Canon’s Tiny Titan: The EOS Rebel SL1

Being nicknamed as Canon’s new “baby DSLR”, the Canon EOS Rebel SL1 is seen as the world’s smallest DSLR in the world. The EOS series from Canon has been touted as an excellent line of lightweight, high-performance but entry-level DSLRs, great for people who want amazing performance out of a camera but are only starting out on high-quality photography. And as they are mostly entry-level cameras, they are more affordable than the cameras on the mid-range and high-level professional devices.

The SL1 Is Born

At 14.4 ounces, the EOS SL1 is also the lightest little camera in the world, which makes it a full 25% smaller and 28% lighter than the previous compact camera from the EOS line, the Rebel T4i. As the “evolutionary” step of the compact camera, it is virtually a high-powered DSLR that has been shrunken down, fully capable of taking the same high-quality photographs and delivering excellent performance as any other larger camera. According to Digitaltrends.com, the SL1 is “essentially a traditional DSLR stuffed into a much smaller body,” and with a few enhanced features to boot.

What are its features?

Weight

If you’re used to handling a full size DSLR, you’ll immediately notice the size difference with the baby camera. Users who will take hold of this device would notice that it’s extremely light, even by Canon standards, with the weight difference similar to how a Nikon user would feel when carrying a Canon camera for the first time.

Image Quality

The SL1 boasts of an 18-megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor, as well as the DIGIC 5-image processor from Canon. This is where actual DSLRs have the edge over the steadily improving cameras in a business phone (click here for more information) or a smartphone like the Xperia: actual DSLRs, even like this tiny cam, still have a far larger megapixel sensor, as well as immensely higher-quality photographs thanks to their adjustable ISO ranges (the SL1 has a range of 100-12,800 still range and 6400 in video).

Shooting features

Like a bigger DSLR, SL1 has a continuous shooting feature that goes up to four frames per second, as well as a brand new nine-point cross-type autofocusing system. The phase area will cover approximately 80% of the sensor, and it’s certainly a more than considerable improvement over the sensor in the T4i. It can shoot videos at Full HD, 1080p with 30fps—which is impressive for its size. It uses Canon Movie Servo AF, giving it the ability to track moving subjects at continuous autofocus. Combined with the use of Canon’s STM lenses, the quality will be even more crisp via quiet AF.

LCD

The LCD screen on the SL1 is a three-inch Clear View LCD Monitor II. This way, even in bright environments such as the outdoors, it’s still easy to view previous shots or preview videos that had been taken with the camera. At the same time, it has an integrated finger-touch panel operation. Two finger-touch gestures are all it takes to zoom in to an image or to switch to a new one.

It may be small, but it is essentially a full size DSLR. It’s an excellent camera that’s highly portable and produces the same excellent performance as any full size camera of its kind.