Canon EOS 100D: What works, what doesn't

It’s not trying to revolutionise the business like the EOS 70D or even trying to be the top-most DSLR in its field. So what is the EOS 100D trying to prove? Let’s find out.

Another month brings another new camera from Canon, one of the leading manufacturers in the field. The Canon EOS 100D easily slots into the upper mid-tier segment and is by no means the most affordable DSLR out here. However, what you do get is a highly competent yet polished device that is still lightweight and compact enough to carry around on trips, while moving around or even when you feel like taking self-portraits single-handedly.

Design

If you’ve seen one Canon EOS camera, you’ve seen them all and the EOS 100D shows no signs of bucking the trend. What it does do is present that design in a smaller, more lightweight package that weighs only 370 grams.

The body of the camera is composed of polycarbonate and aluminium alloy, along with carbon fibre, giving it a strong and sturdy feel. A matte finish helps keep fingerprints at bay.

You’ll only notice how small the EOS 100D is when you try to wrap your hands around it. Most users should have a comfortable time handling it, but those with larger hands are advised to handle it before purchasing to decide if it will suit their daily photography needs.

A rubber grip on the left of the camera helps keep a firm hold on the camera at all times and adds to the build quality.

The button placement is fairly typical even with a small number of changes. The directional pad seen till now has been replaced with a circular pad that almost appears like an analog stick. There are two zoom buttons at the top right corner and other functions such as live view, playback, the dedicated ISO button and more are comfortably placed.

The 3-inch LCD display is touch-based, which alleviates a lot of the frustration of needing to navigate menus quickly. If you’ve used a Canon DSLR before, you’ll take almost no time to adjust to the EOS 100D and the touch-screen also aids that transition.

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Interface

There’s not much to really distinguish the interface from previous Canon EOS cameras, especially the touch-based ones. You can use either the circular pad or the touchscreen and access the usual array of shooting and scene modes which include Landscape, Close-up, Creative Auto, Sports and much more.

You can also set your own parameters and save up to three custom modes for your shooting pleasure. Preview mode lets you rotate and apply filters to your picture using the touchscreen itself and you can even take a picture using only touch when properly focused.

You can also access a Quick mode for changing settings while shooting in live view.

The usual settings for features as white balance remain to be fiddled with, and you can choose from a number of presets such as Daylight, Cloudy, Shade, Tungsten Light and more, set your own custom white balance or just leave it on auto for the camera to handle.

HDR allows you to take three photos quickly and then combine them together to provide a much better overall result.

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Specs and image quality

The Canon EOS 100D features an 18 megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor. It features 9 point auto focus, with a hybrid phase-detect system for a mix of contrast detection and on-sensor phase detection. This makes for smoother and more natural auto focus, though not quite on the level of the 70D. 

Focal length is between 18-55 mm and expands to 28-88 mm in a full frame.

The ISO range is between 100-12800 (with support for ISO 25600), with a minimum shutter speed of 1/4000th of a second and a maximum shutter speed of 30 seconds.

The EOS 100D also captures 1080p video at 30 frames per second. Storage capacity is handled via SD, SDHC and SDXC memory cards.

It also features support for USB, HDMI and PictBridge.

The 3-inch LCD screen has a 1040k-dot resolution and looks fairly good while featuring excellent touch functionality. The image processing is handled via a DIGIC 5 image CPU.

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Image and video quality are very good overall for the device, and it handles low light photos well. The DIGIC 5 image processor ensures a strong level of quality and handles quick image capture, even when taking at comparatively higher ISO settings such as ISO 3200 and ISO 6400.

You still retain a fair amount of detail when zooming in as well, and the touchscreen helps you to easily focus and study any pictures you’ve taken afterwards.  The auto light optimiser is also incredibly useful and allows for some great pictures in shady areas.

Auto focus during videos is good, though it lives a bit to be desired when transitioning from distant to close-up objects suddenly.

Tracking focus works great for capturing fast moving objects though. You also have options for miniature video and snapshot mode, the latter which lets you capture short 4 second videos.

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Verdict

The Canon EOS 100D alone is priced for Rs 48,995, while the body and an 18-55 mm STM lens kit together will cost about Rs 53,995.

Overall, the device is extremely competent for both still images and video, even if you already have a good collection of lenses. At this price, it offers a fair amount of features and performance, although it may be hard to convince someone to pick it up over, say, the 650D purely on the basis of its compact design.

It also lacks a fair amount of connectivity features that we see in cameras these days, but regardless, if you want a nice, strong and lightweight device for shooting, the EOS 100D is a nice bet.

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