Canon EOS 1100D review

There are a few minor regressions. The card slot has moved from the side of the camera to beside the battery, making it inaccessible when using a tripod. There’s no AV out socket, although the HDMI output means it won’t be missed. The top-mounted ISO button has disappeared, too. The buttons on the back have been substantially rearranged, and Picture Styles has disappeared to make room for a new ISO button. Even so, quick access to the most important functions is maintained, and Canon’s tried-and-tested menu system presents other options in a logical, accessible manner.

We prefer the layout of the controls here to those on Nikon’s D3100

Video capture displays all the strengths and trappings that afflict most digital SLRs. Details were as sharp as the 720p resolution allows and colours were sumptuously rich, while the big sensor and resulting shallow depth of field gave clips a gorgeous film-like aura. The internal mono microphone is excellent, too, but that’s where the good news ends.

Clips are limited to around 18 minutes and stop without warning. The 30Mbit/s AVC encoding keeps compression artefacts to a minimum but that also means the files are pretty big, at around 230MB per minute. Autofocus is essentially locked for the duration of clips. It is possible to initiate autofocus while recording but it ruins the picture and sound quality for the three or more seconds it takes to refocus. That makes casual shooting tricky, especially as the shallow depth of field accentuates focus errors. Then there’s the issue of subtle moiré interference that appears on dense, repeating patterns – a by-product of the 12-megapixel sensor’s output being resized to the 1-megapixel 720p resolution. It’s also disappointing – but not surprising, given the price – that manual exposure control for video or an external microphone input aren’t included.

With so many flaws, it might sound like the 1100D’s videos are not worth bothering with. Keen videographers should definitely look elsewhere, but it’s still capable of shooting high quality clips as long as you can work around its limitations.

Photo capture presented far fewer causes for concern. Automatic exposures were impeccably well judged, with attractive colours and sensibly chosen shutter and ISO speeds. That’s fortunate, as the ability to customise this behaviour is limited to a maximum ISO speed setting in the menu, which isn’t as flexible as the sophisticated options in Nikon’s SLRs.

The 1100D can take some great-looking photos

The 12-megapixel CMOS sensor struck an excellent balance of detail against noise levels, with enough detail for A3 prints and usable results all the way up to the maximum ISO 6400 setting. In short, the maturity of the EOS range really shows; the 1100D’s images leave little to report other than exquisite quality.