Canon EOS 77D

Introduction

The Canon EOS 77D (9000D in Japan) is a lightweight 24MP APS-C DSLR that offers impressive Dual Pixel Autofocus, good external controls and WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. It slots between the Rebel T7i and EOS 80D, and can be thought of as the successor to the Rebel T6s; if the name doesn’t make that obvious, the specifications and feature additions over its lower-end Rebel sibling should.

Key specifications

• 24MP sensor with Dual Pixel autofocus
• 45-point all-cross-type phase-detect autofocus system
• Digic 7 processor
• 3″ fully-articulating touchscreen LCD
• Top plate LCD for shooting information
• Dual control dials
• 6fps continuous shooting
• 1080/60p video capture with microphone input

So is the EOS 77D more than a fancy Rebel in disguise? Well, not really. The only meaningful differentiators between this model and the Rebel T7i it was announced alongside are the dual control dials, top plate LCD and the addition of an AF ON button. Less meaningful differentiators include an extra eight grams of heft and some general button shuffling. And that’s it. In other words, the same relationship was shared by the Rebel T6s and T6i.

All that said, we have to concede the name ’77D’ sounds a lot more serious than either the well-worn Rebel or XX0D monikers, and after all, this is a fairly well-rounded camera. It borrows an awful lot from its up-market EOS 80D cousin, and yet, comes in at a pretty steep discount. Let’s see how they compare in detail.

Spec comparison

The EOS 77D then will broadly appeal to the same sort of consumer as the T6s/760D; namely, the photographer with enough experience to want a more hands-on approach and who must have an optical viewfinder of some sort. All of the not-insignificant advancements in the EOS 77D and the Rebel T7i make them compelling upgrade choices for users of previous Rebel (and even some X0D) cameras.

If you can forego an optical viewfinder, one could easily make an argument for the Fujifilm X-T20 or Sony’s a6300, both of which offer 4K video and much faster burst shooting in smaller packages (though the a6300 lacks the level of direct control the 77D offers), and there’s also the new Canon EOS M6, which shares an awful lot with the 77D under its skin.

But with the addition of Dual Pixel AF, Live View shooting on the EOS 77D is arguably just as robust (if not more so, in some situations) than either the Fujifilm or Sony mirrorless options. And that gets to the heart of what really makes the EOS 77D so appealing; it may not offer the best of both the DSLR and mirrorless worlds, but it does offer a compelling balance at this price point.

So does the EOS 77D have what it takes to be your next camera? Let’s find out.

Body, handling and features

Anyone who’s picked up or seen a Rebel over the last few iterations will find that there’s no surprises on the EOS 77D. It’s light and very plasticky, but doesn’t feel overly cheap. As we’d expect from a Canon DSLR, the controls are well-sorted and you can operate just about anything with your eye to the viewfinder. Weather sealing would have been nice, but that’s neither here nor there at this price point.

So there’s not much new to talk about in terms of design with the EOS 77D; it’s just another small DSLR. But this camera (alongside the Rebel T7i) brings Canon’s Dual Pixel AF down a price point, and this has the potential to significantly impact how you use the camera.

Handling – optical viewfinder shooting

But before we get to that, let’s cover the basics. Canon’s EOS ergonomic design is here in full force, with a shutter button and front command dial that could have been lifted off an EOS 650, the first EOS film camera (in fact, the EOS system as a whole is celebrating is 30th anniversary this year). So is it new and exciting? It depends on who you ask, but once you spend some time with it, you will find the EOS 77D is a very well-sorted camera.

Just about everything you need is at your fingertips, and it’s easy to manipulate any settings with your eye to the viewfinder. The dual control dials in particular make settings manipulation fast, though it would be nice to have more control over button customization (I don’t change my ‘Picture Style’ very often, and would assign that button to something else). Thankfully, the touchscreen-operated Q menu works very well, though you necessarily have to take your eye away from the viewfinder for that.

With regards to the optical viewfinder, this is through-and-through a consumer-level APS-C DSLR. The OVF is fairly dim, relatively small and comes with limited information display, though the eye-sensor above the screen is a nice touch in that it keeps you from being distracted by the main display when you raise the camera to your eye. The electronic level is also nice to have in a pinch, but it’s too small and not very precise. Additionally, with less than 100% viewfinder frame coverage, you may find unexpected surprises creeping into the edges of your carefully framed shots.

On a positive note, the 45-point autofocus system from the EOS 80D is a huge step up from previous Rebels, covering a large portion of the small-ish viewfinder. It makes it that much easier to frame your shots up by moving your AF point around, as opposed to having to focus and recompose, and all of those cross-type points should help ensure greater autofocus accuracy than older Rebels.

Handling – Live View

In Live View, the EOS 77D handles much the same as a large-ish mirrorless camera, with good refresh rates and a responsive touchscreen interface. But why would you want to even shoot this way if you have the optical viewfinder? Well, because Dual Pixel AF is that good, and full 100% coverage of the scene you’re shooting comes as an added bonus.

Not only do you get greater autofocus coverage in Live View than through the viewfinder, but it’s also even more accurate much the time (and you’ll never need AF microadjustment in Live View, since focus is measured at the imaging plane). It even subject tracks better than Canon’s through-the-viewfinder iTR tracking by a wide margin – see more on our Autofocus page.

Overall handling is pleasantly competent in this mode as well. You still have most of the controls you need accessible with just your right hand, and then you can cradle the flip-out screen with your left hand and manipulate autofocus with your thumb. It’s great for everyday shooting, and working at odd angles is a breeze.

But for times when you want the optical viewfinder experience, well, it’s just there waiting for you. Users that find an electronic viewfinder a necessity aren’t likely to care since this won’t be a camera they’re considering, but for those that want the option of an optical viewfinder as well as a polished Live View experience, the 77D has it covered.

If you are one to swap between both methods of shooting regularly, you’ll be pleased to note that the experience is fairly consistent. The Q menus between them are broadly similar even down to the autofocus settings vernacular, so long as you just think of ‘Face + Tracking’ to be analogous to Auto AF point selection.

Features

Features-wise, the EOS 77D is a mixed bag. There are guided shooting screens and menus, there’s plenty of scene shooting modes on the top dial, and should you feel somehow uninspired, there’s an array of ‘creative’ filters such as ‘miniature effect’ and ‘selective color.’

You can shoot Raw in auto mode, and you can apply all of the ‘creative’ filters to Raw files after the fact. Unfortunately, you can’t perform more traditional in-camera Raw processing, such as white balance and exposure adjustments that would be of benefit for perfecting an image for Wi-Fi transfer – you’ll have to pony up for the EOS 80D for that.

The EOS 77D inherits a very basic version of Canon’s Auto ISO control, only allowing you to specify an ISO range and the camera will automatically try to keep your shutter speed at around 1/(2 x focal length). There are no options to manually select a minimum shutter speed or bias the camera’s selected shutter speed.

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth implementation are robust through Canon’s Camera Connect app, which is available for both iOS and Android. Initial setup takes a couple minutes if you’re on iOS, but with NFC, pairing is very fast with Android phones. But for those of you on iOS, the option for a constant Bluetooth connection means that subsequent pairings will go far more quickly. You can view and download images from the camera, as well as use your phone to tag images with precise time and GPS measurements. You can also control the camera remotely, manipulate settings and even set the autofocus tracking, which will be great for vloggers.

Image quality

Our latest test scene simulates both daylight and low light shooting. Pressing the ‘lighting’ buttons at the top of the widget switches between the two. The daylight scene is manually white balanced to give neutral grays, but the camera is left in its Auto setting for the low-light tests. Raw files are manually corrected. We offer three different viewing sizes: ‘Full’, ‘Print’, and ‘Comp’, with the latter two offering ‘normalized’ comparisons by using matched viewing sizes. The ‘Comp’ option chooses the largest-available resolution common to the cameras being compared.

The Canon EOS 77D puts up performance in our test scene that is all but identical to the higher-priced EOS 80D, as well as the EOS M5; this isn’t surprising as all three share what is likely the same sensor, and though the M5 and 77D both have newer Digic 7 processors compared to the 80D’s older Digic 6, there seems to be no real impact on image quality.

In general, then, you can expect typically pleasing Canon colors, with reds that are less muddy than a Nikon D7200 and less yellow-tinged than the Sony a6300. The JPEG engine can still use some work, though, as it continues to show fairly rudimentary sharpening that is prone to haloing. The highest ISO values losing low contrast detail while leaving behind plenty of noise. Raw noise performance lags slightly behind the D7200 and a6300. The EOS 77D shows less moiré than the Sony (just like the EOS 80D), which does suggest the presence of an anti-aliasing filter, though its still capturing a pretty good amount of detail.

Conclusion

What’s in a name? The EOS 77D may, at first glance, appear to be a new entry for Canon to slot between their Rebel T7i and EOS 80D. But dig a little deeper into the specifications and you’ll see that the differentiators between the 77D and the Rebel T7i are about as significant as those between the older Rebel T6s and T6i, respectively. To us, it appears that this re-naming is evidence that Canon is possibly aiming this successor to the ‘s’ line of Rebels at a higher market segment; ordinarily, that would be annoying. But here, it seems pretty justified.

The EOS 77D is a remarkably well-rounded and capable camera at its price point. For a pretty big discount compared to the EOS 80D, you get that camera’s sensor and autofocus system, plus you get a newer processor to boot, which has a meaningful impact on Live View performance. Not too shabby.