Canon eos 1300d
The successor to the trusty budget 1200D is new and improved, but can you spot the differences?
The 1200D represented a major revamp of the previous 1100D camera, when it was launched back in early 2014. But despite being a more recent design than the 100D and 700D that are also on test, it’s already been replaced by the new 1300D. This time around, improvements are comparatively subtle, and the new model looks almost identical to its predecessor. At 18Mp, the megapixel count remains the same as in the 1200D. And while the other cameras on test have late-generation DIGIC 5 or DIGIC 6 processors, the 1300D only takes a small incremental step from DIGIC 4 to 4+.
So what’s new? The headline attraction is that, along with only the 750D in this test group, the 1300D boasts built-in Wi-fi and NFC connectivity. The LCD screen gets a resolution boost over the 1200D, from a disappointing 460k to a high-res 920k pixels, but the 1300D remains the only camera in the group to lack a touchscreen. On a minor note, there’s an additional ‘food’ scene mode, for people who like shooting their dinner.
Build and handling
Simple yet effective, the layout of controls is very typical of a Canon entry-level camera. There’s a good compromise between having enough buttons and dials to enable you to access a wide range of shooting settings quickly and easily, without too much clutter that could result in tricky and confusing handling. As usual, the Q (Quick) menu on the LCD screen works well for keeping tabs on the most important shooting settings. However, the intuitive nature of the Q menu for adjusting settings
suffers slightly from the lack of touchscreen facilities.
It’s a comfy camera to use, with a more generously sized handgrip than the 100D. As usual in this class of camera, the main body material is carbon fibre-reinforced polycarbonate, which is durable and pleasant to the touch, while being light in weight.
Performance
From a shooting standpoint, there aren’t many real performance upgrades over the 1200D, and the specifications are in keeping with the 1300D now being Canon’s most inexpensive SLR. As such, it has the slowest continuous drive rate of 3fps (frames per second), and a relatively basic autofocus system that’s painfully slow in Live View mode and prohibits continuous autofocus when shooting movies.
The 1300D also has the smallest sensitivity range, stretching to ISO6400 (12800 expanded) whereas all the other cameras tested top out at ISO12800 (25600 expanded). That said, the 1300D produces vibrant, richly saturated images and combats high-iso noise almost as well as the other cameras on test. An upside of the relatively slow maximum drive rate is that you can continuously shoot over a thousand images in JPEG quality mode, should you feel the need.