Canon EOS 80D vs. Sony A6300: A quick measure of imaging performance

The prosumer APS-C segment gets refreshed

Welcome the new generation of prosumer cameras!

The Canon EOS 80D and the Sony A6300 are the latest APS-C entries from both these companies, and you could say they both represent the current limits of APS-C technology for both their brands. Both sport 24-megapixel CMOS sensors and unique AF technologies that make for better focusing performance, even during Live View. They also both sport shutters that are capable of high continuous shooting rates, with the EOS 80D reaching a maximum of 7fps and the A6300 capable of going up to 11fps in Hi+ mode.

In terms of autofocus systems, the EOS 80D features Canon’s Dual Pixel CMOS AF for faster AF performance during Live View mode, and boasts 45 all cross-type AF points with 27 of the central points being able to focus down to f/8. The A6300 on the other hand, features 425 focal plane phase detect AF points and boasts an AF speed of just 0.05-sec thanks to Sony’s enhanced Fast Hybrid AF system. So, it’s easy to say they both match up well together on paper, but how do the images they produce compare?

Let's jump right in to it with some outdoor shots!

The sample photographs that follow were shot with the Canon EOS 80D and Sony A6300. The photos have not been post-processed and are copyright to SPH Magazines. They are provided for your reference only and we ask that you do not reproduce them elsewhere. Click for the full-resolution images.

Close-up of a flower - Daytime

You can see that the A6300 has clearly picked on the front petal as the point of focus, with the depth of field just extending to the stigma. The EOS 80D on the other hand, seems to have taken a more overall approach to focus, with the point of focus starting just before the stigma and extending to the next petal behind it.

In Chinatown - Daytime (shaded)

Good detail from both cameras here, and you can again see the Canon once again picks a point about one thirds into the scene whereas the Sony places its focus more to the front. It appears that the EOS 80D’s metering bias seems to be a bit more conservative, sticking to a lower ISO value of 800 over that of the A6300, which has jumped up to 1250.

City skyline - Night time

Both cameras are clearly at the limits of their usable ISO settings here, as a quick look at the 100% crops easily show that details have started to become smudged and muddy. It would appear that the A6300 is slightly better at holding highlight details though, as the lights from the buildings aren’t quite as blown out.

ISO comparisons. 

Outdoor testing aside, let's look at some ISO comparisons under controlled situations, using our standard studio scene.

ISO 200

At the low ISOs, both cameras managed to reproduce a good amount of detail (as you would expect from 24MP sensors), however, take a closer look at the fine writing on the bottle on the right and it seems as though the A6300 is slightly sharper.

ISO 6400

Moving up to ISO 6400, it seems that the Sony sensor is again maintaining better detail in its images, whereas the EOS 80D’s image seems to be getting noisy, with details lost to smudging as the camera attempts to reduce the amount of visible noise.

ISO 12800

At ISO 12800, the EOS 80D loses all of the finest detail in the image, and a slight bit of color noise is starting to show in the bottom right corner of the image (the foot of the blue soft toy), but the A6300 is still able to retain quite a bit of fine detail, especially in terms of the printed text on the bottle label.

Preliminary Findings

From an image quality perspective, there’s really little to split between the two cameras at the lower ISO levels. Both certainly give you good detail with very little color biases, though we did note that the Sony A6300 while being faster to focus, wasn’t exactly more accurate - it would sometimes give an AF confirmation beep when nothing was in focus, typically when trying to get too close to objects (near the minimal focusing distance of the lens supplied). The Canon EOS 80D on the other hand, seems to focus better in low light conditions, while being just as speedy in good light. From the photos captured, the biggest difference between the two would be the high ISO performance, and in this case the Sony A6300 clearly stood out as the better of the two.

Of course, this piece doesn't take into account things like ease of handling, basic responsiveness of controls and other aspects of using the camera, so it doesn't yet paint a full picture as to how these two cameras stand up against each other. For example, we personally thought the Canon EOS 80D's interface was the best we've seen in a DSLR so far. So, do check in again when we pubilsh a more in-depth shootout of the cameras along with the just-released Nikon D500 in tow too!

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