Head To Head Expert Opinion On The Lastest Kit

CANON Rebel T6/1300D vs NIKON D3400. We pit Canon’s entry-level DSLR against its Nikon equivalent.

- Rod Lawton

Both of these cameras are aimed at beginners or photographers on a tight budget, so you won’t find cutting-edge specifications here. But you do want a camera that delivers good performance across a wide range of everyday subjects, and which is also fairly future-proof, so you don’t outgrow it too soon as your skills evolve.

Canon’s EOS Rebel T6/1300D and Nikon’s D3400 both have APS-C format sensors. The Canon’s is very slightly smaller – only by a millimetre or so, but it explains why the Canon has a crop factor of 1.6x while the Nikon’s is 1.5x.

You need to multiply a lens’s actual focal length by those numbers to get the effective focal length. So an 18-55mm kit lens on the Canon corresponds to a 29-88mm lens, whereas on the Nikon it’s equivalent to 27-83mm; in practice you’ll hardly notice the difference. Both cameras are backed up by a big range of lenses.

The EOS 1300D uses an 18-megapixel sensor that’s served many of Canon’s SSLRs well, but is a step behind the 24MP sensors in its latest (and more expensive) EOS 750D and 760D. The Nikon D3400 has an up-to-date 24MP sensor, like those found in Nikon’s more advanced cameras. It’s not just about the megapixels, though: each new generation of sensor tends to be a little better at noise control and dynamic range.