DxO Mark Ranks Canon M100

2017.12.22

The Canon EOS M100 is a highly compact mirrorless digital camera sporting a 24 megapixels CMOS sensor at the Canon size of APS-C which gives a 1.6X crop-factor. This sensor is the same one used in their latest entry-level DSLRs, with the exclusive-to-Canon Dual-Pixel system which allows Phase-Detect AF at every pixels. The sensor is paired with a Digic 7 processor to shoot continuously at 6.1 FPS. At a mere 302g, the M100 is one of the lightest mirrorless cameras on the market.

Today, DxOMark revealed that the Canon EOS M100 scores a 78. This is broken down into 23.5 bits of dynamic-range, 12.9 EVs of dynamic-range and 1271 High-ISO points. As expected, this is the virtually same score as the M6, Canon 200D and Canon 80D that score just a single point higher. The difference being that Canon manages to squeeze a bit more dynamic-range from their DSLRs.

While Dual-Pixel AF delivers an extremely smooth focus-tracking experience which is quite useful for video, these sensor require much more circuitry and in fact are made of twice as many photosites, each one being half of a single pixel. This puts the performance of Canon APS-C sensors significantly below par, similar in performance to the top Four-Thirds sensor, slotting itself between the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II which scores an 80 and the Panasonic Lumix GH5 which scores a 77.

Compared to mirrorless digital cameras from other manufacturers, the Canon EOS M100 is drastically behind in terms of image-quality. The top APS-C mirrorless is currently the Sony A6500 which reaches a score of 85, with sub-scores of 24.5 bits-per-pixel, 13.7 EV of dynamic-range and 1405 High-ISO points. Although the ISO score is similar, the A6500 features a 5-axis stabilization built-in, so it will be considerably ahead of the M100 when it comes to practical use in low-light.