Canon EOS R6 First Shots: Sample images from Canon’s new 20MP full-frame mirrorless camera

posted Friday, July 24, 2020 at 6:04 PM EDT

Click here to browse our Canon R6 First Shots

While it might seem like Canon's new 45MP EOS R5 is taking the lion's share of headlines and attention in the camera world, let's not forget that there was another high-end full-frame R-series camera announced alongside it: the Canon EOS R6. Though this camera sports an altogether similar form-factor as the pricier R5 model, the imaging pipeline of the R6 is centered around a more moderate 20-megapixel full-frame sensor with OLPF -- a chip that's perhaps extremely similar to the one inside the flagship 1D X Mark III.

Paired to this 20MP sensor, the R6 utilizes the same DIGIC X image processor as the R5, however the different imaging sensor here gives the R6 a slightly wider ISO range, at least at the high end. The R6's native ISO range spans from a base ISO of 100 and tops out at a slightly higher ISO 102,400. You can further expand the ISO sensitivity of the R6, down to a low ISO 50 and up to even higher ISO 204,800.

We have our Canon R6 review sample in-house now as well, and like the R5, we sent this camera down for the standard "First Shots treatment" right away. Our standardized Still Life target offers a way to gauge a camera's image quality performance across its full ISO range. As always, we have both untouched JPEGs as well as the corresponding RAW files (though given the brand-new nature of the R6, RAW file converters are unlikely to open them at this time). Additionally, we have our First Shots series with JPEGs using the R6's default level of in-camera Noise Reduction processing as well as NR completely disabled.

To see how the new Canon EOS R6 stacks up against almost every other camera we've lab-tested, please check out our Comparometer tool. However, to get the comparison juices flowing, below are a couple of quick side-by-side comparisons of the R6 up against a popular competitor, the 24MP Sony A7 III. (The difference in apparent size is due to the different resolutions.)

Canon EOS R6 vs. Sony A7 III