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Canon EOS 1300D Review

6.0/10
7.0/10
6.5/10
7.0/10



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The craze for selfie phones and point and shoot cameras continues to attract people. You get good photos and videos, but they lack the fine details and realistic colours that you only find on DSLRs. Purchasing a DSLR doesn’t mean spending a huge amount of money on it anymore. Over the past few years, Canon and Nikon cameras have become quite popular offering improved DSLR tech at low prices. The Canon EOS 1200D was quite a popular model when it launched a few years back. Another addition to the Canon’s entry-level camera segment is the Canon EOS 1300D, priced at Rs. 28,990*. The camera is meant for beginners and for those starting photography as a career. The Canon EOS 1300D is equipped with an 18MP APS-C CMOS sensor for quality photos and videos. In additional to standard specifications, it now has Wi-Fi and NFC connectivity options something only introduced to premium models over the past year or two. Looking at its specifications and low price, the Canon 1300D sure appeals to beginners. We test the performance of the 1300D and tell you if it’s worth buying it, at the given price.

Design

camera_front

The Canon EOS 1300D resembles its predecessor model, the Canon 1200D. The body is entirely built of plastic, which is solid and feels sturdy. The camera has a matte finish all over. The right portion of the camera has a rubber padding that provides a good grip to hold the camera in one hand. The camera weighs around 440g and is lightweight. The viewfinder on the top has a soft synthetic material surrounding it. There is a small dioptre dial on the right top of the viewfinder. Just below the viewfinder is a 3-inch fixed LCD screen with a resolution of 920,000 dots, which is pretty good.

cover_image

All the controls are grouped together on the right side of the LCD screen meant for easy access. All the buttons are almost identical to the Canon 1200D. On the top is a circular dial that is equipped with different camera modes. Near the shutter button is a small toggle dial to adjust the aperture and the shutter speed. There is a dedicated ISO and white balance buttons that also work as navigation buttons.

camera_side_view

On the left, there's a built-in mic input, mini-HDMI and mini-USB port. Besides this, there is an N mark (NFC) on the left side of the camera that can be used to connect the camera to a NFC-enabled smartphone. The camera battery and a SD card slot are both located at the bottom.

6.0/10

Features

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Canon has not changed the specification for the EOS 1300D. The 1300D ships with a standard 18-55mm kit lens. It has an auto pop-up flash along with a separate mount for an external flash. This should help click better quality photos and videos. The camera has a standard ISO range of 100-6400 which is expandable to 12800. This is good for night photography. It can click photos in JPEG, RAW and RAW + JPEG format as well as shoot videos at 1920 x 1080p (full HD) resolution at 30fps.
 
 
 
The camera is shipped with a standard 18-55mm lens that has an image stabilizer and auto-focus mode. The lens has a minimum aperture of f/3.5, good for macro and portrait photography. The 1300D has total 9 auto-focus points for clicking sharp photos. The processor of this camera is updated to the DIGIC 4+, which is quite old when compared to the Canon's latest processor DIGIC 7. DIGIC 7 helps in processing data faster, great at focusing and tracking objects automatically to offer high quality images. The Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark II was the first to have DIGIC 7 processor.

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The most highlighted feature of the Canon EOS 1300D is Wi-Fi and NFC connectivity. You can transfer photos from the camera to a smartphone or a tablet, without having to remove the SD card from the camera. Apart from this, you can install the Canon Camera Connect app in your smartphone or a tablet to control the camera wirelessly. This means you can click photos or change a few camera settings from your smartphone remotely that is useful for family and group photographs. The app is available for free on the Google Play Store. Besides this, pairing the NFC-enabled smartphone to the camera is quite easy.

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The Canon 1300D has a 3-inch LCD screen with a resolution of 920,000 dots. It has seven levels of manual brightness adjustments. The camera mode dial on the top has different camera modes - Auto, Manual, Aperture priority, Shutter priority and Program. These are all creative zone modes and should help click better images of your liking. In addition to this, there are a few basic modes such as Portrait, Landscape, Close-up, Sports, Food and Night Portrait mode. The Canon EOS 1300D has a shutter speed ranging from 1/4000 seconds to 30 seconds. This is good for clicking steady objects as well as fast moving objects.

7.0/10

Performance

The Canon EOS 1300D clicked good photos in Auto mode. Colours were bright and appeared natural when clicked in bright light. When we clicked photos clicked in very low light and dark rooms, colours were over-saturated. All the photos clicked had good details. We clicked several photos using different modes and found the camera focussed on subjects promptly.

Canon 1300D

The camera has a live video shooting and to check how efficient auto focusing works here, we recorded some videos. The Canon EOS 1300D was kept on Auto-Focus. It took approximately 4 seconds to focus on a still object, which is very slow. Turning off the live mode helped focusing faster. This means, if you want to capture a moving object, it can be a little tricky. The Image Stabilization feature of the Canon EOS 1300D works fine. To check it out, we captured a few photos and videos by toggling the stabilizer switch on and off. The Image Stabilization was good at reducing the amount of blur seen while capturing photos and videos.
 
 
 
In burst shooting for photos, the camera didn’t focus automatically. We had to first focus the camera on the object and then hold the shutter button. A benefit of clicking photos in RAW + JPEG is you get two files - one in RAW format and the other in JPEG. The RAW file format is uncompressed and gives you the flexibility to edit or make changes such as colour, saturation, exposure, etc. JPEG are compressed and smaller in size. This means you don’t have to spend too much time on editing them. To save your photos and videos, the Canon EOS 1300D is bundled with an 8GB Class 10 SD card.

ISO test_image_final

In our ISO test, the camera was set to a Program mode with different ISO ranges keeping the aperture and the shutter speed constant. The noise levels were clearly visible with ISO 800. Although, every image starting from ISO 400 had noise to it and this was clearly visible when zooming photos to 100 per cent. The camera metering mode was good at determining exposure in a single light. When we tried clicking a photo of an object exposed under different colour lights, it was a bit harder for a camera to get the right exposure. In this case, we got overexposed images.
 
 
The Canon EOS 1300D recorded full HD videos at 30fps. All the scenes in bright and dark areas offered decent colours and had good details. At point, we noticed the auto focusing was limited and wasn’t that great, which means shooting videos with manual focusing is preferable. One needs to practice this, since manual focusing is a bit tricky at times.

Wifi_CameraConnect

The interface of the camera is quite simple. There is a dedicated Quick Control (Q) button that lets you access settings and make changes very quickly. All the settings and menus are organised neatly. The camera has Wi-Fi and NFC feature and connecting it to a smartphone does not takes time. Also, with the help of the Canon Camera Connect app, we were able to click photos remotely and share them on social networking sites instantly because of the compressed file sizes.

6.5/10

Verdict

The Canon EOS 1300D is priced at Rs. 28,990* and is good for an entry-level camera. It clicked good quality photos and recorded videos in full HD at 30fps, which is pretty good. Photos and videos both had good details and also the colours appeared bright and natural. Although, in dark areas colours were saturated which can be managed easily using different photo editing software.
  
The Canon EOS 1300D is almost identical to the Canon EOS 1200D. If you have already used the Canon EOS 1200D, you will find the design, settings and the button placement familiar in the Canon EOS 1300D. A good thing about the Canon EOS 1300D is the Wi-Fi and NFC feature, which helps sharing photos and videos instantly. Both these features are rarely found on the entry-level cameras today. For the given price, the Canon EOS 1300D appeals to beginners and is good for still photography. The Canon EOS 1300D is also good for someone starting their photography career.

7.0/10