Image Quality

All of the sample images in this Review were taken using the 18 megapixel Fine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 6Mb.

During the review, the Canon EOS 600D / Rebel T3i produced images of outstanding quality. The resolution is absolutely best in class, though you will want to shoot RAW for best results and possibly purchase something else than the 18-55mm IS kit zoom we had in for testing, as it does not do the camera full justice, even stopped down (the camera is available in a number of kits and there is a body-only option as well.)

Noise handling is also very good considering the pixel density. Shooting RAW is again a good idea if you plan on taking lots of high-ISO shots, as you can get better detail with less chroma noise than by shooting JPEG. As regards the colours, we have found them to be a little on the dull side, though this is nothing you can't change in-camera, by way of tweaking the available Picture Styles or creating your own.

The camera's Highlight Tone Priority mode allowed us to retain more highlight detail in contrasty scenes than would otherwise be possible without underexposing the midtones and the shadows. The built-in flash caused no red-eye, and the night photo came out very well. Overall, a very good showing from a camera that has considerably smaller pixels than some of its competitors.

Noise

ISO sensitivity can be set between ISO 100 and ISO 6400 in full-stop increments, and a boosted setting of ISO 12800 is also available. Here are some 100% crops which show the noise levels for each ISO setting, with JPEG on the left and the RAW equivalent on the right. The RAW files were developed with Canon's Digital Photo Professional (3.10.0.0), using the software's default settings and noise reduction set to 0.

JPEG	RAW
ISO 100 (100% Crop)	ISO 100 (100% Crop)
ISO 200 (100% Crop)	ISO 200 (100% Crop)
ISO 400 (100% Crop)	ISO 400 (100% Crop)
ISO 800 (100% Crop)	ISO 800 (100% Crop)
ISO 1600 (100% Crop)	ISO 1600 (100% Crop)
ISO 3200 (100% Crop)	ISO 3200 (100% Crop)
ISO 6400 (100% Crop)	ISO 6400 (100% Crop)
ISO 12800 (100% Crop)	ISO 12800 (100% Crop)

File Quality

The Canon EOS 600D / Rebel T3i has 2 different JPEG file quality settings available, including Fine and Normal, with Fine being the higher quality option. Here are two 100% crops which show the quality of the two options.

Fine (6.26Mb) (100% Crop)	Normal (3.08Mb) (100% Crop)
RAW (23.4Mb) (100% Crop)

Sharpening

The out-of-camera JPEGs are quite soft and at the default sharpening setting and benefit from some further sharpening in a program like Adobe Photoshop. You can also change the in-camera sharpening level to suit your tastes via the Picture Style options.

Original (100% Crop)	Sharpened (100% Crop)

Chromatic Aberrations

The EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS kit lens handled chromatic aberrations well during the review, but on a couple of occasions, it produced some nasty purple fringing even stopped down. The examples shown here at 100% represent the absolute worst results you can expect from this lens mated to the EOS 600D / T3i.

Example 1 (100% Crop)	Example 2 (100% Crop)

Flash

The flash settings on the EOS 600D / T3i are Auto, Manual Flash On/Off, and Red-Eye Reduction. These shots of a white coloured wall were taken at a distance of 1m.

Flash Off - Wide Angle (29mm)	Flash On - Wide Angle (29mm)
Flash Off - Telephoto (88mm)	Flash On - Telephoto (88mm)

And here are a couple of portrait shots. As you can see, neither the Flash On setting nor the Red-Eye Reduction option caused any amount of red-eye.

Flash On	Flash On (100% Crop)
Red-eye Reduction	Red-eye Reduction (100% Crop)

Night

The Canon EOS 600D's maximum shutter speed is 30 seconds and there's a Bulb mode for even longer exposures, which is excellent news if you're seriously interested in night photography. The shot below was taken using a shutter speed of 30 seconds, aperture of f/8 at ISO 100. Here is a 100% crop of the image to show what the quality is like.

Night Shot	Night Shot (100% Crop)

Image Stabilisation

The Canon EOS 600D's EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS kit lens offers image stabilisation, which allows you to take sharp photos at slower shutter speeds than with lenses that lack this function. To test this, I took 2 handheld shots of the same subject with the same settings. The first shot was taken with Image Stabilisation turned off, the second with it turned on. Here are two 100% crops of the images to show the results. As you can see, with Image Stabilisation turned on, the images are much sharper than with anti-shake turned off. This feature really does seem to make a difference and could mean capturing a successful, sharp shot or missing the opportunity altogether.

Shutter Speed / Focal Length	Anti Shake Off (100% Crop)	Anti Shake On (100% Crop)
1/5th / 88mm

Picture Controls

Canon's Picture Controls are preset combinations of different sharpness, contrast, saturation and colour tone settings. The available Picture Controls are shown below in the following series, which demonstrates the differences. You can tweak these Picture Controls to your liking, and there are also User Defined styles so that you can create your own look.

Standard	Portrait
Landscape	Neutral
Faithful	Monochrome

Creative Auto

Creative Auto has been extended with the introduction of Basic +. Essentially a more extreme version of the well-established Picture Styles, this offers nine options including Standard, Vivid, Soft, Warm, Intense, Cool, Brighter, Darker and Monochrome, all of which can be interactively tweaked to suit your taste.

Standard	Vivid
Soft	Warm
Intense	Cool
Brighter	Darker
Monochrome

Auto Lighting Optimizer

Auto Lighting Optimizer performs in-camera processing to even out the contrast and correct brightness. There are now 4 different settings - Off, Low, Standard and Strong.

Off	Low
Standard	Strong

Highlight Tone Priority

Highlight Tone Priority is a custom function (C.Fn-6), which can be enabled from the menu. Use of this custom function improves highlight detail by expanding the camera's dynamic range in the highlights. To test the effectiveness of this function, I photographed the same high-contrast scene in M mode at ISO 200 (the lowest sensitivity setting available with Highlight Tone Priority enabled), exposing for open shade. As you can see from these examples, Highlight Tone Priority reduced the extent of highlight blow-out considerably. The 100% crops also reveal that highlight detail was better retained and defined.

Off	On

Peripheral Illumination Correction

Peripheral Illumination Correction, first seen in the EOS 500D, is an in-camera solution designed to reduce the effect of light fall-off in the image corners. It works, though the difference is not night and day.

Off	On

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Canon EOS 600D camera, which were all taken using the 18 megapixel Fine JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample RAW Images

The Canon EOS 600D enables users to capture RAW and JPEG format files. We've provided some Canon RAW (CR2) samples for you to download (thumbnail images shown below are not 100% representative).

Sample Movie & Video

As of February 2025, we are no longer providing full size sample images or videos for download.

Please contact us if you have any feedback on our new policy.

Product Images

Front of the Camera

Front of the Camera - Flash Raised

Front of the Camera

Isometric View

Isometric View

Isometric View

Isometric View

Rear of the Camera - Image Displayed

Rear of the Camera

Rear of the Camera - Turned On

Rear of the Camera - Main Menu

Rear of the Camera - Info Screen

Rear of the Camera - Video Mode

Rotating LCD Screen

Rotating LCD Screen

Top of the Camera

Bottom of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Memory Card Slot

Battery Compartment

Conclusion

The Canon EOS 600D / Rebel T3i further blurs the lines between consumer and prosumer DSLR, offering the portability of the former with some of the advanced features of the latter. The vari-angle LCD is the most welcome addition, making perfect sense on a camera that will potentially be used by all the family for both stills and video alike. It may not be the most exciting new DSLR, but the EOS 600D / Rebel T3i does a lot of things for the money, and does most of them very well.

The addition of the vari-angle LCD screen, Scene Intelligent Auto mode, Basic+ and Creative Filters, and on-screen Feature Guide all serve to make the EOS 600D more appealing to owners of compacts who have outgrown their camera and want to step-up to something that gives better results without being too complicated. The small, light and friendly EOS 600D fits that bill very well, yet it also offers enough features for both the beginner to grow into and to tempt the more experienced user, most notably 18 megapixels, ISO range of 100-12,800, 63-zone metering sensor, full HD movie mode and built-in wireless flash control. This is a very competent DSLR that allows you to capture incredibly detailed photos without ever getting in the way or spoiling the fun of picture taking. Just make sure you understand that if you are mainly attracted to it by its headline-grabbing resolution, you will need to buy something better than the new 18-55mm kit lens to actually make the most out of all those pixels.

The situation is rather less clear if you already own its predecessor, the 550D / T2i. The vari-angle LCD, wireless flash and plethora of hand-holding modes are all very well, but we doubt that any or all of these would or should tempt 550D owners to upgrade - the 7D is a more natural choice. In terms of the competition, things have heated up since the 550D / T2i was launched, with Sony in particular putting the cat amongst the proverbial pigeons with the video-tastic A55, while Nikon's older D3100 looks a little less tempting now in terms of features but is cheaper, not to mention some of the better and crucially smaller compact system cameras. This mid-range area of the market has certainly become very competitive in the last 18 months.

Despite that, the Canon EOS 600D / Rebel T3i cleverly occupies a position that's mid-way between the 550D and the 7D without being subjected to a price increase on launch. It's the most capable yet friendly Rebel yet, and easily worthy of our Highly Recommended award.

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	4.5
Features	4.5
Ease-of-use	4.5
Image quality	4.5
Value for money	4

Review Roundup

Reviews of the Canon EOS 600D from around the web.

Specifications

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