Excellent, but...

AdamT wrote:

I could tell what the issue was within 30 seconds of seeing his example. Softness at 45mm (even worse than normal for that lens), and overaggressive noise reduction settings, for starters.

I could see the excessive NR anyway

+1 And lack of any micro-contrast, color depth, or dimensionality.

In-camera picture style settings are used by almost every conversion software (automatically) as a starting point for editing. Profiles can be applied, and his were obviously off if so.

Ahh - I use capture one which applies Nothing automatically (even CA or distortion), its one reason why I like it - it takes no notice of picture styles so not I`m used to that happening .

Ahhh.  And I haven't used C1 for many years.

Samples from the OP here would really help us out. In fact it would be just guessing otherwise. Supplied RAWs would certainly also help.

yep . he didn`t up load it .... I`ll be trying a couple more 15-45s over the next two days so it`ll be interesting how they perform compared to the one I tried in the shop from the used M100 kit I posted samples from

My first 15-45 was pretty good.  But my second one is even better, however its design does dictate that it's still substantially softer at 45mm than 15mm.  (Best of luck with your testing BTW!)

I don't have the OP's 55-200, but from others' accounts it might be worthwhile for the OP to see if the (adapted) 55-250 STM could accommodate him...  I know, it's bigger than the M.

Otherwise, the 70-200 f/4L IS II would kick some major butt!

R2