m43 vs Canon EOS M

That is a strange upgrade path.

EOS-M is very much aimed at the bottom end of the mirrorless market especially in Asia where I believe that it is the top selling mirrorless range. It has a very limited range of lenses although you can use adapted Canon EF and EF-S lenses.

EOS-M also seems to have been cut adrift by Canon's announcement of the EOS-R mount which will not support EOS-M lenses. Canon might well introduce an APS-C version of the EOS-R and ditch the EOS-M lens mount.

I would have thought that, at the current time, Fujifilm was the natural upgrade if you wanted to go to APS-C, but, frankly, any current M4/3 body is going to be a major upgrade from your GF2 and you will be able to use your existing lenses.

I JUST happened to read a comparison:

http://cameraergonomics.blogspot.com/2018/08/mirrorless-ilc-comparison-canon-eos-m50.html

The comparison quickly deals with image quality as well, and EOS M50 does not seem to have any benefits over G80/G85.

I sold my last EF-M lens last week - I had been a Canon shooter for quite a few years (in terms of the M series, I used to have the M and the M5).

Although I quite liked the M cameras, they had too many niggles and the lack of of native lenses was too much of a sticking point.

In terms of OOC JPEGs, I liked the M quite a lot but low/poor light could be more challenging. Personally, I prefer the GX9’s output - particularly with black and white.

Forest, Trees...

I don't have the EOS-M but looked hard before joining MFT. The kit lenses are disappointing for the EOS-M. Not really the greatest in image quality in some and the slow max apertures of f/6.3 in many washes the advantage of the larger sensor.

Unless you adapt there are no fast tele primes or zooms for the system. There are a couple fast primes and a macro.

I'm not certain if there will any faster zooms for the system with their new FF mirrorless out now. You of course can adapt the SLR lenses, but you have to fiddle with an adapter and larger lenses. Canon doesn't seem to have the impetus to release lenses for the system, especially faster zooms.

OTOH, MFT, has a nice system of lenses including fast zooms.

pannumon said:

I JUST happened to read a comparison:

http://cameraergonomics.blogspot.com/2018/08/mirrorless-ilc-comparison-canon-eos-m50.html

The comparison quickly deals with image quality as well, and EOS M50 does not seem to have any benefits over G80/G85.

Click to expand...

I think a big issue, unmentioned in the article, is going from a 5 axis stabilized body to a "digitally" stabilized 2 axis one. Once you've seen Paris...

Simon97 said:

I don't have the EOS-M but looked hard before joining MFT. The kit lenses are disappointing for the EOS-M.

Click to expand...

The 22mm was a kit lens originally and that really is a fantastic lens.

I found the 18-55mm lens to be very solid - quality was better compared to the equivalent kit lenses in my experience and the physical build was very decent indeed.

Wasn’t keen on the 15-45mm lens, but found it decent enough.

IIRC, the 18-180mm was available as as a kit as well, again pretty good.

Personally, all were fine and found them better on average than the EF-S kit lenses. Although the lack native lenses was an issue for me, I didn’t have any complaints about what lenses were kit ones.

I have an M6 and 22mm f/2 lens. Canon's EOS-M cameras have no IBIS and won't have it any time in the foreseeable future. I was interested in the new 32mm f/1.4 lens (equivalent to ~51mm in full-frame), While it's good, I would never be able to get sharp pictures with a slow shutter speed like I could with a GX8 with 25mm f1.4 (equivalent to 50mm), not even close. ISO 3200 is really the highest ISO that maintains details properly in either APS-C or MFT, as far as I'm concerned, and I never have an issue getting any kind of picture taken when setting the maximum ISO at 3200.

Compared to 20mp MFT cameras, in real-world usage, the signal-to-noise ratio advantage of 24mp Canon APS-C cameras at up to ISO 3200 is no more than about half a stop in low light conditions. This is negligible to me, since I can get much less hand-shake blur with a GX8, and even at fast shutter speeds, there is never enough of an advantage with the Canon camera for it to really be visible.

The low light focusing-ability of a GX8 is greatly superior to that of any M camera including M50 which has significantly improved low light focusing compared to previous models. It's in a completely different league. It's much faster and more reliable, with less "hunting". So this DFD-enhanced focusing system is a great success as far as I'm concerned. If a camera can't auto-focus reliably and fast enough, then it doesn't matter to me how POTENTIALLY high quality pictures it COULD give me, if I can't get some shots right in the first place.

The auto-focusing logic in Panasonic's MFT cameras' "AFF" and "AFC" auto-focus modes is greatly superior to that of Canon's M cameras'. The AFF is especially great and works better than AFC in most cases except when subjects have predictable movement, in which case AFC may perform slightly better.

The color rendering is very accurate and in fact it's usually objectively better than that of Canon's, and that's verifiable by testing with industry-standard color charts, the color values are closer to the correct values. Canon's color rendering is generally good, but Panasonic's is at least slightly better.

The MFT system has many excellent, truly high-end lenses, and a wider variety of them than for any APS-C system.

Overall, I can't say that Canon's M series is "bad", but due to their many years long anti-IBIS policy, you can't expect IBIS in their cameras any time soon, the lens selection is always going to be much scarcer, and the camera quality is not nearly as good as that of the high-end MFT cameras, which have amazing viewfinders, great build quality, brighter screens, and various other better things.

So yeah, my M6 is nice and compact, but I would not recommend getting into the M system if you're looking for a system to stick with.

Let me play a devil's advocate...

Canon M series has a rather decent set of lenses, including very recent ones, like the impressive 32mm f/1.4 (51mm f/2.2 FF equivalent). Look at some images taken with this lens here https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4326109.

For example, in comparison G9 and 25mm f/1.2 lens (50mm f/2.4 FF equivalent ) looks like a monster - 1068g compared to 755g of M6. The price difference $2,700 for G9/lens (new) vs $1,060 for M6/lens (new) is a shocker.

Good job picking the most bulky camera ever (with the best EVF ever made in any system, by the way) and a lens with different specs (pick the 25mm f1.4 instead, cheater). The nice thing with MFT is that you can get a very small, small, medium or larger camera, and it's gonna be a good one either way.

Link to images was wrong

Not exactly fair play picking what is probably the largest MFT body along with a very large lens.

If you must choose the G9, try the 25/1.7 lens which, along with the G9's IBIS, will provide far better low light capability than the Canon combination.

Plagen said:

Let me play a devil's advocate...

Canon M series has a rather decent set of lenses, including very recent ones...

Click to expand...

Speaking from experience, I found the range of native lenses to be incredibly limiting - particularly for primes.

Although I would say that the lenses are decent, only one really stood out for me.

The speed at which Canon has released lenses is laughable. One reason I moved from EF-M is that I had extremely little confidence in future support for the format - that was over a year ago and if anything, given the recent roadmap, there’s cause to be more pessimistic.

Hustle76 said:

Plagen said:

Let me play a devil's advocate...

Canon M series has a rather decent set of lenses, including very recent ones...

Click to expand...

Speaking from experience, I found the range of native lenses to be incredibly limiting - particularly for primes.

Although I would say that the lenses are decent, only one really stood out for me.

The speed at which Canon has released lenses is laughable. One reason I moved from EF-M is that I had extremely little confidence in future support for the format - that was over a year ago and if anything, given the recent roadmap, there’s cause to be more pessimistic.

Click to expand...

I don't disagree with that and I do agree that by the shear number of lenses the M-system is behind MFT. However they do cover nicely a broad range - e.g. 11-22 (OIS); 22mm; 32mm, and (adapted) 55-250 (OIS) is an extremely compact, lightweight , high quality and inexpensive setup ready to go anywhere.

Loga said:

Hi All,

Is here anyone who owns both system? I own m43 but with very old bodies, and I am thinking of upgrading. However, based on net samples I like the new EOS-M cams' rendering very much, while the samples from GX9 (the natural upgrade path for me) seemed not that convincing to me. So owners of both: could you please compare them from an image quality / rendering / OOC jpeg point of view?

Many thanks,

Loga

Click to expand...

Thank you for all the replies. I am aware of that Panasonic cameras are more advanced in features. However, any time I check the new M series cams' pictures, I have the feeling that I like them very much, and somehow I don't have the same feeling with the GX9 for example. It would be great to see the same scenes with both cameras (a GX9 and an M50 or M6), but I am afraid this won't happen neither here nor anywhere else...

However, in the same time I know that it would be much more reasonable to keep my m43 lenses and buy a new m43 body. And I have so great lenses, btw...

Could anyone suggest me good sample photo libraries for the GX9?

Thanks,

Loga

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http://peterdegay.wix.com/photos

Loga said:

Hi All,

Is here anyone who owns both system? I own m43 but with very old bodies, and I am thinking of upgrading. However, based on net samples I like the new EOS-M cams' rendering very much, while the samples from GX9 (the natural upgrade path for me) seemed not that convincing to me. So owners of both: could you please compare them from an image quality / rendering / OOC jpeg point of view?

Click to expand...

My sister in law has an M5. To be honest I think the platform looks really compelling. I have never had a problem with Canon's quality.

The problem I have is, Canon has no desire to put energy into it because they're focused on their pro and full frame gear. They've only released mid-range stuff just like they did for their crop DSLR's. Meanwhile Olympus and Panasonic are working on only one thing, if you want the good lenses, they're all there and waiting. Well, we'll see what Panasonic does with their new direction.

Greg

Adielle said:

The auto-focusing logic in Panasonic's MFT cameras' "AFF" and "AFC" auto-focus modes is greatly superior to that of Canon's M cameras'. The AFF is especially great and works better than AFC in most cases except when subjects have predictable movement, in which case AFC may perform slightly better.

Click to expand...

I am curious about this statement. Is it your experience that AFF works better and more reliably than AFC when shooting fast action such as wildlife or BIF? Is it better to leave the AF set to AFF all of the time rather than changing it to AFS for static objects or AFC for moving objects? Thanks.

Regards, Dave

Hustle76 said:

Simon97 said:

I don't have the EOS-M but looked hard before joining MFT. The kit lenses are disappointing for the EOS-M.

Click to expand...

The 22mm was a kit lens originally and that really is a fantastic lens.

I found the 18-55mm lens to be very solid - quality was better compared to the equivalent kit lenses in my experience and the physical build was very decent indeed.

Wasn’t keen on the 15-45mm lens, but found it decent enough.

IIRC, the 18-180mm was available as as a kit as well, again pretty good.

Personally, all were fine and found them better on average than the EF-S kit lenses. Although the lack native lenses was an issue for me, I didn’t have any complaints about what lenses were kit ones.

Click to expand...

The 14-45 & 55-200 are both soft at the long end, slow at f/6.3. Stopping down to f/8 helps only slightly. The 12-32 and 45-150 pana lenses are better. I found the EF-S 18-55 STM and 55-250 STM I had with my Canon DSLR to be impressive compared to the closest M lenses.

The 18-150 is not bad for a superzoom, not great at the long end, but again, why f/6.3?

The 22 is a quite good lens at f/2.8. A must for any M camera. The 11-22 is a decent lens as is the 28mm macro. I don't know about the 32mm, but suspect it would be a good lens.

My point is the M kit lenses don't do the system any favors. They need better and faster native zooms or MFT is the better choice.

Hello, i own a G7 and this week i just got my Canon M5 so i can't do much comparisons yet. This weekend im going to take both to Italy and i believe it will be a good testing ground.

First impressions right of the gate: ISO on the Canon M5 is significantly better. I can get shots with minimal grain at ISO 8000, with no real loss of detail. I dont know how the GX9 performs but the G7 destroys files at 6400 ISO.

Panasonic cameras are just snappier, faster. S-AF is much quiter to the point, specially in low light... the Canon is better for continuous tracking however.

The canon M5 feels like a serious camera, solid almost metal like construction. It has all the dials for quick operation, the same cannot be said about other M models... there is quite the difference there.

My Canon M5 came with an adapter, which means i can get access with amazing glass for more affordable prices.

The Panasonic has top of the line tech in its cameras, and i believe the GX9 is even better.

dbelling said:

Adielle said:

The auto-focusing logic in Panasonic's MFT cameras' "AFF" and "AFC" auto-focus modes is greatly superior to that of Canon's M cameras'. The AFF is especially great and works better than AFC in most cases except when subjects have predictable movement, in which case AFC may perform slightly better.

Click to expand...

I am curious about this statement. Is it your experience that AFF works better and more reliably than AFC when shooting fast action such as wildlife or BIF? Is it better to leave the AF set to AFF all of the time rather than changing it to AFS for static objects or AFC for moving objects? Thanks.

Regards, Dave

Click to expand...

I haven't had very much experience with it yet, nothing like wildlife shooting, but the AFF mode is definitely better than AFC for getting people who move around (non-continuously, unpredictably) in focus. Its range for each point is supposedly smaller. and AFC could track something moving in a straight line, for example, better and faster, but it's not as good as AFF for random movements.