37.photobucket​.com …ison_zpsd12bf7f​e.jpg.html

Disregard the difference in levels for the 5DIII, I am slightly more familiar on adjusting the exposure curve.

My take is that all three cameras can reach an acceptable level of IQ at ISO12800. The 70D took one more NR stage in PP to get there but it did.

So what remains is ISO25600. The 70D cannot get there without software boost and then the results go south fast. At least at the pixel peeping level.

So if you really need ISO 25600, the 70D will not get you there. Otherwise, it will do fine.

At ISO25600 the DR takes quite a hit, so it's a bit of a stretch to talk about IQ. The 6D does slightly better than the 5DIII at ISO25600, but you can arrive at very similar results

If there is any interest, I can upload the NR'd JPEGS for those of you that want to look more into them.

One word of caution:

If you wish to look at the photos without having your browser create its own noise, you'll either have to downoad them, or look at them in their own tab (right click photo and select View Image).

Please explain how you obtained the jpg results from both cameras?

TeamSpeed wrote in post #16781208
Please explain how you obtained the jpg results from both cameras?

you mean jpeg settings in camera or RAW process without NR to jpeg?

i used jpeg camera settings standard NR.
RAW conversion without any NR, just cropping in PS.


I don´t see much difference on RAW images even without NR except shadow areas... but this is subjective... true fact is : post-processed RAW picture from 70D beats SOOC jpeg 6D very easily, so if anyone is shooting FF SOOC jpeg only, he/she should reconsider shooting RAW, otherwise FF image quality suffers a lot loosing potential.


and after some PP work on both images (using several layers with different NR settings and masks, there are literally no differences at all.. All details can be retained on both cameras...


MakisM1: true, 70D simply can´t beat 6D in ISO 25600.


gabebalazs: Gabe, it seems logical, but this maybe applies on SOOC jpeg quality, RAW with PP looks almost equally the same. You have to look very carefully on 100% level to see any minor difference.

What software to process the raw?