How the Sony a6700 Handles High ISO: Real-World Samples

Here’s a selection of photos I’ve taken with the Sony a6700 at high ISOs.

Looking for general sample photos rather than low-light tests? See my Sony a6700 sample images gallery.

I’ve tried to include a range of different scenes. Many of them were shot in low-light situations of the type you might come across in general travel or walking-around photography.

And in some cases, there are short sequences of the same shot at different ISOs. So there are different ways to compare the high ISO performance.

The original RAW files for the images in this post are available to subscribers to my newsletter on the RAW file downloads page. The page is password-protected; the password is in the newsletter’s welcome email. The JPG versions linked in the captions stay free.

The Sony a6700’s ISO range

When shooting photos, the Sony a6700 has an ISO range of ISO 50 to ISO 102400.

When shooting video, it only goes up to ISO32000.

Of that, 100 to 32,000 is the native ISO range.

You can go further than that in the extended ISO range (ISO 40000 – 102400), which is where software in the camera takes over to amplify the signal. So it’s basically a software boost.

The extended range at the bottom end is worth a mention too, because you can be forgiven for thinking that ISO 50 offers better image quality than ISO 100. It doesn’t. Photons to Photos measures the a6700’s dynamic range at ISO 50 as effectively identical to base ISO 100 (10.95 EV vs 10.93 EV), and the extended-low setting reduces the amount of highlight headroom to get there. So if you want the cleanest and optimal files, shoot at ISO 100.

As you get higher up the ISO range, the image quality degrades. You start to get grainier images. You get a narrower dynamic range between shadows and highlights. And you get degraded color fidelity. You can really notice this toward the top of the ISO range in the images below.

In practical terms, the very highest ISO ranges are too degraded for what most photographers would consider good image quality. They’re essentially there for situations where there’s no other way to get the shot.

And every camera handles it differently. This is why I’m sharing these images: to give you a visual sense of the ISO performance of the Sony a6700 from real-world photos.

If you’re coming from an a6600, one thing is worth knowing before you look at these: the a6700’s sensor is not a low-light upgrade. Photons to Photos measures the two within a rounding error of each other at base ISO — 10.93 EV for the a6700 against 10.97 EV for the a6600 — and the a6600 is fractionally ahead from ISO 400 to 1600. What actually improved in the a6700 is autofocus, readout speed, and video, not noise.

I hope it gives some practical sense of where you would put your own threshold of where the negatives of high ISO start to weigh too heavily on image quality.

Where does “High ISO” start?

Of course, where the “high ISO” threshold lies is entirely subjective.

A sports photographer might consider it above ISO 16000. For a studio portrait photographer, it might be ISO 400.

For the purposes here, I’ve put it at ISO 3200. My rationale is that many modern digital cameras can handle ISO 3200 and maintain excellent image quality without breaking a sweat. Once you start getting beyond that, the issues start becoming more visually obvious.

High ISO Sample Images

You can click on each image to open a full-size version. Those versions are derived from the in-camera JPGs, so they have the default in-camera processing applied as well as some optimization for display on a website.

For the original images straight out of the camera, I’ve included download links in each caption for the JPG and RAW versions. Those versions have had no post-processing done beyond what’s applied by default in the camera.

The JPGs are generally around 20-28 megabytes; the ARW (RAW) files are generally around 38-50 megabytes.

I have more detail on the technical aspects of these images further down this post after the images.

ISO 3200

ISO 4000

ISO 6400

ISO 8000

ISO 10000

ISO 12800

ISO 16000

ISO 20000

ISO 25600

ISO 32000

ISO 40000

ISO 51200

ISO 64000

ISO 80000

ISO 102400

Technical details of these images

There are some things worth knowing about these images and how they were created.

I shot all of these handheld with a Sony a6700. I used the JPG+RAW setting so as to get one of each image type for each shot.

The versions you’re seeing embedded here on this page are derived from the JPGs.

The only actual post-processing I’ve done on them is to slightly bump up the exposure (brightness) on many of them; the default JPGs out of the a6700 are a bit dark to my eyes. I haven’t done any other processing of them once they’ve left the camera. For in-camera processing, I’ve left the default settings of the a6700. And, as you can see, especially in the very high ISOs, that means that they’ve had noise reduction applied in-camera.

And images displayed on many websites, including this one, have extra layers of optimization applied to them to keep the filesize small. They’re compressed further and often converted to WebP or AVIF.

That’s why I’ve also included direct links to download the original untouched JPG and RAW files. You can find those links in the caption for each image. Those have had zero processing done on them once they’ve left the camera, and they’re not optimized for web display.

With the RAW files, depending on your RAW processing app, the first version of the image you see might be the embedded thumbnail preview, which will have the same in-camera processing as the JPG versions. But you can dismiss that and get to the underlying unprocessed RAW image by regenerating the thumbnail previews. Especially at the high ISOs, you’ll notice that the unprocessed version, without the in-camera noise processing applied, will have much more pronounced noise and graininess.

More low-light sample photos: ISO 3200 to 102400

These next sets are separate from the images above: each one is the same scene shot right through the ISO range, so you can compare like with like. A few things worth knowing before you look at them.

All of these are directly out of camera without any post-processing at all. No contrast adjustments or exposure or noise reduction.

But that doesn’t mean they’re not processed. That’s because, by default, the camera applies processing to high-ISO images (I’ve left the default settings on for these). That processing applies only to JPGs, but it does have some bearing on the RAW files as well.

The versions embedded here on this page are derived from the JPGs. They have the in-camera noise reduction applied at the default settings.

Using the links in the caption of each image, you can directly download the original RAW and JPG files. Because the in-camera noise processing applies to the JPG thumbnails embedded with the RAW files, you’ll see those first when you open the file. To see the underlying RAW file, without the processing, you’ll need to regenerate the thumbnails in something like Lightroom or Capture One.

I’ve included several sets with different types of colors, tones, and detail.

Set 1

Set 2

Set 3

Set 4

Where to find them