My First Seven Weeks with the M5

I had been labouring (literally) for a long time with my 5D3 and lenses (mainly L). A 10kg pack would go to about 15kg after an hour of bush walking. 20kg after 2 hrs. etc.

After 4-5hrs hiking I nearly threw it all away in the bush. Then last year I saw the promo for the M5. Could this replace all the lugging of equipment? I ordered one with the 18-150.

Here in OZ i received it on the 1st December. I already had the M with the M22 and M28 Macro. The lens I use most on the 5D3 is the 16-35L. So I ordered the M11-22 to cover that range. (approx)

Over the last 7 weeks I found that I really only needed 2 lenses the M11-22 and the M18-150. The latter I took about 80% of my images and almost 20% with the 11-22. For travelling and landscape

I feel I could replace the 5D3 - but not for astro. The 16-35 @ 2.8 I cannot substitute.

In quite a few ways the shooting experience has been better than the 5D3 with both setup pretty much the same way. Back button focus etc. But the M5 wins with a tilting LCD screen but scores lower points because it can only work in landscape mode. So for low portrait mode the knees still suffer...

The M5 looks great with 55 to 82 step up rings to accommodate the filters and grads from the 5D3.

I have RRS L brackets on both the M5 and 5D3 but the new M5 model has the QD fitting, so the M5 hangs from the Magpul strap. Well that strap weighs about a quarter of a kilo... Thanks to a contributor (Mark I believe) I have ordered the adapter to connect the Magpul to the old RRS L bracket. That was a useful thing learnt here.

I also learnt a lot from Visionlight, Lightgreen, Helen, and many others who seem to have similar experiences.

Like the time that when I looked through the EVF the focus point would shoot off to where my nose was.

So I set the area on the right hand side and using the button below the * moved the FP to the centre. Put my thumb back on the place Canon allocated for the thumb and the FP shot off to the right. Uh?

Repeated those steps - same thing. Then realised that my big 'ol fat thumb was just overlapping the screen so when I put my thumb back, the FP shot off to the top right hand corner. Then not a problem just set the area to be the bottom right. Brilliant!

I did put ML software briefly on the 5D3 but didn't like it but I did like focus peaking. I really like this on the M5. This really came in useful when I stuck my TSE24 lens on (for those who don't know this is the Canon tilt and shift 24mm manual only lens). These lenses can be tricky to focus when tilting down. The 5D3 had magnified focusing that helped but I found the focus peaking on the M5 it became really easy.

Tasmania: Lost Falls.   M28 Macro lens - 28mm  1/160 @ f10 ISO 800

Tasmania: Ross Bridge. M11-22 lens  21mm   1/200 @ f8 ISO 100

Tasmania: Eaglehawk Neck. M18-150 lens   18mm  1/50 @ f11 ISO 100

Tasmania: Tessellated Pavement. M18-150 lens   18mm   1/30 @ f11 ISO 100

Tasmania: From my kitchen window. M18-150   57mm   1/500 @ f8 ISO 100

Tasmania: Bellerive harbour. M22    22mm   1/250 @ f8 ISO 100

Tasmania: Opossum Bay. M18-150    18mm  1/125 @ f8 ISO 100

Tasmania: Opossum Bay. M18-150    18mm   1/100 @ f8 ISO 100

My conclusions are, the image quality is stunning and I found even high ISO shots were terrific. (I did worry for 6 weeks that my images were very grainy then realised, for some reason the Grain filter in LR was set to 25.

Duh !! ) The 18-150 is an almost one stop lens (not f-stop ) even when I had a wide vista to take, on the tripod I took a 14 image pano (2x7) and it turned out fine. 150mm at times seemed too short but where would I be happy.

Adding the 11-22 completed my travel/landscape kit.

The M22/2 is another great lens for just sticking the camera in a large pocket. The M28 macro also was a quality lens but in super macro mode you are so close ... Would love a 10mm f1.4 for astro.