Canon EOS Rebel T6i/750D review: Canon's family-friendly T6i should get the job done

While the latest entry in Canon's midrange consumer dSLR lineup doesn't inspire much excitement, that's not really the point of the EOS Rebel T6i (aka the 750D everywhere but the US). It remains a reliable option for people looking for a functional camera capable of handling pet photography, kids' soccer games and vacation snapshots.

7.9

Canon EOS Rebel T6i/750D

$899 at Walmart

The Good

The T6i performs much better than the models that preceded it and the design remains streamlined and functional.

The Bad

Image quality and autofocus don't fare as well as they should in very low light.

The Bottom Line

The Canon EOS Rebel T6i/750D continues the line's tradition of being the crowd-pleasing choice for family photographers.

In photo quality it doesn't compare favorably with competitors, but unless you make side-by-side comparisons you probably won't notice or care. It's faster than previous models, both for viewfinder and back-display shooting, and gains Wi-Fi connectivity, both of which make it more attractive than its predecessor and worth a look if you're thinking of upgrading from an older model.

Though they have notably different body designs, the T6i/750D and its more expensive sibling the T6s/760D are ultimately only slightly different. The T6s' controls and layout are designed to appeal to a higher-end photographer, with advanced conventions like a top status LCD, lockable mode dial and a lockable control dial on the back, with hopefully less cheap-feeling buttons.

You can find the T6i at about $750 for the basic kit with an 18-55mm STM lens (£500, AU$1,000), the same price as the body-only version in the US and UK (body only is roughly AU$50 cheaper); the kit with the 18-135mm STM lens costs about $950 (£740, AU$1,300).

Image quality

The T6i's photo quality and video quality are fine in good light -- not best in class, but unless you compare side by side you probably won't notice that they're less sharp or that there's less detail in highlights and shadows.

Canon EOS Rebel T6i/750D full-resolution photo samples

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Noise isn't the T6i's worst enemy; tonal range is. Noise always increases with ISO sensitivity, and in the T6i's JPEGs the noise reduction jumps between ISO 800 and ISO 1600, where you start to see color noise and smoothing. Depending upon lighting, the scene and how large you plan to display them, you can probably use the images all the way through the ISO 25600 expanded setting.

But the bigger problem is that you start completely losing detail in blacks as exposure decreases. The default Auto Picture Style increases contrast a lot so in low-light JPEGs the shadows clip to black, but even in the raw files there's not a lot of detail captured there compared with similar cameras like the Nikon D5500.

A lot of consumer cameras display non-neutral automatic white balance, and the T6i is no exception; it has a somewhat purple bias, so there's some hue shift in reds/oranges. However, one benefit of this is that low-light shots don't have as severe a yellow cast as you'll see elsewhere.

Video has the same issues, namely color cast and a fairly limited tonal range, but otherwise it looks pretty good; certainly good enough for family vacation videos. There's some jello if you're shaking at all (which is typical), but otherwise no notable artifacts.

Canon offers some really cheap, fast lenses optimized for the sensor-based autofocus in the camera, like the 50mm f1.8 STM ($126, £100, AU$200) and 24mm f2.8 STM ($150, £150, AU$250) which I shot with in addition to the 18-55mm kit lens, but let's just say you get what you pay for -- and the 50mm is much better than the 24mm. You'll get your nicely out-of-focus backgrounds, but they both suffer from serious fringing and neither is particularly sharp (or image stabilized).

Analysis samples

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Performance

Canon finally ramped up the performance on the Rebel, including an increase to 19 autofocus areas from 9, and now it's quite good. While it takes a surprisingly long time to power on, focus and shoot -- 0.9 second -- it's competitively fast for everything else. It takes 0.3 second to focus and shoot in both bright and dim light, though in darker conditions (lower than typical living-room light), it takes a lot longer to focus. It also takes 0.3 second for two sequential JPEG or raw shots. Two sequential shots with flash increases to 1.2 seconds.

It can sustain a burst of more than 30 JPEGs at 5 frames per second, and I found the in-focus hit rate is good enough for typical kids-and-pets photographers. The raw continuous shooting is a little more disappointing; it's really fast for 6 shots -- 6fps -- and then tanks down to about 2.4fps. However, you can continue shooting at that slower speed for more than 30 shots. It doesn't simply stop.

Live View (using the LCD rather than the viewfinder) performance is better than previous Rebels, but it's still slow. In both bright and dim light it takes 0.6 second to focus and shoot, and two sequential JPEGs run 0.7 sec.

The multi-point autofocus -- the setting where you let the camera make all the decisions about what to focus on -- actually seems a little more intelligent than most, in that it doesn't always opt for the closest element in the scene. However, like all complete autofocus modes, it's inconsistent, focusing on something different each time you half-press prefocus, even if you don't move the camera.

The battery life is solid, though using the Wi-Fi runs it down quickly.

Design and features

The camera's design has changed very little from previous Rebels, including the somewhat plasticky feel. The primary differences are a couple of new buttons on top, the stereo mic has moved from the top to either side of the flash on the front, and the addition of a Wi-Fi status LED on the left shoulder.

The most welcome change is in the viewfinder: Canon has finally replaced the awful tiny autofocus points with larger, more traditional autofocus areas. It makes viewfinder operation much more comfortable. The viewfinder itself is a little less magnified than that of the T5i 's, but the change in the AF area handling more than compensates for it.

On the right shoulder of the camera sits the mode dial, which has the usual manual, semimanual and automatic modes, plus a three-way on/off/movie switch. In addition to standard scene modes like portrait or sports, there are three basic multishot modes: HDR Backlight Control (which automatically combines four image exposures to retain detail in shadow and highlight areas for backlit subjects), a four-shot Handheld Night Scene mode and Night Portrait.

The handful of filter effects -- grainy black and white, soft focus, fisheye, vivid oil painting, watercolor, toy camera and miniature -- live in Creative Auto mode. If you shoot in Live View, which gives you a preview, it will only save the image with the filter applied; if you shoot via the viewfinder, it can save a non-filtered JPEG image simultaneously. You can control a few parameters depending upon the effect, but none of them really stand out.

In addition to the ISO sensitivity button, there are now display (to turn the LCD on and off) and autofocus type- and area-selection buttons.

On the back, menu and information display buttons sit to the left of the viewfinder, while the Live View/movie record button is on the right. Next to the thumb rest are the autoexposure lock button and a duplicate autofocus type- and area-selection button. Unfortunately, you can't remap one of the duplicate buttons to another control. Your autofocus options are single-point, Zone (which lets you choose from 4 blocks of 4 areas on the top, bottom, left or right or the center 9 areas), or 19-area automatic selection.

To the right of the display are the exposure compensation and quick-settings buttons. However I still don't like the feel of the flat buttons below them that control drive mode, white balance, Creative Style (Canon's color, sharpness and contrast controls) and the single/continuous autofocus selector.

The articulated touch screen remains a favorite of mine for shooting video. It's responsive and has an intelligent user interface, including the usual capabilities, like touch focus, that streamline Live View shooting. You can view the screen pretty well in direct sunlight. You don't have to use it if you don't want to, though operations like selecting ISO sensitivity go much faster when you can directly select rather than having to cycle through them. Overall, I find Canon's interface straightforward and easy to use.

Its feature set is only slightly improved over the T5i: it now includes wireless connections. The company has deprecated its Camera Window and EOS Remote apps in favor of the single Canon Camera Connect (iOS, Android; sorry Windows Phoners). It's a bit buggy: in response to many complaints in the Apple app store that it doesn't work, Canon basically tells you that you have to configure it twice. The app greets you the first time with "When using Camera Connect, after installing onto the device that will use Camera Connect, carry out settings on the camera and the device one more time." It's actually not that confusing if you've connected cameras to mobile devices before, but it's not completely transparent, either.

However, unlike every other camera, Canon does not display the password on the connection screen (necessary when connecting to an Apple device). So on first configuration, you have to exit the connection to dig into settings to find the current key. If it doesn't work at first, the key changes and you have to dig into the settings again. On the

Aside from that, the app has a reasonable, if not complete, feature set. It lets you perform remote shooting with manual controls or transfer photos to your mobile device (it downsamples and converts raws to JPEG). There are some notable deficits: if you use more than one device you have to manually switch your saved settings or it won't connect, there's no way to select all photos for transfer or delete, it can't shoot video, there's no way to prefocus (you actually have to shoot to get it to focus) and there's no operational help in the app or online -- just a 168-page manual for connecting the camera to various devices. (Sorry, there's no way to provide a direct link to the documentation, just Canon's landing page.)

However, the camera still lacks popular options like time-lapse, multiple exposure and intervalometer and the ability to save custom settings or remap controls (except for the SET button). I also miss peaking for manual focus in Live View and a level indicator, both of which the less expensive Pentax K-S2 has; peaking would make focusing with every lens besides the STM model so much easier. Canon chose to put the level plus tracking autofocus (only in Live View) in the T6s instead.

Conclusion

I think one of the biggest components of the Rebel family's popularity is that there are a bazillion different "Who cares about the price, I got all this stuff with it" bundles for sale in conjunction with aggressive manufacturer rebates throughout the year.

The Nikon D5500 is a better camera -- it delivers better photo quality and has a broader feature set, with comparable performance and better battery life -- but its collapsible kit lens is annoying and the downsized grip will make it uncomfortable for some folks. And though it, too, comes in an overload of bundles, it still remains roughly $100 more than the Canon, the same price in the US as the T6s (the 18-55mm T6s kit price is a lot more in Australia, about AU$1,200).

And I don't think the latter is worth the extra money unless the prices are very close; it may look like a more grown-up camera on the outside, but it's fundamentally the T6i. The exception is in the UK, where it looks like you can get the 760D kit for the same £500.

The T6i/750D is a fine camera for the family photographer who's not terribly picky about photo quality; I think most people who buy it will be happy with it.

Comparative specifications