Canon SL1 Review

Overview

by Dan Havlik, Mike Tomkins, William Brawley and Zig Weidelich
Preview posted: 03/21/2013
Review finalized: 07/23/2013

Field Test by Eamon Hickey
Posted: 07/23/2013

We were told the "SL" in the 18-megapixel Canon SL1 consumer DSLR stood for "super lightweight." And that it certainly is. The new Lilliputian EOS Rebel SL1 feels as light as many mirrorless cameras -- and nearly as small -- especially with a Canon EF 40mm f/2.8 STM pancake lens attached to the front of it. Canon touts the camera as "the world's smallest and lightest DSLR."

Clearly, the burgeoning mirrorless camera market is what Canon is aiming to take on with the fully mirrored SL1. While Canon already has its own compact system camera, the EOS M, this mirrorless model doesn't stack up against many DSLRs in terms of still photography skills. With the Rebel SL1, Canon has attempted to offer the best of both worlds: a compact camera that's small and light enough to take with you anywhere, combined with the performance and high image quality of a DSLR.

Design and build. Though the Canon SL1 is a very small and light camera, its design and build mimic Canon's other DSLRs. Consequently, it's comfortable and ergonomic to use, even for photographers with larger hands. The Rebel SL1 is approximately 25% smaller and 28% lighter than the Canon Rebel T5i -- which was introduced at the same time -- and the T4i before it, with the SL1 measuring 4.6 (w) x 3.6 (h) x 2.7 (d) inches (117 x 91 x 69 mm) and weighing just under 14.4 ounces (407g), with the battery and SD memory card installed (but not the kit lens).

Despite the Rebel SL1's small size, the textured hand grip fits snugly in your hand and the surprisingly large shutter button beckons you to press it. Canon's kept the same 3-inch LCD touchscreen monitor as one on the T5i/T4i, offering 720 x 480 pixel resolution (1,040,000 dots). It's fixed to the rear of the camera, however, and doesn't offer any vari-angle or side-swiveling capabilities.

Sensor and performance. Like the Canon T5i (and the T4i before it), the Rebel SL1 employs an 18-megapixel, APS-C CMOS sensor. The SL1's ISO range is 100 to 12,800 (expandable to 25,600 in H mode) and it boasts low-light capabilities that rival the Canon T4i's, which were quite good.

The Canon SL1 uses a DIGIC 5 image processor, but can shoot just four frames per second in continuous shooting mode, compared to five fps on the T5i/T4i. That four fps burst mode, however, is fairly typical for entry-level DSLRs. It's definitely fast enough to capture candid moments and even some amateur sports. In terms of overall operational speed, the SL1 is peppy and takes advantage of a fairly decent 9-point autofocus system, but with just the center point being a cross-type point. (All nine AF points on the T5i/T4i are cross-type points.)

Expanded AF area. Speaking of the SL1's autofocus capabilities, though it's smaller than the T5i/T4i, its Hybrid CMOS AF II system features an AF area that uses approximately 80% of the width and height of the Live View display. That's a huge difference compared to the AF area of the T5i/T4i, which takes up just 38% of the width and 26% of the height of the Live View display.

This difference translates to improved Live View and movie mode focusing -- especially when the subject is not centered -- and gives photographers more flexibility when composing shots.

Creative features. The Canon SL1 is aimed at novice and beginning photographers, so it comes loaded with plenty of preset creative functions. In particular, the camera boasts a Scene Intelligent Auto Mode, which detects faces, colors, brightness, movement and a whole bunch of other factors, and automatically picks an appropriate exposure mode.

Other creative tools include an Effect Shot mode, which automatically produces two different photos, one with a creative filter and the other without. The Rebel SL1's seven creative filters include Art Bold, Water Painting, Grainy Black and White, Soft Focus, Toy Camera, Fish-Eye and Miniature. As with the T5i, creative filters and the background-blur simulation effect can be shown in real time on the rear LCD during Live View shooting. Other new special scene modes include Kids, Food and Candlelight, providing beginners and even more advanced users with a wide variety of camera effects that not only help do the work for you, but add drama without post processing.

New kit lens. The Rebel SL1 uses an EF-mount that, like other Canon APS-C DSLRs, is also compatible with EF-S lenses. It's available in a kit with Canon's EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM lens, which focuses quickly and quietly, and is pretty sharp for a kit lens. This lens is optimized for Canon's Hybrid CMOS AF II system on the SL1. Together the combination is effective, particularly for shooting video, tamping down any buzz from the focusing motor so you can capture HD clips with only the sounds of a scene being recorded. The 18-55mm STM lens offers four stops of image stabilization. (It's also available separately for a list price of US$250.)

Summary. By creating such a small and light -- yet highly usable -- camera with the EOS Rebel SL1, Canon has added an interesting wrinkle to the DSLR landscape. For photographers who might have been intrigued by small, mirrorless CSCs, the Canon SL1 offers a strong alternative. As it stands, the Rebel SL1 comes in just one color scheme: basic black. It currently retails at US$750 kitted with the EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM lens, while the body-only version costs US$650. At just a $100 premium, the kit lens is a tremendous value (it's sold separately for US$250). The svelte, EF 40mm f/2.8 STM pancake lens, which retails for US$150, would be a solid addition to an SL1 system -- especially since it enhances the camera's compactness.

In the Box

The Canon EOS Rebel SL1 ships with the following items in the box:

• Canon SL1 DSLR camera body
• EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM lens (if in a kit)
• Eye cup
• Lithium-ion battery pack LP-E12
• Battery charger LC-E12
• Wide camera strap EW-300D
• USB interface cable IFC-130U
• EOS Digital Solution disc and software instruction manual CD
• Camera instruction manual

Recommended Accessories

• Extra battery pack (LP-E12) for extended outings
• Large capacity SDHC/SDXC memory card. These days, 16GB is a good trade-off between cost and capacity for a consumer DSLR, but if you plan to capture HD movie clips or shoot in RAW format, look for larger cards with Class 6 or faster ratings.
• Additional lenses, especially the EF 40mm f/2.8 STM
• AC adapter kit ACK-E15
• Mini-HDMI cable and/or AV cable
• Wireless remote control RC-6
• Canon EX-series Speedlite external flash
• Mid-size camera bag

Optics

The Canon Rebel SL1 is available bundled with the new Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM lens. Note that other shots in the review are taken with our very sharp reference lenses, but this page is used to explore kit lens quality.

Kit Lens Test Results

Zoom
The Canon EF-S 18-55mm IS STM lens offers a typical zoom range , with decent performance for its class.

The Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM kit lens offers a typical optical zoom range of about 3.1x, with a 35mm-equivalent range of about 29-88mm. Sharpness and contrast are pretty good across much of the frame at 18mm and f/8, however there's moderate chromatic aberration and some minor softness visible in the corners, as well as some minor flare around bright objects. Results at full telephoto are also good at f/8, with good sharpness and contrast across much of the frame, as well as lower levels of chromatic aberration, though corners look to be a touch soft. Above average performance far-field for an inexpensive kit lens, and the built-in image stabilization will come in hand for low-light shots. (These shots are meant mainly to illustrate zoom ratio and are not ideal for judging optical performance; see below for how the lens performed in the lab.)

Macro
A small macro area (for an SLR kit lens), with very good detail. Flash throttled down well.

The Canon EOS Rebel SL1's macro performance will of course depend entirely on the lens in use. With the 18-55mm STM lens set to 55mm, the Canon Rebel SL1 captured a smaller-than-average size minimum area for an SLR kit lens, measuring 2.25 x 1.50 inches (57 x 38 millimeters). Details are quite strong in the center of the frame, though corners are quite soft. (Most lenses have some softening in the corners at macro distances, though.) The Canon SL1's flash throttled down well, producing a good, even exposure with no detectable shadow from the lens barrel.

Geometric Distortion
Higher than average barrel distortion at wide angle but low pincushion distortion at telephoto with the 18-55mm STM kit lens.

Barrel distortion at 18mm is 0.9 percent

Pincushion distortion at 55mm is less than 0.1 percent

The Canon EF-S 18-55mm STM lens produced images with about 0.9 percent barrel distortion at wide angle, which is higher than average and noticeable in some shots. At the telephoto end, there was less than 0.1% pincushion distortion, which is negligible The Canon SL1 does not correct for geometric distortion in its JPEGs, as uncorrected RAW files have identical amounts. Geometric Distortion is the tendency for the lens to bend straight lines outward (like a barrel -- usually at wide-angle) or inward (like a pincushion -- usually at telephoto).

Chromatic Aberration and Corner Sharpness
Moderate to high chromatic aberration in the corners with the 18-55mm STM lens. The lens produces soft corners at wide angle.

Aperture: Maximum
Wide, f/3.5: Lower right C.A.: High Softness: Soft	Wide, f/3.5: Center C.A.: Very little Softness: Sharp
Tele, f/5.6: Upper left C.A.: Moderate Softness: Slightly soft	Tele, f/5.6: Center C.A.: Very low Softness: Sharp

Chromatic Aberration. Chromatic aberration in the corners with the Canon 18-55mm STM lens is high and bright at wide angle (18mm) but only moderate at full telephoto (55mm). The amount and intensity of the color fringing reduces as you move toward the center of the image, to the point where it is very low at the center. See below for how well the Canon SL1's optional chromatic aberration correction works.

Corner Softness. The 18-55mm STM lens produced some soft corners when wide-open at maximum aperture. At full wide angle, the bottom right corner is pretty soft, though blurring doesn't extend very far into the frame. The other three corners are pretty sharp, though, and the center is quite sharp. At full telephoto, the top left corner is softest and the bottom right is sharp, while sharpness in the other corners is somewhere between. The lens is quite sharp in the center.

Vignetting. Vignetting or corner shading is not an issue in the above crops, but that's because the Canon SL1's Peripheral Illumination Correction is enabled by default. See below for comparisons with it off.

Aperture: f/8
Wide, f/8: Lower right C.A.: High Softness: Soft	Wide, f/8: Center C.A.: Very little Softness: Sharp
Tele, f/8: Upper left C.A.: Moderate Softness: Fairly sharp	Tele, f/8: Center C.A.: Very low Softness: Sharp

f/8: Chromatic aberration in the corners is still moderate to high, while sharpness in the corners improves slightly when stopped down to f/8, though the same corners are still softer than the center, particularly at wide angle. As you can see, the Canon SL1's Peripheral Illumination Correction over-corrected at wide angle, producing a noticeably brighter corner crop than the center.

Chromatic Aberration Correction
The Rebel SL1 offers optional Chromatic Aberration Correction to reduce lateral C.A. with Canon lenses.

C.A. Correction Off	C.A. Correction On
Wide, f/3.5: Upper left C.A.: High	Wide, f/3.5: Upper left C.A.: Very low
Tele, f/5.6: Upper left C.A.: Moderate	Tele, f/5.6: Upper left C.A.: Very low

As you can see, the Canon SL1's Chromatic Aberration Correction feature was very effective at removing almost all the lateral chromatic aberration in our 18-55mm STM lens test shots above.

Overall, a better-than-average performance for an inexpensive kit lens.

Peripheral Illumination Correction
Like most recent Canon DSLRs, the SL1 features Peripheral Illumination Correction feature to reduce vignetting or lens shading with Canon lenses.

18mm @ f/3.5		55mm @ f/5.6
Peripheral Illumination Correction:		On (default)	Off

Like most Canon DSLRs, the SL1 provides what the company calls "Lens Peripheral Illumination Correction," which corrects for lens shading (commonly called "vignetting"), attempting to produce a more uniform exposure across the frame by compensating for the light fall-off seen with some lenses in the corners of the frame. Mouse over the Off and On links above to see the effect on the 18-55mm kit lens at wide-angle and telephoto at maximum aperture. PIC is enabled by default.

Peripheral Illumination Correction and Chromatic Aberration Correction are supported for over 85 different Canon lens models, in both raw and JPEG workflows. For JPEG shooting, the correction is made at capture time, while raw shooters can access the function in Canon's Digital Photo Professional software. From the factory, the SL1 body ships with correction data for about 25 lens models. Canon's EOS Utility software allows correction data for lenses (including models as-yet unreleased) to be uploaded to the Canon SL1.

Canon SL1 Viewfinder Accuracy

Viewfinder Test Results

Accuracy
Average accuracy from the optical viewfinder, very good accuracy from the LCD in Live View mode.

Testing with a low-distortion mid-focal length macro lens to minimize the effects of lens distortion, we measured the Canon SL1's optical viewfinder's coverage at close to 96%. This is better than Canon's 95% specification, but the image is offset both vertically and horizontally with respect to the sensor, which is unfortunately quite common with optical viewfinders in consumer-oriented models (and many prosumer models). Live View mode using the LCD is much more accurate, resulting in just over 100% coverage (a little loose), and of course the image isn't offset.

The images above were taken from our standardized test shots. For a collection of more pictorial photos, see our Canon EOS Rebel SL1 (EOS 100D) Photo Gallery .

Exposure

Color

Saturation & Hue Accuracy
Very good saturation and excellent hue accuracy.

ISO Sensitivity
100	200	400
800	1600	3200
6400	12800	25600
In the diagram above, the squares show the original color, and the circles show the color that the camera captured. More saturated colors are located toward the periphery of the graph. Hue changes as you travel around the center. Thus, hue-accurate, highly saturated colors appear as lines radiating from the center. Mouse over the links above to compare ISOs, and click to load a larger version.

Saturation. The Canon EOS Rebel SL1 produces images with fairly accurate saturation levels. Strong reds, oranges, dark greens and dark blues are pushed a little, while yellow and cyan are slightly muted. The mean saturation of 108.4% (8.4% oversaturated) at base ISO is not too pumped yet not too dull, and saturation remains fairly consistent over the ISO range except at ISO 25,800 where it drops off noticeably. Most consumer digital cameras produce color that's more highly saturated (more intense) than found in the original subjects. This is simply because most people like their color a bit brighter than life.

Skin tones. The Canon SL1 produced pleasing, natural-looking Caucasian skin tones in our tests when using both manual and auto white balance settings. Darker skin tones show a small nudge toward orange, but good results overall. Where oversaturation is most problematic is on Caucasian skin tones, as it's very easy for these "memory colors" to be seen as too bright, too pink, too yellow, etc.

Hue. The Canon Rebel SL1's hue accuracy is excellent, much better than average. There are the usual shifts in cyan toward blue (actually quite small), red toward orange, and orange toward yellow, but all are fairly minor. (The cyan to blue shift is very common among the digital cameras we test; we think it's a deliberate choice by camera engineers to produce better-looking sky colors.) Average "delta-C" color error at base ISO is only 3.3, which is outstanding, one of the best scores we've recorded to date. Delta-C color error increases with ISO, but remains better than average even at the highest ISO. Hue is "what color" the color is.

Saturation Adjustment
The Canon EOS Rebel SL1 offers a total of nine saturation settings, four above and four below the default saturation. This covers a very wide range of saturation levels, and as it should, the Canon SL1's saturation adjustment affects only saturation, leaving the contrast of images more or less unaltered. (In some cameras, saturation tends to affect contrast, and vice versa.) The fine steps between settings mean you can program the camera to just the level of saturation you prefer. As usual for Canon, well done.

Saturation Adjustment Examples
-4	-2	0	+2	+4

The table above shows alternate settings including the default as well as the two extreme saturation settings. Click on any thumbnail above, then click again to see the full-sized image.

Sensor

Exposure and White Balance

Indoors, incandescent lighting
Auto and Incandescent settings both struggled with household incandescent lighting, though Manual white balance worked well. Slightly higher than average exposure compensation required.

Indoors, under incandescent lighting, the Canon EOS Rebel SL1's Auto and Incandescent white balance settings struggled, both producing very warm red/orange color casts. Unfortunately, this is common among cameras we've tested, but disappointing nonetheless. The Manual setting produced the most accurate results, though just slightly cool overall. The Rebel SL1 doesn't offer a Kelvin temperature setting like its more expensive siblings, but like all recent Canon SLRs, you can shift color balance toward more or less green vs magenta or blue vs amber, using a +/-9 step grid format display. The Canon Rebel SL1 required +0.7 EV exposure compensation for this shot, which is slightly higher than the +0.3 EV average among the cameras we've tested. (Our test lighting for this shot is a mixture of 60 and 100 watt household incandescent bulbs, a pretty yellow light source, but a very common one in typical home settings here in the U.S.)

Outdoors, daylight
Color and saturation are very good, though a tendency towards slightly cool color balance and slightly high contrast under harsh lighting. Slightly below average exposure accuracy.

Outdoors, the Canon EOS Rebel SL1 tended toward a slightly cool color balance, though overall color was generally very good. The Canon Rebel SL1 required +1.0 EV exposure compensation to keep the mannequin's face bright, a little more than the typical +0.7 EV we're accustomed to using for our "Sunlit" portrait shot. The Canon SL1's default contrast is a little high, producing some washed-out highlights and dark shadows under the deliberately harsh lighting of our "Sunlit" portrait test shown above left, though the camera's contrast, Auto Lighting Optimizer and Highlight Tone Priority settings do help with high contrast scenes like these. See below for examples of this. The Far-field shot (above right) was also a touch cool, and exposure a bit dim, though the camera did a good job of avoiding blown highlights at default exposure. Deep shadows however are quite dark and somewhat noisy.

See full set of test images with explanations
See thumbnails of all test and gallery images

Resolution
Very high resolution, ~ 2,100 lines of strong detail from JPEGs, about 2,300 from RAW.

Our laboratory resolution chart showed the Canon Rebel SL1's images with sharp, distinct line patterns down to about 2,100 lines per picture height horizontally and about the same vertically. Some may argue for higher numbers, but aliasing and sharpening artifacts start to interfere at this resolution. Extinction of the pattern occurred just past 3,200 lines horizontally and at about 3,000 lines vertically. Adobe Camera Raw converted .CR2 files show higher resolution than the in-camera JPEG, perhaps another 200 lines, and complete extinction of the pattern was extended well past 3,200 lines in the horizontal direction, and to about 3,200 lines in the vertical direction. While ACR was able to extract more detail, it also produced more moiré and false colors, especially in vertical lines. Use these numbers to compare with other cameras of similar resolution, or use them to see just what higher resolution can mean in terms of potential detail.

See full set of test images with explanations
See thumbnails of all test and gallery images

Sharpness & Detail
Good sharpness and loads of detail with a sharp lens. Some minor detail loss to noise reduction processing even at low ISOs.

Sharpness. The Canon EOS Rebel SL1's 18-megapixel sensor captures excellent image detail when coupled with a good lens, though some minor edge-enhancement artifacts are visible around high-contrast edges, as shown in the crop above left. (The above left crop shot was taken with Canon's very sharp 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM lens at f/8.) Edge enhancement creates the illusion of sharpness by enhancing colors and tones right at the edge of a rapid transition in color or tone.

Detail. The crop above right shows some detail loss due to noise suppression in darker areas and in areas with low contrast, but no more than we're accustomed to seeing at these resolutions. Good performance for an 18-megapixel APS-C sensor. (The image above right of the hair was taken with our very sharp Sigma 70mm f/2.8 reference lens.) Noise-suppression systems in digital cameras tend to flatten-out detail in areas of subtle contrast. The effects can often be seen in shots of human hair, where the individual strands are lost and an almost "watercolor" look appears.

Raw vs In-Camera JPEGs
As mentioned above, the Canon SL1 does an excellent job of capturing sharp, detailed JPEGs when coupled with a sharp lens, but as is usually the case, additional detail can be extracted by carefully processing its RAW files.

Camera JPEG (Fine, default settings)	RAW via Canon DPP (default settings)	RAW via ACR (sharpened in Photoshop)

In the table above, mousing over a link at the bottom will load the corresponding crop in the area above, and clicking on the link will load the full resolution file. Examples include in-camera Fine JPEG, the matching RAW file processed through Canon's Digital Photo Professional (DPP) software using default settings, and finally, the same RAW file processed through Adobe Camera Raw (ACR 8.1), then sharpened in Photoshop using 300% unsharp masking with an 0.3 pixel radius.

Canon's DPP software produced images similar to in-camera JPEGs, perhaps with just slightly better detail. Images processed through ACR show an improvement in fine detail compared to the DPP conversions, but also show a bit more noise at default settings, which is not unusual. You may want to experiment with ACR's noise reduction settings to find the detail versus noise trade-off you're looking for. Regardless, the Canon SL1 is clearly a camera that carries a lot of detail in its RAW files.

ISO & Noise Performance
Very good detail versus noise up to ISO 1,600, though detail suffers at higher ISOs.

Default High ISO Noise Reduction
ISO 100	ISO 200	ISO 400
ISO 800	ISO 1,600	ISO 3,200
ISO 6,400	ISO 12,800	ISO 25,600

The Canon SL1's high ISO performance is pretty good, very similar to the Canon T4i's. Images are quite clean at ISOs 100 through 400, with just a tiny amount of luminance noise seen in the shadows, as well as what looks to be chroma noise in the darker strands of hair. Noise "grain" is slightly more evident at ISO 800, but detail remains very strong despite some minor blurring due to noise reduction. ISO 1,600 is of course noisier, but fine detail is still very good. At ISO 3,200 noise grain becomes coarser, blurring stronger and chroma noise more apparent, resulting in a more noticeable drop in detail. ISO 6,400 is quite grainy with obvious chroma noise, but there is still some fine detail left. Noise and the effects of noise reduction working hard to keep it under control really become apparent at ISO 12,800 and especially 25,600, with strong blurring and obvious chroma blotching, along with a drop in saturation.

There are also what look to be demosaicing errors in areas of fine vertical detail and high local contrast, such as the horizontal bands in the strands of hair on the mannequins's forehead at lower ISOs (see ISO 100 crop at right). We've seen these artifacts in our indoor portrait JPEG images from other Canon SLRs, as well as hints of them in JPEGs from other manufacturers, so they're not that unusual. The aberrations are very subtle to be sure, but they're something to be aware of if you plan to make very large prints of similar subject matter from JPEGs. They don't appear in RAW files processed with a good converter such as Adobe Camera Raw.

Overall though, a very good performance for an entry-level model, similar to the Canon T4i's. See the Print Quality section below for our evaluation of maximum print sizes at each ISO setting.

A note about focus for this shot: We shoot this image at f/4, using one of three very sharp reference lenses (70mm Sigma f/2.8 macro for most cameras, 60mm f/2.8 Nikkor macro for Nikon bodies without a drive motor, and Olympus Zuiko 50mm f/2.0 for Four Thirds and Micro Four Thirds bodies). To insure that the hair detail we use for making critical judgements about camera noise processing and detail rendering is in sharp focus at the relatively wide aperture we're shooting at, the focus target at the center of the scene is on a movable stand. This lets us compensate for front- or back-focus by different camera bodies, even those that lack micro-focus adjustments. This does mean, though, that the focus target itself may appear soft or slightly out of focus for bodies that front- or back-focused with the reference lens. If you click to view the full-size image for one of these shots and notice that the focus target is fuzzy, you don't need to email and tell us about it; we already know it. :-) The focus target position will simply have been adjusted to insure that the rest of the scene is focused properly.

Extremes: Sunlit, dynamic range and low light tests
Very high resolution with strong overall detail, but somewhat high default contrast and unremarkable dynamic range. Highlight Tone Priority and contrast adjustment options do a great job of dealing with tough lighting. Good low-light performance, but autofocus can struggle.

The Canon EOS Rebel SL1 produced moderately high contrast with some washed-out highlights and deep shadows under the deliberately harsh lighting of the test above. The mannequin's face was too dim at the +0.3 EV and +0.7 EV settings, so we preferred the image with +1.0 EV exposure compensation. This resulted in more clipped highlights in the shirt and flowers than we're used to seeing from an APS-C sensor lately, indicating mediocre dynamic range compared to the best of recent competitors. Shadow detail was however pretty good, though somewhat noisy. Bottom line: while dynamic range isn't bad, the Canon SL1 struggled a bit with this difficult shot compared to recent state-of-the-art peers.

Because digital cameras are more like slide film than negative film (in that they tend to have a more limited tonal range), we test them in the harshest situations to see how they handle scenes with bright highlights and dark shadows, as well as what kind of sensitivity they have in low light. The shot above is designed to mimic the very harsh, contrasty effect of direct noonday sunlight, a very tough challenge for most digital cameras. (You can read details of this test here. In actual shooting conditions, be sure to use fill flash in situations like the one shown here; it's better to shoot in open shade whenever possible.)

Face Detection
Just like most point & shoot cameras these days, the Canon EOS Rebel SL1 has the ability to detect faces in Live View mode, and adjust exposure and focus accordingly.

Face Detection
Aperture Priority Face Detect: Off 0 EV	Aperture Priority Face Detect: On 0 EV	Auto Mode 0 EV

As you can see from the examples above, it works well, as the center image with face detection enabled is much better exposed for the face (actually slightly overexposed) than the left image where face detection was not employed. Full Auto mode (right) was also an improvement over Aperture Priority without face detection, selecting a larger aperture than we normally use for this shot (f/4 vs f/8), though the mannequin's face is still somewhat dim.

Contrast Adjustment
We really like it when a camera gives us the ability to adjust contrast and saturation to our liking. It's even better when those adjustments cover a useful range, in steps small enough to allow for precise tweaks. As was the case with its saturation adjustment, the Canon SL1's contrast setting meets both challenges very well.

Minimum Contrast
Contrast set to lowest, +0.7 EV	Contrast set to lowest, 0 EV

At its lowest contrast setting, the Canon SL1 did an excellent job of preserving highlight detail, maintaining fairly natural-looking skin tones, and holding nice detail in the shadows. Overall, very good results here when the contrast setting is adjusted.

Contrast Adjustment Examples
-4	-2	0	+2	+4

The Canon Rebel SL1's contrast-adjustment control offers a very broad range of control in usefully fine gradations, and does a good job of adjusting contrast without affecting color saturation in the process. (As noted earlier regarding saturation adjustment, something that not all cameras manage to do.)

Highlight Tone Priority
The Canon EOS Rebel SL1's Highlight Tone Priority (HTP) option did an excellent job of preserving highlight detail, as shown below. (Mouse over the Off and On links to load the corresponding thumbnail, histogram and crops.)

Highlight Tone Priority (+0.7EV)
HTP Setting: Off On

Both shots above were captured at the same exposure, the only difference being that HTP was enabled for the second shot which necessarily increases the ISO to 200; part of how HTP works. The result is evident in the histograms and thumbnails above, clearly showing the superior highlight preservation when HTP is enabled, while shadow brightness is left relatively untouched. If you look closely at shadows however, you'll notice an increase in noise is the price you pay when ISO is boosted from 100 to 200. Except in the very deepest shadows, though, overall noise is low enough at ISO 200 that this is really a negligible trade-off for all but the most critical applications.

Automatic Lighting Optimization
Like previous EOS models, the Canon SL1 offers three selectable levels of Automatic Lighting Optimization (ALO), plus Off. In fully automatic and Creative Auto exposure modes, ALO is automatically enabled. All four shots below were taken with the same default exposure settings. Mouse over the links below to load the associated thumbnail and histogram, and click on the links to load full resolution images.

Automatic Lighting Optimization
ALO Setting: Off Low Standard (default) High

As you can see above, ALO has the effect of shifting shadows and mid-tones in the histograms to the right, brightening shadows and indeed most of the image without clipping too many additional highlights. ISO is not boosted for ALO so increased noise is not an issue, though it may be slightly more visible in shadows that have been boosted significantly.

Dynamic Range
A key parameter in a digital camera is its Dynamic Range, the range of brightness that can be faithfully recorded. At the upper end of the tonal scale, dynamic range is dictated by the point at which the RGB data "saturates" at values of 255, 255, 255. At the lower end of the tonal scale, dynamic range is determined by the point at which there ceases to be any useful difference between adjacent tonal steps. Note the use of the qualifier "useful" in there: While it's tempting to evaluate dynamic range as the maximum number of tonal steps that can be discerned at all, that measure of dynamic range has very little relevance to real-world photography. What we care about as photographers is how much detail we can pull out of the shadows before image noise becomes too objectionable. This, of course, is a very subjective matter, and will vary with the application and even the subject matter in question. (Noise will be much more visible in subjects with large areas of flat tints and subtle shading than it would in subjects with strong, highly contrasting surface texture.)

What makes most sense then, is to specify useful dynamic range in terms of the point at which image noise reaches some agreed-upon threshold. To this end, Imatest computes a number of different dynamic range measurements, based on a variety of image noise thresholds. The noise thresholds are specified in terms of f-stops of equivalent luminance variation in the final image file, and dynamic range is computed for noise thresholds of 1.0 (low image quality), 0.5 (medium image quality), 0.25 (medium-high image quality) and 0.1 (high image quality). For most photographers and most applications, the noise thresholds of 0.5 and 0.25 f-stops are probably the most relevant to the production of acceptable-quality finished images, but many noise-sensitive shooters will insist on the 0.1 f-stop limit for their most critical work.

JPEG. The graph at right (click for a larger version) was generated using Imatest's dynamic range analysis for an in-camera Canon Rebel SL1 JPEG file with a nominally-exposed density step target (Stouffer 4110). At default camera settings and base ISO, the graph shows 12.2 f-stops of total dynamic range, with 7.42 f-stops at the "High" Quality level. These are decent numbers for a JPEG, though somewhat lower than some recent competitors. Compared to the Canon T4i which uses a similar sensor, the SL1 scored essentially the same at the High Quality level (7.42 vs 7.41 f-stops), and significantly higher in total dynamic range (12.1 vs 11.1 f-stops), though as mentioned above, the total dynamic range number is not terribly useful. Note though that this measurement has a margin of error of about 1/3 f-stop, so differences of less than 0.33 can be ignored.

RAW. The graph at right is from the same Stouffer 4110 stepchart image captured as a RAW (.CR2) file, processed with Adobe Camera Raw using the Auto setting, then tweaking from there. The Canon SL1's RAW file scored 0.4 f-stop more in total dynamic range (12.6 vs 12.2 f-stops) but the score at the highest quality level increased only 0.19 f-stops from 7.41 to 7.56, which is an insignificant improvement and below average these days. Results are very similar to those of the Canon T4i at the High Quality level (7.61 vs 7.35 f-stops), though the total dynamic range score was higher like the JPEG, at 12.6 vs 11.9 f-stops. The score at the "Low" setting which is what most sites that report dynamic range seem to measure is essentially the same as the T4i's, at 11 versus 11.1 f-stops. Like all recent Canon SLRs, these scores are somewhat below average for a modern APS-C sensor. As always, it's worth noting here is that ACR's default noise reduction settings reduced overall noise somewhat (see the plot in the lower left-hand corner) relative to the levels in the in-camera JPEG, which would tend to boost the dynamic range numbers for the High Quality threshold, but notice that pixel noise in darker midtones and shadows is actually higher than the JPEG. Also, the extreme highlight recovery being performed by ACR here would likely produce color errors in strong highlights of natural subjects.

	1 fc 11 lux	1/2 fc 5.5 lux	1/4 fc 2.7 lux	1/8 fc 1.3 lux	1/16 fc 0.67 lux	1/16 fc No NR
ISO 100	2 s f2.8	4 s f2.8	8 s f2.8	16 s f2.8	32 s f2.8	32 s f2.8
ISO 200	1 s f2.8	2 s f2.8	4 s f2.8	8 s f2.8	16 s f2.8	16 s f2.8
ISO 400	0.5 s f2.8	1 s f2.8	2 s f2.8	4 s f2.8	8 s f2.8	8 s f2.8
ISO 800	1/4 s f2.8	0.5 s f2.8	1 s f2.8	2 s f2.8	4 s f2.8	4 s f2.8
ISO 1600	1/8 s f2.8	1/4 s f2.8	0.5 s f2.8	1 s f2.8	2 s f2.8	2 s f2.8
ISO 3200	1/16 s f2.8	1/8 s f2.8	1/4 s f2.8	0.5 s f2.8	1 s f2.8	1 s f2.8
ISO 6400	1/32 s f2.8	1/16 s f2.8	1/8 s f2.8	1/4 s f2.8	0.5 s f2.8	0.5 s f2.8
ISO 12800	1/64 s f2.8	1/32 s f2.8	1/16 s f2.8	1/8 s f2.8	1/4 s f2.8	1/4 s f2.8
ISO 25600	1/128 s f2.8	1/64 s f2.8	1/32 s f2.8	1/16 s f2.8	1/8 s f2.8	1/8 s f2.8

Low Light. The Canon SL1 performed well on the low-light test, capturing bright images at the lowest light level (1/16 foot-candle), even with the lowest sensitivity setting (ISO 100). As expected, noise increases as ISO goes up and light levels go down, but noise remains fairly low up to ISO 1,600, and performance is still quite good up to ISO 6,400. Noise is a little high at ISOs 12,800 and 25,600, particularly when noise reduction is minimized (extreme right column in the table above), though that's to be expected.

We noticed a few hot pixels here and there particularly when long exposure noise reduction was turned off (where they can be expected), but that's not unusual. And we didn't see any significant banding (pattern noise) or heat bloom.

Color balance was pretty neutral with Canon Rebel SL1's Auto white balance setting (just a touch cool), even at high ISOs, though white balance took on a slightly red or magenta tint at lower light levels.

1 fc 11 lux	ISO 100	ISO 200	ISO 400	ISO 800	ISO 1600
Std. NR	2 s f2.8	1 s f2.8	0.5 s f2.8	1/4 s f2.8	1/8 s f2.8
Multi Shot NR	2 s f2.8	1 s f2.8	0.5 s f2.8	1/4 s f2.8	1/8 s f2.8
	ISO 3200	ISO 6400	ISO 12800	ISO 25600
Std. NR	1/16 s f2.8	1/32 s f2.8	1/64 s f2.8	1/128 s f2.8
Multi Shot NR	1/16 s f2.8	1/32 s f2.8	1/64 s f2.8	1/128 s f2.8

The Canon SL1's Multi Shot Noise Reduction mode takes a burst of four images and blends them together to average out noise. It really makes a difference at higher ISOs, making very high ISOs like 12,800 and 25,600 much more usable. As expected, it makes little difference at low to moderate ISOs, where noise is already low. Compare rows in the table above.

When using the optical viewfinder and phase-detect AF, the Canon Rebel SL1's autofocus system was able to focus on the subject down to just below the 1/8 foot-candle light level unassisted with our Sigma f/2.8 lens, and in complete darkness with AF assist enabled. In Live View mode using Hybrid AF, the Canon SL1 was able to focus down to just above the 1/2 foot-candle light level, which is poor for a DSLR with an f/2.8 lens.

As always, keep in mind that the longer shutter speeds here demand the use of a tripod to prevent any blurring from camera movement. (A useful trick is to just prop the camera on a convenient surface, and use its self-timer to release the shutter. This avoids any jiggling from your finger pressing the shutter button, and can work quite well when you don't have a tripod handy.)

How bright is this? The one foot-candle light level that this test begins at roughly corresponds to the brightness of typical city street-lighting at night. Cameras performing well at that level should be able to snap good-looking photos of street-lit scenes.

NOTE: This low light test is conducted with a stationary subject, and the camera mounted on a sturdy tripod. Most digital cameras will fail miserably when faced with a moving subject in dim lighting. (For example, a child's ballet recital or a holiday pageant in a gymnasium.) Digital SLRs like the Canon SL1 do much better than point & shoots, but you still shouldn't expect a quick autofocus lock with moving subjects.

Output Quality

Print Quality
Good 24 x 36 inch prints at ISO 100/200; makes a good 16 x 20 inch print at ISO 800 and a usable 4 x 6 at ISO 12,800.

ISO 100/200 can produce great 24 x 36 prints if you look at them from a typical viewing distance, while a 20 x 30 inch print looks wonderful. You are pushing the resolution of the 18-megapixel sensor once you go past 20 x 30 inches, as you can see tiny pixilation on the edges if you look very closely. However, image quality is still impressive with excellent fine details and bright, accurate colors. ISO 100 and 200 prints are nearly identical, with maybe just a tiny fraction more detail in ISO 100, but it's extremely hard to tell the difference. Despite the 18-megapixel resolution, 30 x 40 inch prints would do fine for wall display.

ISO 400 allows for great prints up to 20 x 30 inches, while 24 x 36 inch prints are suitable for wall display.

ISO 800 images look good at 16 x 20 inches. There is a hint of noise, but you only really notice it in the shadow areas. 20 x 30 inch prints are suitable for wall display.

ISO 1600 makes a good 13 x 19 inch print with a nice level of fine detail. Colors also looked accurate and pleasing. At 16 x 20, the image is a bit too soft in finely detailed areas for us to make the call at that size. Noise starts to appear a bit in the shadows if you look closely, but noise in the highlights and midrange areas are very low.

ISO 3200 prints start to show a bit more noise in the shadows, and the SL1 starts to have noticeable issues with red colors (particularly in our red fabric area of our test scene), but it still produces a nice 8 x 10 inch print. As before, shadow noise is apparent, but otherwise the image looks great and fine details are still noticeable.

ISO 6400 makes a decent 5 x 7, but noise and a reduction in fine detail starts to degrade image quality, preventing us from calling anything larger acceptable.

ISO 12,800 images are fairly heavy on noise and lack fine detail at larger sizes, but can still produce a decent 4 x 6 inch print. Colors still look okay, if a little on the dull side.

ISO 25,600 images were too mushy on fine detail and high ISO noise was very apparent, and therefore we would recommend avoiding this ISO level for use in prints.

The Canon Rebel SL1 uses an 18-megapixel APS-C sensor that's very similar to the one housed inside the Canon T4i & T5i, and produces excellent results for large prints at low ISO levels, all the way up to wall-mountable 30 x 40 inch prints at ISO 100 and 200. Additionally, this camera did surprisingly well in handling noise and grain at higher ISO levels. It wasn't until you got to ISO 6400 and looked very closely at the shadow areas that you began to see noise as well as noticeable degradation in fine detail. Once you get up to ISO 12,800, things start to look a little bleak, although we still thought a 4 x 6 inch print looked acceptable. At ISO 25,600, the lack of fine detail and high ISO noise levels made it difficult for us to call any size acceptable. All in all, a solid performer from Canon with its micro-sized DSLR.

The images above were taken from our standardized test shots. For a collection of more pictorial photos, see our Canon EOS Rebel SL1 (EOS 100D) Photo Gallery .

Not sure which camera to buy? Let your eyes be the ultimate judge! Visit our Comparometer(tm) to compare images from the Canon EOS Rebel SL1 (EOS 100D) with those from other cameras you may be considering. The proof is in the pictures, so let your own eyes decide which you like best!

Performance

Image Quality

The crops below compare the Canon SL1 to the Canon T5i, Nikon D3200, Olympus E-PL5, Pentax K-30, and Sony NEX-6.

Note that these images are best quality JPEGs straight out of the camera, at default settings including noise reduction. Each camera was shot with one of our very sharp reference prime lenses.

Canon SL1 versus Canon T5i at Base ISO

Canon SL1 at ISO 100	Canon T5i at ISO 100
The SL1 and T5i are very similarly spec'd with the same or very similar 18MP APS-C CMOS sensor and DIGIC 5 image processor. As you might expect, the images look very similar to each other.

Canon SL1 versus Nikon D3200 at Base ISO

Canon SL1 at ISO 100	Nikon D3200 at ISO 100
The D3200 features a 24MP APS-C sensor, so the crops looks slightly different in size and quality. The mosaic crops look very similar between the two, but the SL1 seems to produce sharper fine details. The D3200, however, does noticeably better with the red fabric crop compared to the SL1.

Canon SL1 versus Olympus E-PL5 at Base ISO

Canon SL1 at ISO 100	Olympus E-PL5 at ISO 200
The Olympus really outshines the SL1 in the mosaic image, producing much more crisp detail. The bottle itself in the first E-PL5 crop looks just a bit cleaner and sharper than in the SL1 crop, however the shadow area of the E-PL5 appears to show some noise reduction issues. Meanwhile, the SL1 may have a slight edge with the fabrics.

Canon SL1 versus Pentax K-30 at Base ISO

Canon SL1 at ISO 100	Pentax K-30 at ISO 100
The Pentax is the clear winner with this comparison, producing much more fine detail than the Canon in all three crops. However, the Pentax has a bit of trouble with the pink colored fabric.

Canon SL1 versus Sony NEX-6 at Base ISO

Canon SL1 at ISO 100	Sony NEX-6 at ISO 100
Like the above comparison, the Sony has the edge compared to the Canon. The mosaic and red fabric are the most telling, showing higher detail from the NEX-6, although the SL1 is quite close with the mosaic.

Most digital SLRs and CSCs will produce an excellent ISO 100 shot, so we like to push them and see what they can do compared to other cameras at ISO 1600, 3200, and 6400. Recent advances in sensor technology have made ISO 1600 look a lot more like ISO 100, but there are still cameras whose quality starts to fall apart at this setting. We also choose 1600 because we like to be able to shoot at least at this level when indoors and at night.

Canon SL1 versus Canon T5i at ISO 1600

Canon SL1 at ISO 1600	Canon T5i at ISO 1600
Like before, these two cameras are nearly identical in their image quality. And both begin to have trouble with fine details at ISO 1600, particularly with the red fabric.

Canon SL1 versus Nikon D3200 at ISO 1600

Canon SL1 at ISO 1600	Nikon D3200 at ISO 1600
It's a mixed bag here with this comparison. The SL1 produces a cleaner image in terms of noise in the first crop, with much less chroma noise compared to the D3200. The Canon also appears to produce crisper detail in the mosaic (notable in the beige tile border), while the Nikon handles the red fabric much better.

Canon SL1 versus Olympus E-PL5 at ISO 1600

Canon SL1 at ISO 1600	Olympus E-PL5 at ISO 1600
The E-PL5 does nicely here at ISO 1600, producing better fine detail than the SL1, most notably in the mosaic crop. It also produces a more discernible leaf pattern in the red fabric compared to the SL1. Like we saw at ISO 200, the Olympus shows more apparent noise reduction in the shadow areas in the first crop.

Canon SL1 versus Pentax K-30 at ISO 1600

Canon SL1 at ISO 1600	Pentax K-30 at ISO 1600
Another mixed comparison, with the Pentax producing more fine detail in the mosaic crop, but having an oddly mottled look to the shadow areas and the bottle surface in the first crop. The SL1 does great with noise, but the K-30 produces sharper text on the bottle's label, for instance. In the fabric crop both cameras have issues, with the Pentax almost completely unable to reproduce detail in the red fabric.

Canon SL1 versus Sony NEX-6 at ISO 1600

Canon SL1 at ISO 1600	Sony NEX-6 at ISO 1600
The Sony does a great job at ISO 1600, and just edges out the SL1. The bottle crop from the NEX-6 is clean and has sharp detail, as does the mosaic crop compared to the SL1. The red fabric area looks better from the Sony than the Canon, but the NEX-6 has trouble with the pink fabric.

Today's ISO 3200 is yesterday's ISO 1600 (well, almost), so below are the same crops at ISO 3200.

Canon SL1 versus Canon T5i at ISO 3200

Canon SL1 at ISO 3200	Canon T5i at ISO 3200
Like we saw previously, the SL1 and T5i images here at ISO 3200 look practically identical.

Canon SL1 versus Nikon D3200 at ISO 3200

Canon SL1 at ISO 3200	Nikon D3200 at ISO 3200
At ISO 3200, both of these cameras run into trouble with noise, which greatly affects their ability to reproduce fine detail. The Nikon images look a bit worse with noticeable chroma noise in the bottle and mosaic crops, while still barely producing some semblance of a leaf pattern in the red fabric (which the SL1 really struggles with).

Canon SL1 versus Olympus E-PL5 at ISO 3200

Canon SL1 at ISO 3200	Olympus E-PL5 at ISO 3200
The Olympus beats the Canon at ISO 3200 in the mosaic crops, while both end up struggling with producing detail in the fabric. The bottle crop from the Olympus has much sharper text and a bit less noise than the Canon.

Canon SL1 versus Pentax K-30 at ISO 3200

Canon SL1 at ISO 3200	Pentax K-30 at ISO 3200
High ISO noise really becomes an issue for the Pentax at ISO 3200, however it still manages to produce more fine detail in the mosaic crop than the Canon, as well as sharper text in the bottle's label. The red fabric area is difficult for both cameras to resolve, but the Pentax does worse than the SL1 here.

Canon SL1 versus Sony NEX-6 at ISO 3200

Canon SL1 at ISO 3200	Sony NEX-6 at ISO 3200
Like we saw in the previous comparison, the Sony packs a punch compared to the Canon with less shadow noise and a bit more detail in the mosaic crop. The NEX-6 also shows a more noticeable leaf pattern in the red fabric compared to the SL1.

Detail: Canon SL1 vs. Canon T5i, Nikon D3200, Olympus E-PL5, Pentax K-30 and Sony NEX-6

Canon SL1 ISO 100 ISO 3200 ISO 6400	Canon T5i ISO 100 ISO 3200 ISO 6400	Nikon D3200 ISO 100 ISO 3200 ISO 6400	Olympus E-PL5 ISO 200 ISO 3200 ISO 6400	Pentax K-30 ISO 100 ISO 3200 ISO 6400	Sony NEX-6 ISO 100 ISO 3200 ISO 6400
Detail comparison. At base ISO, the Olympus and Pentax easily come out on top, with clean, crisp fine detail. The SL1 and T5i images at ISO 100 look virtually identical. In terms of detail alone, the two Canons, the Nikon D3200 and the Sony all look fairly similar. The Sony however does appear to show some moiré artifacts in the fine lines of the lettering. As the ISO increases, the Olympus E-PL5 really shoots ahead of the competition here, maintaining lots of fine detail. The SL1, T5i and D3200 all look very similar at ISO 3200 and 6400.

The SL1 delivers good 24 x 36 inch prints at ISO 100/200; makes a good 16 x 20 inch print at ISO 800 and a usable 4 x 6 at ISO 12,800.

ISO 100/200 can produce great 24 x 36 prints if you look at them from a typical viewing distance, while a 20 x 30 inch print looks wonderful. You are pushing the resolution of the 18-megapixel sensor once you go past 20 x 30 inches, as you can see tiny pixilation on the edges if you look very closely. However, the detail is still impressive with excellent fine details and bright, accurate colors. ISO 100 and 200 prints are nearly identical, with maybe just a tiny fraction more detail in ISO 100, but it's extremely hard to tell the difference. Despite the 18MP sensor, 30 x 40 inch prints would do fine for wall display.

ISO 400 allows for great prints up to 20 x 30 inches, while 24 x 36 inch prints are suitable for wall display.

ISO 800 images look good at 16 x 20 inches. There is a hint of noise, but you only really notice it in the shadow areas. 20 x 30 inch prints are suitable for wall display.

ISO 1600 makes a good 13 x 19 inch print with a nice level of fine detail. Colors also looked accurate and pleasing. At 16 x 20, the image is a bit too soft in finely detailed areas for us to make the call at that size. Noise starts to appear a bit in the shadows if you look closely, but noise in the highlights and midrange areas are very low.

ISO 3200 prints start to show a bit more noise in the shadows, and the SL1 starts to have noticeable issues with red colors (particularly in our red fabric area of our test scene), but it still produces a nice 8 x 10 inch print. As before, shadow noise is apparent, but otherwise the image looks great and fine details are still noticeable.

ISO 6400 makes a decent 5 x 7, but noise and a reduction in fine detail starts to degrade image quality, preventing us from calling anything larger acceptable.

ISO 12,800 images are fairly heavy on noise and lack fine detail at larger sizes, but can still produce a decent 4 x 6 inch print. Colors still look okay, if a little on the dull side.

ISO 25,600 images were too mushy on fine detail and high ISO noise was very apparent, and therefore we would recommend avoiding this ISO level for use in prints.

The Canon Rebel SL1 uses an 18-megapixel APS-C sensor that's very similar to the one housed inside the Canon T4i & T5i, and produces excellent results for large prints at low ISO levels, all the way up to wall-mountable 30 x 40 inch prints at ISO 100 and 200. Additionally, this camera did surprisingly well in handling noise and grain at higher ISO levels. It wasn't until we got to ISO 6400 and looked very closely at the shadow areas that we began to see noise as well as noticeable degradation in fine detail. Once we get up to ISO 12,800, things start to look a little bleak, although we still thought a 4 x 6 inch print looked acceptable. At ISO 25,600, the lack of fine detail and high ISO noise levels made it difficult for us to call any size acceptable. All in all, a solid performer from Canon with its micro-sized DSLR.

Field Test

By Eamon Hickey · 07/23/2013

The Canon SL1 consumer DSLR was designed as an entirely new solution for photographers looking for a smaller, more compact interchangeable lens camera system, and to capitalize on the growing popularity of mirrorless compact system cameras. As someone who has shot with traditional (film and digital!) SLRs for more than 30 years, but who is now a big fan of mirrorless cameras, I was very interested in seeing just how good an answer the Rebel SL1 turns out to be.

Extra small. The Canon SL1 is shown here with the optional EF 40mm f/2.8 STM pancake lens.

Size and handling. The first thing I noticed after unpacking the Canon Rebel SL1 was its weight -- it really is surprisingly featherweight for a DSLR. It's also, of course, uniquely compact for a DSLR, but that difference didn't seem as striking to me. I'm sure that's partly because my test camera came with the EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM kit lens, which is fairly light but not particularly small in stature. But it's also because the SL1 is noticeably thicker than the mirrorless cameras I've used; the camera has to make room for its mirror.

After charging the battery and fitting a strap to the camera, I slung the Canon SL1 over my shoulder and headed out for a two-hour walk around New York City's Greenwich Village on a beautiful sunny day. One of the Village's landmarks, Washington Square Park, was abuzz with activity, and I spent more than an hour shooting street performers and other people enjoying the park. These included a small troupe of Irish step dancers, accompanied -- in the park, remember -- by a baby grand piano on wheels, plus an aspiring guitar god, a unicyclist and more.

Despite its small size, the Rebel SL1 felt immediately familiar and comfortable in my hands, allowing quick, stable and secure handling and shooting. Canon has managed to shrink the SL1's dimensions without compromising the camera's basic SLR-style handling and ergonomics in any significant way -- at least for me. The one slight exception is that I am naturally a left-eyed shooter, which pushed my face well into the control area on the right side of the Rebel SL1's back. I thumbed myself in the nose a few times, trying to access the exposure compensation button, and I've never had quite that much trouble on any other DSLR. But I don't really count this against the camera; I've known for a long time that left-eyed shooting was a personal vice I should be trying to conquer.

On subsequent days, I took the Canon SL1 on similar walks in Central Park and along the Hudson River, and I carried it with me on several nights out. On all those outings, the camera's weight remained hardly noticeable. It definitely negates the portability advantage that smaller mirrorless cameras have over standard DSLRs. But in terms of size, the SL1 still doesn't match up with most mirrorless models, especially with the sizable kit lens attached. You're just not going to slip the Canon SL1 into a coat pocket or a slim bag along with your iPad Mini and a bottle of water.

Performance. In just my first few shots in Washington Square Park, I confirmed what I had expected: the Canon Rebel SL1 is a quick and responsive camera. All the buttons and dials responded instantly when I changed settings or accessed features. I never found myself waiting for the Rebel SL1 to respond to my inputs.

While shooting the dancers, I was trying to capture moments of peak action, and this is the kind of situation where the feel, responsiveness and especially the delay of the shutter release cycle can make a real difference. The Canon Rebel SL1's shutter response turned out to be typical of entry-level SLRs, which means it's fairly quick and perfectly adequate for the vast majority of hobbyist photographers. (Pro DSLRs are definitely faster, as they should be.)

On the dancer shots, I also used the Canon SL1 in continuous drive mode, which shoots at about four frames per second. Combined with the reasonably responsive shutter, this allowed me to get several interesting shots of the dancers in action.

Just how fast is the Canon SL1? Find out by clicking here to see our full battery
of rigorous, objective speed and operation tests conducted in the IR Lab.

I did, however, run into one relatively modest performance shortcoming. Irish step dancing goes fast and furious, and I was firing off multiple sequences of continuous bursts to try to capture all the many cool moments happening in front of me. I had the Rebel SL1 set to record simultaneous RAW+JPEG images, and it can only shoot five frames in that mode before the image buffer fills up and the frame rate falls way off. This isn't out-of-the-ordinary for an entry-level DSLR, but it caused me to miss a lot of shots. On later outings, I tested the Rebel SL1 in RAW only (i.e. with no simultaneous JPEG) and got eight frames before the buffer filled. For some sports shots on one of those later outings, I switched to capturing Large JPEGs only and never filled the buffer -- testing this mode, I could get more than 25 images at full frame rate, which is more than six seconds of action, easily good enough for any practical purpose I can think of.

As I walked around Washington Square Park taking grab shots of the action around me, I was impressed with the Rebel SL1's autofocus when used in its normal mode -- using phase-detection AF with the eye-level optical viewfinder and the mirror in its normal down position. It was very fast and decisive on every subject I shot, from the dancers in bright sunlight to backlit people sitting on a park bench.

The optical viewfinder is, of course, the biggest difference between a DSLR and a mirrorless model, but I don't feel like there's too much to say about the viewfinder in the Canon SL1. It's pretty typical of entry-level DSLR cameras, which means it's decent but noticeably less impressive than the big, bright viewfinders in high-end DSLRs, especially full-frame models.

On a different outing to Hudson River Park, I also tried the Canon SL1's Live View mode for taking some pictures of flowers, and folks walking along the river promenade. I had no trouble viewing and framing with the LCD except in the brightest direct sunlight.

Live View mode features Canon's new Hybrid CMOS II AF system which is unique to the SL1 so far and combines phase- and contrast-detect autofocus technologies. The new system uses a lot more of the Live View screen -- in fact, about 64% of the screen in total -- than models such as the Canon T4i and T5i.

I found the SL1's hybrid AF to be adequately fast, but not quite up to the standards of the best mirrorless cameras in my opinion. In my use, it was about half as fast as the Rebel SL1's standard phase-detection mode AF. That said, it was still faster than DSLRs I've tested that utilized solely contrast-detect AF for Live View still picture shooting -- and more importantly, a huge improvement over the T4i which had remarkably slow AF in Live View and video, even though it had an earlier version of the Hybrid CMOS AF technology.

When I headed home at the end of my Hudson River Park shoot, it was dusk edging into night, which gave me a chance to try both of the Canon SL1's AF systems in dim light. As I shot pictures of some East Village landmarks like McSorley's Old Ale House, both AF systems were impressively decisive despite the low light levels. Here, the Hybrid CMOS II AF system in Live View mode worked almost as fast as the SL1's phase-detection AF system with the viewfinder. I found that pretty impressive.

To really give any AF system a challenge, you need to shoot sports, so on a subsequent day I took the Canon SL1 to a park near my apartment where I know I can find young -- and sometimes not so young -- men battling it out in pickup basketball games. I shot continuous bursts at 4 fps using AI Servo AF mode with the Rebel SL1's phase-detection AF system, and the camera did a really good job. It was able to easily follow fast-moving action and gave me a high percentage of in-focus shots. This remains one area where DSLR cameras significantly outperform nearly all mirrorless cameras. I should mention one caveat: this was not an absolute AF torture test for the Rebel SL1 because the kit lens I was using only opens up to f/5.6 (at 55mm), which provides enough depth-of-field to hide small focusing errors.

Controls. The control systems on DSLR cameras are pretty well worked out by now, and so the buttons and dials on the Canon SL1 were instantly familiar to me, as they would be to anyone with experience taking pictures with DSLRs, especially Canon SLRs.

Before my first shoot with the Rebel SL1, I set up the camera to separate autofocus from the shutter release button. On my trip to Washington Square Park, when capturing images of the dancers, I simply autofocused once on the center dancer, and then I could fire the shutter multiple times with no AF delay, as I tried to capture the peak of the action. It's also always been a snap to switch between manual and automatic focus on Canon DSLRs -- with a switch on the lens -- so the SL1 provided all the focus flexibility I needed.

On my trip to Hudson River Park, I did a lot of switching from one sensitivity to another, as I went from shooting front-lit landscapes and people to backlit flowers -- sometimes to allow narrower apertures, sometimes to allow faster shutter speeds. With its dedicated ISO button, the Canon SL1 made it easy to quickly make these changes.

Like nearly all entry-level DSLRs (and mirrorless cameras, for that matter) the Canon SL1 has only one main control dial, but within that constraint, its exposure control system is quick to operate. In Hudson River Park, I used it mainly in Aperture Priority exposure mode, and I could quickly set positive or negative exposure compensation from shot to shot. I used this in combination with autoexposure bracketing for many backlit shots, and was able to get good exposures for several tricky images, including a group of teenagers backlit against the Hudson River, and a bed of flowers in dappled sunlight with backlit runners jogging by. As I mentioned earlier, my only small issue was that my nose covered the Rebel SL1's exposure compensation button, and I ended up with a thumb inside a nostril once or twice before I figured it out.

Quick Control System. Get all your exposure settings right at your fingertips with the SL1's touch screen.

The Rebel SL1 mostly conforms to the Canon family menu style, which isn't necessarily brilliant but is perfectly acceptable. Most functions are quick to understand and access, and the My Menu, which you can customize with your own most-used function settings, is very handy. By my second shoot with the SL1, however, I had largely switched to using the Quick Control system, which lets you access important features and functions using the camera's touch-screen LCD. I was happy to discover that two very useful functions that are sometimes buried in menus are available directly with the Rebel SL1's Quick Control system: autoexposure bracketing and flash exposure compensation. Very nice.

The Canon SL1 includes a variety of scene modes and special effects filters, but I didn't find it particularly intuitive to activate them. That said, I used the HDR Backlight Control mode to shoot an image of a new building down the block from my apartment. The sun was low in the sky in the background, and the Rebel SL1 automatically combined three images into one HDR shot that easily captured more detail than I could get in a single image.

Canon Rebel SL1 Other Creative Effects filters
Miniature Effect filter
Grainy Black & White	Soft Focus
Fisheye Effect	Art Bold
Water Painting	Toy Camera
The Canon Rebel SL1 offers an array of creative filter effects for additional artistic expression. Like many, if not most other cameras that offer similar effects, these creative filters do not work for RAW shooting. Furthermore, if Auto Exposure Bracketing, White Balance Bracketing or Multi-Shot Noise Reduction is enabled, Creative Effects cannot be applied to the photos.

Later that same day, I shot a streetscape using the Handheld Night Scene mode, and the Canon SL1 automatically combined four images into a single, sharp shot with a half moon set against a deep blue nighttime sky over St. Mark's Place in the East Village.

Lens. My test Canon Rebel SL1 came with the EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM kit lens. As we mentioned above, this lens is specifically designed for quiet operation when shooting video, and sure enough, it's essentially soundless. I shot several video clips on busy 2nd Avenue in the East Village and could not hear any lens noise from either focusing or zooming.

Functionally, I was mostly impressed with the EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM lens. It autofocuses not only silently but also very quickly. In five different shooting days with it, I left its Image Stabilization on for nearly every shot, and it let me make sharp handheld shots down to 1/10 second (zoomed to 55mm).

In manual focus, however, the lens leaves a lot to be desired; the manual focus ring is significantly underdamped and the focus throw is very short. I shot a few test images using manual focus, but it just was not very satisfying. The zoom action on the 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM lens is also mediocre -- overall, it just feels plasticky, but this is almost certainly the price we have to pay for the very low weight of the lens.

Overall, however, I found the 18-55mm to be a pretty decent kit lens, better than most you'll find that come packaged with entry-level DSLRs.

How good is the Canon SL1's EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM kit lens?
Find out by clicking here to see our optical test results.

Image quality. We evaluate the image quality of the Canon Rebel SL1 in detail, using standard test images side-by-side with some top competitors, later in another section of this review, but I'll add some subjective impressions from my test shots.

I used careful technique -- a high shutter speed, medium f-stop, careful focusing and stabilizing -- to shoot images designed to show me what kind of detail the Canon Rebel SL1's 18-megapixel sensor can record. The SL1 doesn't disappoint. Even though it may not have as much resolution as some competing entry-level DSLRs such as the Nikon D3200, there's more than enough detail to make very large prints. (A fact which we confirmed in our Print Quality Analysis further down in the review.)

Also, I shot a lot of other contrasty subjects and many backlit scenes into the sun setting over the Hudson River, and the Canon SL1 was able to capture a decent amount of dynamic range. All of my test images were shot at the camera's default JPEG settings, which produced good skin tones but colors that are, to my eye, not particularly inspiring, although reasonably neutral and accurate. I also shot a large number of high ISO images (up to ISO 6400), and these were quite good, with a nice balance of noise reduction and detail at the default JPEG settings.

You can view the IR Lab's in-depth Canon SL1 image quality test results by clicking here,
and read further on in the review for side-by-side comparisons
against the Canon SL1's top competitors.

Movies. To test the Canon Rebel SL1's movie mode, I shot a series of short clips one evening on 2nd Avenue, one of the most active streets in the East Village. I found the camera's movie mode controls a bit unintuitive. However, once I figured them out, they were fairly flexible, allowing focusing while recording and also providing reasonably advanced exposure control options. The Rebel SL1 provides a good range of video resolution and frame rate options (up to 1,920 x 1,080 Full HD at 30 fps, or 1,280 x 720 HD at 60 fps).

The resulting clips were very stable, courtesy of the image stabilization of the 18-55mm lens, and also very sharp. As noted above, I couldn't detect any noise from the lens in the recorded clips, as the EF-S 18-55mm IS STM is both smooth and silent. Most importantly, unlike what we found with the Rebel T4i, the AF speed didn't exhibit any noticeable lag or otherwise get in the way.

All in all, the SL1 proved to be quite good at recording videos -- better than most entry-level DSLRs that I've used.

Summary. I was reasonably impressed after shooting with the Canon SL1. It undeniably provides the benefits of a DSLR, including very responsive autofocus and overall operation, a well worked out control system, and an optical eye-level viewfinder. And it captures extremely high quality images and movies. Canon has managed to fit all this in a small and very lightweight DSLR body without compromising usability very much at all.

On the other hand, the SL1, especially when considered with a lens mounted, is still significantly bulkier than most mirrorless cameras and, of course, the overwhelming majority of compact point-and-shoot cameras. For photographers who have their minds set on a DSLR but would like to save as much weight as possible, it's a great choice. For shooters who are more interested in ultimate portability, it may still be a bit too bulky.

Video

The Canon SL1 includes very similar high definition video recording features as its larger sibling, the Rebel T5i, making this diminutive DSLR a pretty powerful video shooter (though unlike the T5i, the SL1's internal microphone is not stereo and its LCD monitor is not articulating). The SL1 includes most of the standard set of video features we've seen on other Canon video-capable DSLRs like 1080p recording at 30 and 24 fps plus 720p at 60 fps, as well as manual audio level adjustments, and an external mic input.

The unique, stand-out feature for this tiny DSLR is the inclusion of Canon's Hybrid CMOS AF II technology, currently making it Canon's only camera to feature this newer hybrid focusing system. The Canon T4i, T5i and EOS M use an older hybrid AF system, and the newer 70D features an even more advanced Dual Pixel CMOS AF system, while other Canon DSLR models do not support continuous AF during movie recording at all. We talk more about the SL1's Hybrid CMOS AF II system down in the video focusing section, but it greatly improves Live View autofocusing over the older system, particularly Movie Servo AF.

Barring a few things such as aperture- or shutter-priority exposure control and the generous selection of frame rates and compression types found on some higher-end cameras, the SL1 packs a fairly healthy feature set into its compact body. Despite the SL1's position squarely at the consumer end of the spectrum, it's quite a capable little camera. Here's a quick rundown of its video capabilities, along with our usual selection of sample videos at the bottom.

Canon SL1 Basic Video Specs

• 1,920 x 1,080 (Full HD / 1080p) at 30 & 24 frames per second, 1,280 x 720 (720p) at 60 frames per second, and 640 x 480 (VGA) at 30 frames per second
• TTL (through the lens) matrix metering using the main image sensor
• MOV file format, with H.264/MPEG-4 AVC encoding with variable bitrates
• Hybrid CMOS AF II provides a much larger area of on-chip phase detect autofocusing (64% of sensor surface) for much-improved Movie Servo AF over the prior hybrid system
• MOV file format, with H.264/MPEG-4 AVC encoding with variable bitrates
• Autofocus can be triggered during movie recording by pressing the shutter button, or continuous AF can be enabled
• Manual focus also available
• Aperture, shutter speed, and ISO sensitivity can be controlled in Manual exposure modes, both before and during recording (note: the level meter is only displayed when in manual level setting menu screen)
• ISO sensitivity can also be controlled automatically in Manual exposure mode
• All three exposure variables are controlled automatically in other exposure modes
• Exposure compensation can be selected prior to or during recording
• Video recording can be started and stopped with dedicated movie button or optional RC-6 remote control
• Seven-step LCD brightness adjustment available
• LCD brightness must be adjusted before capture starts
• 16-bit, 48KHz, Linear PCM audio from internal mono microphone or an optional external 3.5mm stereo jack
• Automatic or fine-grained 64-step audio sensitivity adjustment available, including level display with peak hold indication
• Still images can be captured while in video recording mode, but doing so pauses recording for a second or so
• Movies can be "trimmed" in-camera, selecting just the portion you want and optionally saving it as a new file
• Video Snapshot feature lets you record quick video clips in 2, 4 or 8 second durations, which can be joined together in Video Snapshot Albums and be set to music
• If an attached Canon flash unit has an LED light, it can automatically enable it in low-light shooting in all except Manual mode
• Video duration limited to 29 minutes, 59 seconds maximum
• File size restricted to 4 GB maximum; automatically and seamlessly spans movie capture across a second file if needed
• If sensor temperature threshold is exceeded, shooting may stop before either limit is reached; camera warns before threshold is reached
• Single SD memory card slot. Uses SD, SDHC, SDXC cards, Speed Class 6 or faster recommended.
• Histogram is available in manual mode, but only before capture starts
• Two grid displays (3x3, 6x) are available, but only before capture starts
• "Clean" HDMI output not supported. Live view feed is only about 50% of screen, surrounded by black area containing readouts.

Canon SL1 Video: Image Size, Frame Rate, and Encoding

The Canon Rebel SL1 offers three different video resolutions and three frame rates, although only certain frame rates are available for a given resolution. When set to NTSC mode, the combinations shown below are available:

Full HD movie. The SL1's touch screen makes it easy to quickly select the appropriate video resolution among other setting and options.

The SL1 features the standard set of video recording resolutions like many other Canon DSLRs, all of which are progressive scan formats. It offers full 1,920 x 1,080 HD video at both 30 and 24 frames per second. The 60 frames/second frame rate available in 1,280 x 720 mode is great for capturing smooth-looking action, but won't be as good in low-light situations, because the camera can't use a shutter speed longer than 1/60 second. Note that the Canon SL1 records video at 25p and 50p instead of 30p and 60p respectively when switched over to PAL video mode.

The 24p mode is popular with many filmmakers and cinematographers because 24 fps is the frame rate used for cinema, and it gives videos more of a "film look." The lower frame rate can look choppy, though, particularly when shooting in bright light with fast shutter speeds.

The Canon Rebel SL1 saves its video files in the MOV format, using H.264/MPEG-4 encoding. Unlike the more advanced, newer Canon DSLRs, the SL1 doesn't feature the higher bitrate video formats like ALL-I mode. The SL1 is very similar to cameras like the 60D or T5i in terms of recording formats.

The Canon SL1 also features Canon's Video Snapshot feature, which lets users take quick 2-, 4- or 8-second video clips, then stitch them together and set them to music in Video Snapshot Albums all in-camera.

Canon SL1 Video: Image Quality

The SL1 produces very high image quality in video, similar to what we've seen with other Canon DSLRs. Video has nice, crisp detail with accurate, pleasing colors. Scenes shot in bright daylight can look a bit too contrasty to our eyes, though, with shadow areas being fairly dark when using the Standard Picture Profile. Thankfully, Canon allows users to customize the picture style, allowing for more dynamic range by decreasing the contrast. In low-light scenes, the SL1 did a great job, with nice detail overall and decent shadow detail. While there was visible high ISO noise, particularly chroma noise, in our nighttime test videos, it wasn't severe enough to significantly degrade the image quality.

We saw a fair amount of moiré artifacts in the standard problem areas like window screens, roof shingles, and fine patterned fabrics. Moiré and aliasing were even more pronounced in 720p video, which has been the case with other Canon DSLRs we've seen in the past. Overall, moiré artifacts look very similar to those seen on the other Canon DSLRs (with the exception of the 5D Mark III). This isn't a deal breaker by any means, and while it could be a deciding factor for professionals or high-end video shooters, most users should just be careful where they shoot and be on the lookout for problems with the patterns in people's clothing, etc.

Below you can see our standard array of sample videos for the SL1:

Canon SL1 Video: Focusing

The Canon Rebel SL1 is a unique camera among Canon's lineup in that it is currently the only camera that features Canon's Hybrid CMOS AF II focusing system, which increases the area of the on-chip phase detect AF capability to 64% of the total image sensor area. The T5i, T4i and EOS M in contrast have a much smaller area for on-chip PDAF, at only about 10% of the sensor area. As such, the SL1's Movie Servo AF is quite good -- check out how it stacks up compared to the excellent Canon 70D over on our 70D review page.

• 

  By default, the SL1 uses movie-servo AF, but you can disable this and opt for manual or single-servo autofocus instead
• Single-servo autofocus focuses when the shutter button is half-pressed; movie-servo AF focuses as the camera deems necessary during recording
• Near-silent autofocusing with STM lenses (like the standard 18-55 f/3.5-5.6 IS STM kit lens)
• AF area mode options:
  • Face-priority + Tracking
  • FlexiZone - Multi
  • FlexiZone - Single
• The focus point can be selected by gently tapping on the touch screen, letting you subtly change focus between different subjects without moving the camera
• Autofocus via the shutter button can be disabled, which is useful if you want to capture still images during movie shooting without causing the camera to refocus as well
• Manual focus is also available during movie recording
  • Note: with STM lenses, you have to half-press the shutter button and hold it down for manual focusing to work

Canon SL1 Video: Exposure Control

• 

  Exposure. Although you can shoot video in Av, Tv or P modes, exposure for video will default to Program Exposure in all three modes.

  Defaults to fully automatic exposure, but exposure compensation adjustment is available
• Auto-ISO limit set in still capture mode doesn't affect video recording
• Camera defaults to Program Exposure mode in P, Av and Tv modes. M mode is used for full manual exposure control
  • Adjustments to exposure compensation are somewhat delayed, and are applied gradually, making them more subtle than with many cameras
• Aperture, shutter speed, and ISO sensitivity can be adjusted before and during exposure in Manual exposure mode
  • All three exposure variables can be adjusted through touch screen, using the four-way controller, or the control dial
  • The physical controls produce some noise on the audio track. The touch screen is silent, but it's difficult to keep the camera still, as you have to tap repeatedly to make adjustments. (Sadly, the touch-and-drag slider you get when not recording isn't available during recording; this would make it easier to adjust settings without shaking the camera.)
  • Adjustments in shutter speed, aperture, or ISO sensitivity are instant and make noticeable changes in exposure level, even with auto ISO. (Here, the exposure level dims or brightens slightly, then returns to the original level.)
  • Available shutter speeds range from 1/4,000s down to 1/60s for 60p, and down to 1/30s for 30p and 24p
  • Sensitivity can be set from ISO 100 to 6,400 (or 12,800 with ISO Expansion enabled), or to Auto. The latter lets you dial in your chosen shutter speed and aperture, while letting the camera handle the exposure level by changing the ISO.
• Full range of Picture Style settings apply to movie recording. (Auto, Standard, Portrait, Landscape, Neutral, Faithful, Monochrome, and User Defined 1 - 3), and each can be adjusted. Picture Style adjustments include sharpness and contrast, plus saturation and color tone for color styles, and filter / toning effects for monochrome.)
• AE (auto-exposure) lock is supported in video mode, both before and during recording
• Evaluative metering is always used for video recording, regardless of metering mode selected
• If an attached Canon flash unit has an LED light, it can automatically enable it in low-light shooting in all except Manual mode

Canon SL1 Video: Audio Recording

• 

  Internal monaural microphone
• Defaults to automatic level control
• Manual level control available via Movie Settings menu, with 64 levels available
• Audio level meter is true VU-type, calibrated in dB, and with peak-hold function
• VU (audio level) meter available only when adjusting recording level (no option for it on-screen before or during recording)
• External stereo mic input - use external mics for better sound quality, control over stereo effect / directionality, and to eliminate camera / lens noise
  • Thankfully, the SL1 features a touch-screen allowing for silent adjustment of camera functions during recording (exposure compensation, aperture, shutter speed, etc.)
• Audio can be disabled entirely

Canon SL1 Video: Rolling Shutter Artifacts ("Jello effect")

Pretty much every DSLR on the market distorts moving objects, or the entire scene, if the camera is being panned. The technical term for this is "rolling shutter artifacts," but many users simply call it the "Jello effect," because the image can jiggle and sway like Jello as the camera is moved. This occurs because the image is captured and read out line by line, so the bottom of an object may no longer be underneath the top of it by the time the camera gets around to capturing that part of the frame.

The SL1 does a nice job of controlling rolling shutter distortion. At the 1080p resolution, rolling shutter distortion was noticeable yet still minimal, and even less so at 720p. Overall, the SL1 seems evenly matched with other Canon DSLRs in this regard, putting it well within the upper range of all DSLRs when it comes to rolling shutter. As long as you are mindful of this effect, and avoid quick pans or back-and-forth motions, particularly around objects with vertical lines like trees and buildings, you probably won't notice the rolling shutter distortion at all.

Flash

Canon SL1 Flash

Built-in Flash Test Results

Coverage and Range
Good flash range for its size, though with somewhat narrow coverage. Average positive exposure compensation required.

Coverage. Canon rates the EOS Rebel SL1's internal flash coverage at approximately 17mm, though as you can see in the top left shot, we've found manufacturers' coverage ratings are usually quite optimistic. Peripheral Illumination Correction was on (by default) for these shots, so the fall-off seen here in the corners and vertical edges is mostly from the flash. Coverage is more even at full telephoto, as expected.

Exposure. Indoors, under incandescent background lighting, the Canon Rebel SL1's flash performed well, requiring an average amount of positive exposure compensation of +0.7 EV for a bright image. The camera's slow-sync flash mode only required +0.3 EV exposure compensation for bright results, though the longer shutter time (1/15s) results in a warmer orange/yellow cast from the ambient background lighting.

Flash Range: Wide Angle
6 ft	7 ft	8 ft	9 ft	10 ft	11 ft
1/64 sec f3.5 ISO 200	1/64 sec f3.5 ISO 200	1/64 sec f3.5 ISO 200	1/64 sec f3.5 ISO 200	1/64 sec f3.5 ISO 200	1/64 sec f3.5 ISO 200
12 ft	13 ft	14 ft	15 ft	16 ft
1/64 sec f3.5 ISO 200	1/64 sec f3.5 ISO 200	1/64 sec f3.5 ISO 200	1/64 sec f3.5 ISO 200	1/64 sec f3.5 ISO 200

Flash Range: Telephoto
6 ft	7 ft	8 ft	9 ft	10 ft	11 ft
1/64 sec f5.6 ISO 200	1/64 sec f5.6 ISO 200	1/64 sec f5.6 ISO 200	1/64 sec f5.6 ISO 200	1/64 sec f5.6 ISO 200	1/64 sec f5.6 ISO 200
12 ft	13 ft	14 ft	15 ft	16 ft
1/64 sec f5.6 ISO 200	1/64 sec f5.6 ISO 200	1/64 sec f5.6 ISO 200	1/64 sec f5.65 ISO 200	1/64 sec f5.6 ISO 200

ISO 200 Range. At the 18-55mm lens' maximum wide-angle setting, the flash range test shots at ISO 200 show bright results out to about 14 feet, which is very good. At full telephoto (55mm), flash intensity was good out to about 9 feet.

Manufacturer-Specified Flash Range
Wide Angle	Telephoto
12.5 feet ISO 200	7.9 feet ISO 200

Manufacturer Specified Flash Test. The Canon Rebel SL1's built in flash has a rated Guide Number of 9.4 meters or 30.8 feet at ISO 100. At ISO 200, that works out to about 12.5 feet at f/3.5 and 7.9 feet at f/5.6, the maximum apertures of the 18-55mm lens at full wide angle and telephoto respectively. In the shots above, we can see that the Canon Rebel SL1's flash performed to specification at both wide angle and telephoto, producing well-exposed targets at the rated distances.

Note: Our standard test method for flash range uses a fixed setting of ISO 200, to provide a fair basis of comparison between cameras. We've now also begun shooting two shots using the manufacturer-specified camera settings, at the range the company claims for the camera, to assess the validity of the specific claims.

Technical Info

by Mike Tomkins

Sensor. The tiny little Canon SL1 is based around an 18-megapixel, APS-C CMOS image sensor shared with the simultaneously-announced Canon T5i DSLR, and closely related to that in the earlier T4i. It features a native 3:2 aspect ratio, and yields maximum image dimensions of 5,184 x 3,456 pixels.

Processor. Output from the image sensor is handled by Canon's DIGIC 5 image processor, which was first introduced to the Rebel series in the summer of 2012 with the T4i. It's said to be five times faster than the previous-generation DIGIC 4 chip.

Burst. Although it uses essentially the same processor and sensor pairing as does the Canon T5i, the Canon Rebel SL1 extracts a little less performance. Burst shooting is limited to a manufacturer-rated 4 frames per second in high-speed continuous mode, with focus fixed from the first frame. By way of comparison, its sibling manages 5 fps under the same conditions, as did the Rebel T4i.

Sensitivity. Although its performance is curtailed somewhat, the Canon SL1 does derive the same sensitivity range from its sensor and processor as do the significantly larger T4i and T5i. From a base of ISO 100 equivalent, the Rebel SL1 offers up to ISO 12,800 equivalent ordinarily, which can be expanded to a maximum of ISO 25,600 equivalent.

Lens mount. Like all Rebel-series digital SLRs, the Canon SL1 includes an EF lens mount that's also compatible with EF-S lenses, and has a 1.6x focal length crop.

Only one kit lens choice is available: the EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM lens. Unlike previous versions of the 18-55mm lens, this switches the autofocus motor to an STM type, providing for quick, quiet autofocus. You can also buy the Rebel SL1 body-only, if you prefer to stick with your existing glass, or to choose from the many other lens options.

Hybrid autofocus. Like the Rebel T4i before it, the Canon SL1 includes on-chip phase detection autofocus, or Hybrid CMOS AF in Canon parlance. The system, available during both Live View and movie capture, uses a combination of phase detection to get focus into the ballpark quickly, and contrast detection to fine-tune focus.

Where the T4i provided hybrid autofocus only from a small area at the center of the image frame, the Rebel SL1's Hybrid CMOS AF II system offers it across 80% of the frame width and height. That's a full 64% of the image frame covered, where the T4i's on-chip phase detect was available from barely 10% of the frame.

The use of on-sensor phase-detect enables smoother AF with less hunting, but you'll want to use an STM lens to take best advantage of this capability.

Dedicated AF, too. Just as on the T4i and T5i, the Rebel SL1's on-chip PDAF system isn't used for still imaging when shooting through the viewfinder. In this case, the SL1 uses a brand-new, dedicated, nine-point sensor. Unfortunately, only the center-most autofocus point is a cross-type; others are line-type sensors, quite a downgrade from the nine cross-type points of the T4i and T5i. That center-most point operates as a cross-type at f/5.6, and as a vertical line point at f/2.8.

Autofocus working range is EV -0.5 to 18 at 23°C, ISO 100 equivalent for the center-most point, and EV 0.5 to 18 for the remaining points.

Metering. Just like the Rebel T4i and T5i before it, the Canon SL1 includes a 63-zone metering sensor. Available metering modes include 63-zone AF-linked evaluative, 9% partial, 4% center spot, and center-weighted average. The metering system has a working range of EV 1-20 (23°C with 50mm f/1.4 lens, at ISO100).

Shutter. Available shutter speeds range from 1/4,000 to 30 seconds, plus bulb, set using an electronic first-curtain shutter and a vertical-travel, mechanical focal plane shutter for the second curtain.

White balance. This is another area where the Canon SL1 is much like the Rebel T4i and T5i. White balance modes on offer include Auto, six presets, and custom, along with a +/- nine step white balance adjustment on blue/amber and magenta/green axes.

Exposure. The Canon SL1 provides all the usual suspects on its Mode dial: Scene Intelligent Auto (aka 'Green' mode), Program AE, Shutter priority AE, Aperture priority AE, Manual, No Flash, Creative Auto, Portrait, Landscape, Close-up, Sports, and Scene. This last position provides access to Kids, Food, and Candlelight modes -- all new -- as well as Night Portrait, Handheld Night Scene, and HDR Backlight Control modes.

Viewfinder. The Canon Rebel SL1's viewfinder is similar -- but not identical -- to that in the T4i and T5i. It's still a pentamirror design with fixed focusing screen, rather than the brighter pentaprism type with interchangeable screen that's found in larger, heavier, more expensive cameras. Coverage is 95%, but magnification is 0.87x, slightly higher than the 0.85x of its siblings. The Canon SL1's finder still has a somewhat tight 19mm eyepoint. Diopter correction is -3 to +1m^-1.

Display. On the rear panel is a three-inch, 3:2 aspect LCD panel with 720 x 480 pixel resolution (~1,040,000 dots), the same size and resolution as used in all Rebel DSLRs from the T2i through the T5i. Like models since the T4i, the Canon Sl1 has a newer Clear View II LCD panel type which removes the air gap between LCD and cover glass, reducing glare.

Touch screen. Also like the T4i and T5i, the Canon SL1's display is overlaid with a capacitive touch panel, similar to those used by most smartphones. This allows it to provide autofocus on the subject touched on the screen, a very handy feature.

No articulation. Unlike the T4i and T5i, however, the Canon Rebel SL1 lacks any form of articulation for its display. That's understandable as a concession in favor of keeping size and weight down, but does mean the live view mode will not be as useful for shooting from an awkward angle.

Flash. Despite its trim proportions, the Canon SL1 still includes a built-in, pop-up flash strobe. It's quite a bit weaker than those of the T4i and T5i, though, with a guide number of just 9.4 meters (31 feet) at ISO 100. The built-in strobe on the larger Rebel DSLRs has a rating of 13 meters (43 feet), by way of comparison. Coverage is manufacturer-rated at approximately 28mm (35mm-equivalent), and the recycle time is about three seconds. X-sync is at 1/200 second.

As well as the built-in flash, there's an intelligent hot shoe compatible with EX-series Speedlites and Canon's E-TTL II metering system. Both Canon's IR and radio-controlled wireless flash systems are supported, with the appropriate hardware.

Video. Video capture is possible at up to Full HD (1,920 x 1,080 pixel) resolution, with a rate of 30, 25, or 24 frames per second, using MPEG-4 AVC / H.264 compression. Two reduced-resolution options are available: HD (1,280 x 720 pixel) at 60 / 50 fps, and VGA (640 x 480 pixel) at 30 / 25 fps. The high-def options have a bit rate of 330MB/minute, and the VGA mode records at 82.5MB/minute.

As mentioned previously, phase detection autofocus is available for movie capture in the center-most 80% (horizontally / vertically) of the image frame courtesy of the hybrid AF system. Both automatic and manual exposure are possible.

Microphone. Where the T4i and T5i sport a built-in stereo microphone, the Canon SL1 makes a concession to size and opts for a monaural mic. That's not the end of the world, though -- stereo separation is often awful with built-in microphones anyway, and the SL1 still provides an external stereo microphone jack.

Connectivity. As well as the mic jack and hot shoe we've already mentioned, other options include an infrared remote receiver, wired remote jack, combined AV/USB 2.0 High-Speed port, and a high-def Mini HDMI (Type C) port.

Power. Not surprisingly given its smaller size, the Canon SL1 doesn't use the same LP-E8 battery pack as other recent Rebel cameras. Instead, it opts for an LP-E12 battery pack. Battery life is CIPA rated for 380 shots on a charge, about 14% less than the T5i manages.

Accessories. Canon doesn't offer a battery / portrait grip for the SL1, but a range of other items are available, including an AC adapter, angle finder and a variety of dioptric lenses and eyepieces.

Price and availability. Available since April 2013 in the U.S. market, the Canon SL1 has an original retail price of US$650 body only, or US$800 in a kit with the EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM lens. However, the kit is now readily available in stores and online for US$750.

Conclusion

In many ways, the Canon SL1 provides the best of both worlds, pairing the compact, lightweight body of a mirrorless camera and the performance and image quality of a DSLR. You could almost call it a miniaturized version of Canon's Rebel T4i/T5i DSLRs. And that's a good thing; both standard-size interchangeable lens cameras are solid, full-featured consumer models. It's somewhat amazing that Canon can pack so much DSLR into a tiny body.

However, the SL1 does have one important advantage over its bigger siblings -- its new Hybrid CMOS II AF system for shooting in Live View and Movie modes. The previous version of the technology proved to be fairly sluggish in the T4i, but we were relatively impressed with the improved AF speed of Rebel SL1. What's more, the Hybrid CMOS II AF of the SL1 uses a whopping 80% of both the width and height of the LCD monitor, offering a lot more framing and shooting flexibility than the T4i/T5i.

The image quality of the Canon SL1 is almost identical to that of the T4i/T5i; if you look at the comparison crops against the T5i (the replacement for the T4i that was introduced at the same time as the SL1), it's outright uncanny. Photos taken with the SL1 at low ISOs in particular are excellent, but there is noticeable drop-off as ISO rises above 1600 -- the Canon Rebels could still stand some IQ and processing improvements to make high-ISO results more competitive. The SL1 also doesn't exhibit the dynamic range we've seen recently from other consumer DSLRs in its class.

One last nitpick with the SL1: Though its by far the smallest and lightest DSLR we've ever reviewed, it's still bulkier than most mirrorless compact system cameras. That's certainly not a deal-breaker, unless you're a photographer looking for the ultimate in ILC portability.

Add in the EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM kit lens -- which is relatively sharp and very smooth and silent when recording movies -- and some serious video recording skills, and the Canon SL1 is much more than a cute, tiny Rebel. It's a camera that needs to be taken seriously, and should appeal to a wide range of photographers, beginners and enthusiasts, who want a small body but the benefits of a DSLR. It's a bona fide Dave's Pick.

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