New DSLR test
The novice-friendly EOS 800D has the same impressive tech under the skin as the EOS 77D. rod lawton puts it to the test
We give Canon’s brand-new entry-level yet feature-packed EOS 800D the full-on Photoplus test treatment
Canon is aiming for two distinctly different types of photographer with the EOS 800D and EOS 77D. Both use Canon’s latest 24-megapixel APS-C Dual Pixel CMOS AF sensor and offer the same continuous shooting rate and ISO range. But where the EOS 77D offers more hands-on control for serious enthusiasts, the 800D cuts back on the complication to appeal more to novices. Strictly speaking, then, the EOS 800D takes the place of the EOS 750D (Rebel T6i) as Canon’s best beginner DSLR.
At first glance, it might not look so very different since both cameras have 24-megapixel APS-C sensors. In practice, though, the 800D brings some substantial improvements. One of these is the sensor itself. This is the 24-megapixel Dual Pixel CMOS AF sensor used in the Canon EOS 80D, not the lower-spec Hybrid CMOS AF III sensor in the 750D. This should deliver improved autofocus for Live View photography and movies – in fact, Canon claims a response time of just 0.03 sec, and that this is currently the fastestfocusing APS-C interchangeable lens camera using sensor-plane autofocus – though real-world autofocus response will also depend on the conditions and the lens used.
The regular autofocus system gets a boost too, going from the 19-point AF system used in the EOS 750D to the 45-point autofocus of the EOS 80D. The 800D may be designed for beginners, but it packs some of Canon’s latest and best imaging technology. This includes the latest-generation DIGIC 7 processor, higher ISO range (up to ISO25,600 without expansion), 6fps continuous shooting and a decent buffer capacity of 27 Raw files or as many JPEGS as your memory card is able to hold.
There’s also a modest but useful boost to the video performance
– the 800D doesn’t offer 4K video, but it can shoot Full HD at 60/50fps for half-speed slow motion at full video resolution. You might expect all of these advances to put a dent in the battery life, but the 800D is more frugal with its power than its predecessor, offering up to 600 shots on a single charge. That’s 160 shots more than the EOS 750D using the same LP-E17 battery.
On top of all that there’s a new, faster, quieter, smaller kit lens, the EF-S 18-55mm f/4-5.6 IS STM. This impressed us a lot when we tried it at Canon’s press launch event, though it was unavailable for this review, which was carried out with the existing EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II lens instead.
The 800D may be for beginners, but packs some of Canon’s latest technology
Build and handling
Technically, the 800D is impressive on the inside, but in the flesh it’s mildly disappointing given its steep launch price (in the UK, at least). The body is nicely contoured and easy to grip with few sharp corners, in classic EOS style, but the plastic finish feels a little cheap. Corners have been cut with the viewfinder too, which uses a cheaper ‘pentamirror’ rather than a classic pentaprism. In practice, though, it’s clear and bright and you’re unlikely to notice any difference.
One of the 800D’s key features is Canon’s new guided user interface, which uses easy-to-understand graphics and information to explain the effects of different camera settings. For example, when you’re using the Shutter Priority (Tv) mode, the screen shows a scale with slower, ‘flowing’ shutter speeds on the left and faster ‘frozen’ speeds on the right; as you turn the dial, a caption below indicates the situations where the current speed might be used.
This interface is both attractive and informative, and you can disable it in favour of a regular menu system once you feel you don’t need it any longer. (The EOS 77D has this guided interface too, but on that camera it’s disabled until you select it.)
The vari-angle touch-screen display works really well. It gives you the flexibility to shoot at all sorts of awkward angles, and the 800D’s responsive Live View performance makes it something you might use all the time, rather than just keeping for emergencies. Touch control on camera screens isn’t always good, but the 800D’s is light, reliable and responsive – just about perfect, in fact.
The single-dial control system might prove an irritation for more experienced Canon users, but the 800D does have a large number of external buttons for adjusting everything from the ISO setting to the drive mode, AF point selection and Picture Style.
The Bluetooth and Wi-fi connections are easy enough to set up and use via the Canon Camera Connect app. You do need the Wi-fi for camera control, however, and if you’re using an IOS device that means connecting manually to the camera’s Wi-fi network each time you want to use it since Apple’s operating system won’t let the Bluetooth connection launch the Wi-fi connection automatically – which is irritating.
Performance
The 800D’s autofocus proved fast and reliable in our tests, in both regular viewfinder shooting, which uses the 45-point phase detection AF sensor, and in Live View, which uses the Dual Pixel CMOS AF system. This proved crisp and mostly positive, even when using the older non-stm kit lens.
The results from the 800D’s exposure system are more variable. It places a lot of emphasis on the area under the active autofocus point, and this means that even a small reframing of your shot can produce a big shift in the exposure. You notice this most in highcontrast scenes, such as sunsets, where the camera will veer from exposing for the foreground to producing a silhouette, depending on whereabouts the active AF point is in the frame. More experienced photographers will quickly learn to find their way around this, but novices may well end up wondering why they’re not getting the same exposure twice, when the scene itself hasn’t changed.
The Auto White Balance system performed perfectly, though, and we left it set to Auto all the way through the test. If you shoot Raw images, of course, you can always correct white balance later.
The 800D’s autofocus proved fast and reliable, in both regular shooting and in Live View
Adobe had yet to offer support for the 800D at the time of going to press, but Canon’s Digital Photo Professional 4 software has been updated to support the 800D’s Raw files. It didn’t seem to offer much of a margin for highlight recovery in the files, but results from Adobe Camera Raw may prove better.
The image quality at the maximum ISO25,600 setting is substantially reduced, as you’d expect, but if you need to grab an image at all costs, the results are really quite acceptable. In fact, at this sensitivity you can shoot handheld in conditions so dark that the camera’s autofocus struggles to find anything to lock on to.