600d - a good beginner's camera, with a few limitations

I’m writing this review of my canon EOS 600d (t3i), as I am now selling it.

I was given my 600d with the kit lens (EF-S 18-55mm IS II) by a friend in August.

When I first got it I thought wow! Some features really impressed me (eg. The automatic sensor cleaning).

Now for a bit of a background:

Prior to being given my 600d, I was using a Canon EOS 1200d. That body was fine, but I had a bad experience with it. It was my own fault, though….

I made the mistake of buying an EF 35-80mm f/5.6 USM. The lens itself was fine (it was wonderfully light) was it simply wasn’t wide enough for me. Every time I was a nice landscape, I could only use an effective focal length of around 50mm.

Not only was that lens not wide enough for me, it was slow. Only f/5.6 thought the entire zoom range.

The Camera itself

I’ll start with ergonomics.

I haven’t had any problems in this aspect, with one BIG exception.

The grip.

I found the grip to be too small to be comfortable. Especially when using my 100-300mm telephoto zoom. And my hands aren’t at all big.

I really loved the flippy screen. It was a big upgrade from the fixed one on my 1200d. Pity it it’s not touchscreen, though. Oh well, there’s the 650d for that.

Also worth mentioning that the 600d has a depth-of-field preview, which my 1200d didn’t (although it can be programmed to do so with Magic Lantern, more on that later).

Auto Focus

The 600d has basically the same AF system as my 1200d – the traditional 9-point AF, the centre one being cross-type.

I found this system fine for everyday use, but not for birds-in-flight.

The need for better continuous tracking is one of the main things pushing me to sell my 600d.

That said, the centre AF point is perfectly capable of tracking a subject, AS LONG AS YOU CAN KEEP YOUR SUBJECT UNDER THE CENTRAL AF POINT, tracking works fine. I’ve used it for BIF and my family’s dog running across the park.

Image Quality

Even though it’s a very old camera, the 600d still produces high quality photos.

High ISO performance is pretty bad. Without denoising, ISO 1600 as about as far as I can go.

That said, with the amazing denoising of the DxO products (photolab, pureraw) the 600d’s files become a lot more usable.

A note of warning: Using PureRAW, I experienced issues with the 600d’s files. Some photos, after being processed in PureRAW, took a purple/pink colour to the sky when the exposure was reduced in post processing. It turned out, the problem only happens with files taken at intermittent “fake” ISOs.

So, if you want to use DxO PureRAW with the 600d’s files, don’t use auto ISO.

You can read about it in detail at these threads:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4637376

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4638757

Magic Lantern

Magic Lantern is a free firmware add-on, and it's compatible with the 600d. It adds loads of extra features which the 600d doesn't have by default.

Magic Lantern

Magic Lantern download for the 600d

There is one problem - ML only runs (safely) on firmware v1.0.2.

The most recent version is version is v1.0.3.

So is you want to use ML on your 600d and are running the latest firmware, you'll need to downgrade to v1.0.2. Read how I did it here (it's perfectly safe).

Firmware v.1.0.3 only fixes a problem with a couple of lenses, so you probably won't need it anyway. Canon (official) v1.0.3 is here .

Verdict

The Canon EOS 600d is still a great camera, even today, in 2022.

Ergonomics are fine, except the grip (too small for me). The articulating screen is excellent.

It’s AF is fine for everyday shooting. For tracking subjects, as long as you can keep your subject under the centre AF point (which I’m not very good at) it’s fine.

This camera could very potentially be an excellent beginner’s DSLR, costing less than £200 for a used one with the kit lens.

Where will I go from here? Probably a Canon EOS 7d, for it’s better AF system and better grip.

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Thanks for reading.