The Canon EOS R100 felt particularly backward in 2023
There were no bad cameras from the big names in photography in 2023, but a couple of launches immediately spring to mind that had me asking, ‘Really?’. Top of that unremarkable pile was the Canon EOS R100, while the Sony ZV-1 II wasn’t far behind. There was also a tiny Fujifilm camera that’s a bundle of cute but technically not great.
When the EOS R100 was announced in May, I described it as ‘all out of touch with beginners’. That’s a play on words for the beginner-level mirrorless camera packing a fixed, rear LCD screen with no touch function. That’s right, you can’t flip the screen for selfies, or even use a touch interface on that screen. That’s why, in 2023, the EOS R100 feels backward.
Like I said, the EOS R100 isn’t a bad camera. It has the same 24MP sensor as pricier Canon cameras like the EOS R50 and EOS R10, so it can give you equally good image quality – and we rate the EOS R10 as the best mirrorless camera for beginners. But for its intended audience, I couldn’t sensibly recommend the EOS R100 because of its handling. I’d advise going for the pricier EOS R50, EOS R10, or other Canon entry-level models like the EOS M50 II or even Rebel T7i / EOS 2000D DSLR camera, instead. At the time of writing, those alternatives have more in their favor. Canon EOS R100 – why so bad?
The EOS R100 is Canon’s entry-level RF-mount camera with the same APS-C sensor as pricier siblings like the EOS R10 and EOS R50, so it’s mostly good on the image quality front. That is unless you shoot video, as the EOS R100’s 4K video has a meaty 1.55x crop so you can’t shoot wide angle. That’s an extremely dated video spec – the same as the EOS M50, in fact – and you’ll probably get better video quality out of your phone, at least until Canon starts launching better RF-S lenses.
You can, in theory, get the same picture quality with the EOS R100 as pricier Canon EOS R cameras, and in certain situations, Canon’s latest lens mount outperforms previous M-mount and EF-S mount Canon systems.
