Photography News Issue 45

Photography News | Issue 45 | absolutephoto.com

Camera test 35

ISO 100

ISO 3200

Performance: ISO

With ISO performance should improve in each generation. Unlike the days of film or early digital, you should be able to shoot at middling ISOs, like ISO 400 or 800 without much noise, meaning shutter speed can be faster. The lowest ISOs can then be reserved for lengthening the shutter or shooting in bright light. The 77D performed very well in our noise tests. At ISO 100 images are very clean, and this level modern cameras,

extends to ISO 800, so you can rely on decent results without keeping to the lowest settings. Even at higher settings like 1600 and 3200 luminance noise (grain) is good, and pictures very usable. Colour noise does start to creep in above ISO 1600, but it’s not offensive unprocessed and easy to remove in a Raw conversion. From 6400 onwards, colour artifacting is much more obvious and detail really begins to suffer.

Images For these ISO test images we shot in Rawmode. The pictures are reproduced without any noise reduction to clearly show how luminance and colour noise increase as the signal is amplified. The range expands beyond 25600 to the High setting of 51200, but this should only be used in extreme need.

ISO 400

ISO 6400

Original image

ISO 800

ISO 12,800

ISO 1600

ISO 25,600

I found it easiest to work in One- Shot and use the Single-point AF area, selectable across the 45 points. Therein, instead of using the D-Pad route, you can turn the dials to move the point. It takes getting used to but is ultimately faster and you don’t need to adjust your grip. For moving subjects, the 77D’s Color Tracking system, and wide area grouping performed very well, too, though there were occasional soft shots. It’s not perfect, but it does a job. In its Continuous drive mode, the 77Ddidwell. It recordedup to 27Raw files at 6fps before things slowed up. This improves with JPEGs, which Canon specifies as unlimited. I certainly achieved over 500 before I lost interest. Of course, it depends on the speed of card you’re writing to. The 77D’s pop up flash, activated automatically in certain modes, or using a button on the side of the pentamirror housing performed well for fill-in flash, wherein power is adjustable though +/-2 stops in 1/3 increments. It’s also used as an optical trigger for other flashes, using Canon’s E-TTL II system, and compatible EX series flashguns. This is very simple to set up, and power can be controlled manually or automatically. Finally, the Wi-Fi connectivity worked really well, being easy to set up. I used it a lot and found myself starting to miss it on non-Wi-Fi cameramodels.

the Quick Control dial defaults to exposure compensation, as on other Canon models. Both or either dial can be locked using the switch of the back of the body. I found the Quick Control dial a little small and light to the touch, but it functions well enough. Click it up, down, left or right and it functions like the 800D’s four-way controller; you get control of white balance, drive mode, autofocus modes and picture styles. Unlike the 80D, there’s no button on the body to set metering mode, so this is done in the Main or Quick menu (via the Q button). It works fine, but if you change modes a lot, switching to spot or centre, diving into amenu each time could grate. Next to the top plate LCD are buttons to control ISO, AF area and to illuminate the LCD. Helpfully, the ISO button in the middle has a different feel, so your finger knows where it is, evenwhile composing. The 77D’smenu system iswell laid out and easy to navigate. Again, if you’re a Canon user, it will be second nature. Basic functions are grouped, and you can put frequently used settings into custom menu, which I didwith the exposure bracketing. The AF system performed very well.TheDualPixelAFfeaturemakes use of a phase detection AF system on the sensor itself, rather than a separate AF chip, and worked well. It’s also meant to improve focusing in live view and when shooting video,

Having a front (which Canon calls Main) and a rear (Quick Control) dial is a definite improvement over Through the viewfinder, the system offers 45 points, all of which are the more sensitive cross-type. 27 of these, grouped towards the centre, willworkatup to f/8 , soyoucanshoot with slower lenses, teleconverters or extension tubes without too much worry. The central point is a dual cross-type for even greater accuracy. There’s a good selection of AF areas and modes, so you won’t be caught out by any subject. The usual CanonAFmodes; One Shot, AI Servo and AI Focus are on board, the latter switching between the first two, to deal with unpredictable subjects. and certainly seemed to. Performance was snappier than I’ve seen in live view focusing before.

the single dial offered on the EOS 800D

Powered by