paratom
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Veteran Member
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Posts: 3,019
Re: R3 for wildlife/bird photography?
John Sheehy wrote:
paratom wrote:
For me, I am much more interested to see how a camera and sensor work in the light situation where I intend to use the camera. For example I have used my R5 and R3 in the same location with the same light for handball and in this situation and with the kind of light the R3 did show better color and noise behavior at high ISO.
It's nice to look at review-site artificial subjects. But IMO this does not necessarily reflects (all) real life situations.
It doesn't reflect overall use of the camera, but the maximum IQ as defined by resolution and noise favor the R5 clearly for resolution, and the R3 slightly for noise. I see claims in these threads about "a stop better" noise-wise, and those claims can not be supported with a proper comparison, whether the difference is one stop of noise at the same exposure and ISO, or one stop difference in exposure and ISO. If we took every statement seriously about "improved noise in stops" with a series of cameras that someone might purchase, and added all those stops up, we'd be talking about 10 stops improvement over the last 20 years, and that simply is not possible. Any claim of more than 1/4 stop difference with a new sensor of the same size is automatically suspect unless there was a major innovation in sensor tech. Future innovations could be photon-counting with no practical read noise, or a revolution in color filtration that doesn't waste a majority of photons through low quantum efficiency. In either case, "a stop of improvement" could possibly be an understatement.
How are you looking at the results? If you are like many people, you are going straight to 100% pixel views, and there's no doubt that the R3 looks sharper and cleaner that way, AOTBE. When you process for the same image size, though, the R3 is only marginally cleaner than the R5 with the same exposure. Also, if you view the entire frames on your monitor and viewing software is using Nearest Neighbor downsampling, NN actually increases noise, and increases it more for images with more original pixels.
If I were to buy the R3, it would be for something like the fast sensor readout (fast rolling e-shutter, about 5ms, compared to about 17ms with the R5, or 30ms of the R7), and the better AF ability. It wouldn't be for minimal noise.
Like you I would not buy the R3 for lower noise. The combination of (somewhat) lower noise, somewhat faster AF and more AF options, fast readout is attractive for sports and action.