Canon EOS 1300D / Rebel T6 review

6th June 2016

Written by Ken McMahon

Quality

Canon EOS 1300D / Rebel T6 JPEG quality results

To test real-life performance, I shot this scene with the Canon EOS 1300D / Rebel T6 fitted with the EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 IS II kit lens using its best quality large fine JPEG setting and at its base 100 ISO sensitivity setting. The 1300D / T6 was mounted on a tripod and image stabilisation was disabled, the sensitivity was manually set to 100 ISO and Aperture priority mode was selected for the exposure. I set the Aperture to f5.6 which I’d previously determined produced best results and the 1300D / T6 chose a shutter speed of 1/800. the crops below are taken from the areas marked in red below.

These crops from the 1300D / T6 are pretty much what I expected to see in terms of quality as it employs the same sensor as the 1200D / T5 which I tested back in 2014. These results are comparable with those which are worth a look if you want to see how the 1200D / T5 and 1300D / T6 quality compares with the Nikon D3300.

As for these crops, they’re as much about the quality of the 1300D / T6’s lens as its sensor and JPEG processing. Cast your eye down the table below and you’ll notice that the quality starts off looking quite soft at the left edge, with few crisp edges, but things improve quite a bit in the two crops from the centre, before once again getting a little furry in the final crop from closer to the right edge of the frame. In the second crop it’s a little disappointing that the finer detail isn’t better resolved – you can’t tell the time on the church clock – something I’d expect to be able to see from a camera in this class.

From my experience with the earlier 1200D / T5 I know it’s possible to squeeze a little more detail from this sensor by shooting RAW and processing the files yourself. The other option of course would be to go for a better quality lens though that would obviously require a bigger budget.

Above: Canon EOS 1200D / Rebel T6 with 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 IS II kit lens at 18mm f5.6 100 ISO.

Above: Canon EOS 1200D / Rebel T6 with 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 IS II kit lens at 18mm f5.6 100 ISO.

Above: Canon EOS 1200D / Rebel T6 with 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 IS II kit lens at 18mm f5.6 100 ISO.

Above: Canon EOS 1200D / Rebel T6 with 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 IS II kit lens at 18mm f5.6 100 ISO.

Canon EOS 1300D / Rebel T6 JPEG noise results

To examine noise levels under real-life conditions, I shot this scene with the Canon EOS 1300D / Rebel T6 at each of its ISO settings using the highest quality JPEG setting. The 1300D / T6 was mounted on a tripod and stabilisation was disabled.

I zoomed the lens in a little and set the aperture to f5.6 which I’d previously determined produced the best results. At the base 100 ISO sensitivity the 1300D / T6 selected a shutter speed of 1/8.

I turned off the 1300D / T6’s Auto Lighting Optimizer, but otherwise the camera was left on the default settings.

Just to note the sensitivity range of the 1300D / T6 is 100 to 6400 ISO. To access the 12800 ISO ‘Hi’ setting you must first enable the extended range in the Custom function menu.

And so to the crops. The 1300D / T6 gets of to a pretty good start with a 100 ISO crop that, though not entirely free of noise looks very clean even on close examination. The 200 ISO crop is also very clean and hard to tell apart from the base ISO sensitivity setting. Even the 400 ISO crop is relatively noise-free, the only give away to the higher setting being a slight softness in the detail as the noise reduction alogorithm gets to work.

Canon’s noise reduction on JPEGs does a fine job here and the 800 and 1600 ISO crops show a small increase in noise levels which the processing contains with a correspondingly slight softening of the image detail. It’s not until you get to 3200 ISO that the noise textures in the wall become obvious and the flower heads start to lose their detail. 6400 ISO looks a little grungy at 100 percent, but you’ll get away with it at smaller sizes and it’s well worth enabling the 12800 ISO setting for those must have at all costs low light shots.

This is a very respectable set of results that shows the 1300D / T6 handles noise well throughout the sensitivity range, but particularly up to 3200 ISO. I suspect that since the 1200D / T5 Canon has made some improvements in noise processing. Even so, it’s worth bearing in mind that if you shoot RAW there’s the potential to do better and eke a tad more detail out of the 1300D / T6 at higher ISO sensitivity settings.