Comparing the image quality of Canon entry level DSLR 550D of which is same as the rest of Canon line, from 550D T2i to 700D T5i as all got the same sensor even the 60D and 7D have the same sensor. And comparing it to the Panasonic G6 which is not that old but recently had a major price drop and can be bought for €250 2nd hand, but the Canon 550D also currently is 2nd hand €250 but its a much much older camera with way less features. And this is to show that the Panasonic G6 has a way better image quality and also better in low light.
This test was shot with the same Canon 10-22mm f3.5-4.5 lens and used a non speedbooster adapter as speedbooster changes the lens performance allot. Only its really hard to get the same framing as as they have different cropfactor plus also the Panasonic G6 sits much lower on the tripod. Plus the sharpness here is not due to the lens if you look better at 200% blown up its not lens blur but you can see that image of Canon is mushy and pixels are blown up especially the rubber focus/zoom ring on that tiny lens you see on Panasonic the ridges are sharp and thin while on the Canon its much thicker looking.
The fact is that the Canon way of processing the images to get 1080p video is really bad, as its uses binning and which causes the output of the video looks like 720p upscaled. If you look at test result some people did with ML RAW and they filmed slightly higher than 720 as they can’t do full 1080p RAW on 550D, but can see the RAW which is not processed in the way of binning is way sharper and got more details, while it comes out from the same sensor. And also been noticing on my Canon I got really expensive lenses like the Canon 10-22mm f3.5-4.5 which are really sharp, but on the Canon are not producing same sharp result in the video and making it harder to edit the videos together as the Canon footage would look out of focus slightly compared to the Panasonic.
Personally I am really happy I upgraded to the Panasonic G6 and getting the nicer image quality and knew I would get great result from it. But I didn’t even realise that the Panasonic ISO values were so much brighter than the Canon with this test result. Which now is giving me even bigger push to more proper M4/3 lenses and not look into Canon lenses that much.
