The saturation characteristics of two sizes of parallel-plate free-air ionization chambers were investigated for synchrotron radiation at bending-magnet, wiggler and undulator beamlines of SPring-8. The gaps of the electrodes were 4.2 and 85 mm. The monoenergetic photon energies ranged from 10 to 115.56 keV and the air kerma rates from 0.2 mGy s-1 to 150 kGy s-1. Ion recombination at the high dose rate was found to be smaller than that predicted by Boag's expression, which was based on volume recombination, and the difference increased with an applied electric field. In the high dose rate region, the reciprocal of the current was linear to the reciprocal of the electric field near saturation, which represented the occurrence of initial recombination and diffusion loss. At the low electric field and the low dose rate, the reciprocal of the current was linear to the reciprocal of the square of the electric field. The reduction of total ion recombination was attributed to the shift of the contribution from volume recombination to initial recombination and diffusion loss.