I've been weighing the mirrorless option heavy and finally made the plunge to keep it in the Canon family. I Received this camera and have been playing with it and enjoying it for it's purpose. Let me state this, I own a Canon 5D Mark III as well, so I can only speak on my intentions and reasoning for wanting the Eos-M. I had no intentions of buying this camera as a back up body, nor would this be the camera I would recommend for others who are in the market for one. However, image quality wise, it could be. If you've made the Canon investment in gear, and could use something a little more light weight, sort of pocket friendly, and portable that has the capability to be used with your other canon gear.. It's a no brainer. This camera to me is the Hobbyist/enthusiast Canon gear owners good, to best friend.The Good: I love the image quality, size, and build quality of the camera and even the 22mm itself is a much better build then expected. It doesn't feel cheap. The touchscreen is pretty good and responsive, if you don't mind a few prints on the screen trying to assist the focusing. Also I love the relief of not carrying my battery gripped 5D around with me for all of the smallest things, and missing something worth capturing because of it. This camera has been a blast, and I've worn it around my neck on several occasions and even the people with me haven't noticed.
The Bad: Slow maneuvering around the menus, as there are limited physical buttons and no turn dial (But this may get faster as you get use to the touchscreen). No built in flash (When this camera is said to target those coming from point and shoot cameras), No view finder (But after a couple of shots.. I wasn't missing it), And no direct lens mount Ef-s or EF (and mainly this is because of the outrageous price for the adapter). But all of this is tolerable... Sort of. I wont complain about the auto focus speed as to me, it's really not that bad. I have seen faster, and even faster focus speeds on this camera alone. But then again, I use a 85mm 1.2L quite a bit on my Mark III and that lens can almost make any focus speed seem fast.
I did purchased the 16GB Eye-Fi card and use it to transfer images straight to my cellphone for quick editing if needed, and uploading to any social network services I use. I have no idea why it did not cross someones mind at Canon, to include wifi and/or Gps, when I've have heard time and time again about one of the excuses for not having a built in EVF was that this camera should attract those who are familiar with taking cellphone images.
In the end, a built in Viewfinder, wifi, gps, flash and a cheaper if not free lens adapter would have been nice. But even so, I am happy with my purchase, and I've read enough to understand its purpose or my reasoning for wanting one, and have actually been more impressed then what I've originally expected. I do not think anyone would be in their right mind to purchase this camera for sports photography, and if you've taking pictures with almost any modern smart phone today, the focus speed may never be a issue to you. If you already own or are familiar with a Canon DSLR, this camera will feel right at home with the options and setup. And if this is a new world to you, you might want to read the manual, or watch a video to get yourself familiar first. Great buy for me!!!
**UPDATE**
I am a professional. When I saw the EOS M and I was excited that it's a small portable multi-use camera that I could use as a carry-around as well as for work as a back-up camera using the lens coupler. The perfect addition to a mobile rig, the EOS M would be great as a second camera for shooting interviews when attached to my lenses.
When I bought it and held it, I was even more excited. It's built EXTREMELY well, feels solid, great finish. It's a camera I really like to touch.
Once I turned it on, this was the first Canon that didn't quite feel like a Canon. The interface felt rough. Just finding how to set it in manual focus mode required reading the user's manual (and multiple menu pages as mentioned by other reviewers). The LCD touch-screen interface and lack of physical dials (especially for AF/M focusing) makes it more difficult to add an LCD loupe to the camera which would be amazing.
Snapped a couple of photos and they looked beautiful (Hey, the 3-year old 7D sensor is still magnificent) and the lens looked sharp with beautiful bokeh. Color was well rendered.
But what's this... Brrrrzzzzzzzz..... YUP. I can clearly and loudly hear the autofocus motor while shooting a movie, especially during quiet scenes. Yeah ok, you're supposed to use manual focus for movies. Agreed. But not when the camera specs claim it has continuos focus for movies. The motor is LOUD. This is a strange first entry by canon. I REALLY WANT TO LIKE IT.... Not happy face. Not sad face. More a perplexed face. After flipping through the manual I saw a mention about this. Canon suggests using an external mic rather than the built-in stereo mics.
I loved seeing photos of a 70-200mm lens attached to this thing. Then I thought... wait, I can't press this camera against my face to balance its weight. Holding that big lens 6 inches away from my face to shoot would set my whole center of gravity off. I really do miss having a viewfinder so I can stabilize the camera.
Main disappointment was at night, casually shooting in a restaurant, where the focusing speed was beyond unacceptable. A full 3-4 seconds of focus hunting, WITH focus assist on, before it would fire the shutter. On my second night of ownership, I left the camera at home and that's a pretty bad sign as I love really diving into new gear. The terrible low light focus of the Fuji X100 seemed acceptable compared to the EOS M. Back when I got the X100, I loved using it so much I practically went to bed with it. As much as I hate to admit it, the EOS M felt like it fired more slowly than my S100, even during the day. That shouldn't be so. Not at $800.
Then... $70 for a tiny battery? $200 for the coupler? These are Pro prices... without Pro performance. Me: perplexed face.
I ended up returning the camera. Some of these issues may be fixed with a firmware update, others will need Canon to really study their competition.
A bit bummedmy first real disappointment in a Canon product.
Buy Canon EOS M 18.0 MP Compact Systems Camera with 3.0-Inch LCD and EF-M18-55mm IS STM Lens Now
I picked this camera up on my last trip to Japan 3 days after it came out there. In Japan they only sold a kitchen sink bundle for the first few weeks which included the body, 22m lens, 18-55m lens, EF Lens adapter and the Speedlite 90EX flash.This camera takes fantastic pictures! But there are two shortcomings that are incredibly annoying. First of all the camera takes a good second (or more) to focus for a camera this expensive this is almost unacceptable. My Canon G11 was focusing faster... Second there is a (beautiful) touch screen on the back of the camera. This touchscreen can also be used as a shutter as in: touch the touchscreen to take a picture. Now the product manager/developer who decided it was a good idea to put the control to enable/disable the touch shutter onto the touchscreen needs to be fired. When I walked around various Japanese cities with the camera around my neck it happened with regularity that the camera would bump up against my body, turn the touch shutter on and then continue to take pictures every time it bumped against my body. SERIOUSLY ANNOYING with no way to disable. I really hope there will be a firmware update to fix this (there is a menu setting to enable/disable the touch screen shutter I have no idea why the additional control on the screen itself).
When doing post processing of my photos I did notice that I had quite a few of them with the focus slightly off. Guess the automatic metering didn't always pick the right spot to focus on but then again I could have easily fixed that by using spot metering.
Now various other reviews (e.g. on Engadget) mentioned the missing mode dial compared to DSLRs or even G-series cameras. To be honest I haven't missed it that much during two weeks of intense shooting.
Also I haven't scratched the surface on what this camera can actually do but I did find that for taking HDR pictures the built-in mode only really works for static scenes. With moving objects the camera can't really build a great HDR so if there are people in a scene it's definitely better to process manually on the computer.
There really isn't much to say about the two lenses or the flash that came with the camera they do the trick. And I have no EF lenses to try the converter with.
Added 2013/05/08:
I just returned from another trip to Asia and after this trip I would no longer recommend this camera. It simply doesn't focus fast enough to capture things quickly e.g. when driving in a car and trying to take photos of the outside. Also I can't tell you how often my wife (or anyone else) ended up in my frame because it took more than 1 second to focus and take the shot. I know that's more "snapshot" photography but nevertheless I'd like to have that option.
Added 2013/06/27
Canon just released a firmware update 2.02 that claims to increase focusing times 2x 3x in OneShot AF mode. I just applied it and within the room I'm in it seems to do what it says. Now I'll have to test the new firmware in the wild to see if it makes this camera more suited to my style of photography.Here are my two cents on the EOS M + 22mm f/2 STM kit lens. I'll point out that I'm a semi-pro, and I bought this camera as a more casual/portable alternative to my 5D Mark III and heavier L glass.
The main thing I will say about the EOS M is that it's just plain fun. It's portable, it takes great pictures, and has all the pro features I need to give me the confidence that, in a bind, I could leave my big camera at home and come back with perfectly usable shots. Plus, there's just something liberating about using a more casual camera...I love my 5D III, but I seem to set higher expectations for myself when using that camera and it's nice to be able to just get out and have fun.
Anyway, here are some thoughts on the EOS M:
1. Auto-focus If any one thing could be blamed for the less-than-stellar reviews of the EOS-M, this is it. When I first heard about how slow the AF was, I immediately decided that this camera wasn't for me. It made me think of my crummy old cellphone camera, which would hunt for a few seconds in low light then finally take a blurry shot. I'll say that while the AF can be slow, when it *does* lock -unlike the cell camera -you WILL get a great shot. Furthermore, you can maximize AF performance by using the "FlexiZone Single" mode, setting the AF Operation to "ONE SHOT AF", and disabling Continuous AF. I'd also suggest leaving the "Touch Shutter" option disabled, but that may just be a personal preference. [Note: Supposedly the MagicLantern folks are working on homebrew firmware that will fix some of the AF issues, but I would not recommend buying any camera based on the vague promise of some future update.]
2. Image Quality Image quality is great, but it's no 5D Mark III. If you're expecting 5D3 level images from this then you're in the wrong place, but with some care it can produce shots a pro would be proud of. What I noticed most when compared against the higher end cameras would be contrast range and saturation. Some of this could just be the lens, but I haven't yet had a chance to put on something like my 24-70 f/2.8L or 50mm f/1.2L. I plan to do that soon and will update the review with my results. If you shoot in RAW you'll be able to overcome a good portion of the contrast/saturation problems with Photoshop and CameraRaw, but even so I've had to be more careful with blown highlights (particularly specular highlights) on the EOS M.
3. Video Quality I'm generally impressed with the video performance. That said, expect to use manual focus if you want anything near professional-level video. I haven't tried this with a focus peaking monitor yet, but I'm not even sure the camera would be fully functional after losing the touchscreen.
4. ISO Performance The ISO performance is pretty good. Again, it's no 5D Mark III but up to at least ISO 1600 it's not something you can't fix in Photoshop. My biggest complaint with ISO is the fact that you can't seem to use anything finer than full stop increments. Am I missing something?
5. Touch screen I had mixed feelings about losing the majority of my physical buttons and switches in favor of a touch screen, but it is growing on me. The settings I use the most are all easily available via the screen (shooting mode, aperture/shutter speed/ISO, exposure compensation) or through physical buttons (menu, quick menu, exposure lock, drive mode, etc.). One thing that took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out was how to zoom on the image preview screen...using my fingers to pinch and zoom seemed completely foreign coming from the 5D3, but it works well.
6. No view finder This doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would, but I do embarrass myself by occasionally lifting the M to my eye.
7. Features I love the fact that, feature wise, this is very similar to Canon's high-end DSLRs. I had this little camera attached to a wireless strobe system in my home studio, and it just worked. The user interface was familiar, the settings and options were similar, and the results were fantastic. It's also got all the shooting modes (M/Av/Tv/P) that a pro would expect, plus the full auto and "scene intelligent auto" settings that allow you to hand the camera off to a random passerby to get a family shot for you while on vacation.
8. Ergonomics The camera is small and light, and I can stick it in my jacket pocket and "almost" forget that it's there. That said, the small size makes me wonder how easy it will be to hold with heavier glass attached via the EF/EF-S adapter. I'll provide info on that when I get around to it as well.
In short, as long as you don't come into the game expecting pro-level performance and quality, you will not be disappointed. It does exactly what I got it for: it gives me a way to leave my 25 lbs. camera bag at home on occasion, while still delivering great shots that I'm not embarrassed to share online. Plus, for someone who's already invested a great deal of money on Canon glass this makes even more sense. Sure the AF is slow, there aren't many dedicated lenses for the M mount (yet), and it's not a replacement for a high-end camera...but I didn't go in expecting any of that, and so I came out happy.
UPDATE
I've had a chance to use some of my EF lenses on this camera, and here are my results:
1. Canon 16-35mm f/2.8L Good focal length range for a cropped sensor, AF speed comparable to the 22mm f/2 STM.
2. Canon 50mm f/1.2 AF speed comparable to the 22mm f/2 STM, aperture opens all the way to f/1.2 if you were wondering.
3. Tamron 18-270 Di II VC PZD AF is unusably slow, don't bother.
4. Canon 18-135 f/3.5-5.6 IS STM A great pairing with the EOS M, this is on my camera 90% of the time.
5. Canon 100mm f/2.8L IS Macro The EOS M is great for macro. The cropped sensor gives you that extra bit of reach, and the small size and light weight make it easier to maneuver into tight spaces. I'm having a bunch of fun walking around outside my house with this setup.I'm new to the mirror-less camera party, but Canon is even later. I have learned a lot since I bought the camera and thought it worth while to share. First off, I'm a pro photographer and was looking for something compact that delivered high quality RAW images without pulling out my DSLR. I had the Canon G1x and found it to fall short and read that the EOS M delivered. True enough, image for image the EOS-M delivers higher quality results and that is where it ends. I fear Canon did not think this one thru. It falls way short of the other mirror less cameras on the market. The LCD screen is fixed and impossible to see in the sunlight and it dose not have a view finder. Those are the two biggest drawbacks, both I hear will be fixed in the next update. If your in the market for a mirror less camera Sony is years ahead of the curve, that would be my first choice if I was to buy today. If you already own Canon Lenses there is an advantage to the EOS because with an adapter you can use many of the canon lenses. I have put the EOS on a Canon 600mm f4 and it works, but really why would you? TIP if you looking to buy soon: Wait! Canon is updating the EOS-M in the next few months and I expect big changes, also Sony is updating there NEX-7 in the next month or so as well. I expect both to offer at least 24mpx sensors. Hope that helps.
No comments:
Post a Comment