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M50 Mark II First Impressions

Started Oct 12, 2021 | Discussions thread
Larry Rexley Senior Member • Posts: 1,238
M50 Mark II: 'Third' Impressions

I've had a couple more shoots with both the M50ii and the M6ii side-by-side with different lenses, and more time processing images in my normal workflow.

This is enough time to start to see the more nuanced differences between the two cameras, and it's quite interesting...

Last night's shoot was a short bike ride on the Gulf of Mexico --- some stationary birds, a Florida sunset, and Moonrise with the EF-S 55-250 IS STM + 2x MC7 Kiron teleconverter (vintage optics, non-EXIF-recording TC), deciding to push the M50ii at long focal lengths this time, with the more versatile wider EF-M 18-150 on the M6ii.

Third impressions

- the M50ii at ISOs of 1600 or less appears to have a slightly cleaner, more 'velvety' appearance to the images, which is quite attractive. I am not sure if this can be attributed to the larger pixel size (thus making the M50ii perform a more like a FF camera than the M6ii) or perhaps more optimized firmware in the 'later model' camera, or a combination of both. At any rate the images from the M50ii are lovely, as good as the M6ii's at least ---- and I would not hesitate to use this camera vs. the M6ii in many or most situations.

- the M50ii appears to be slightly less tolerant of 'high ISO shooting' grain and noise (when processed with DxO Photolab 4 Elite using Deep Prime de-noise), to the tune of about 0.5 - 1 EV (f-stop). I start to have some difficulty with noise and sensor 'mottling' in monochromatic pinks and purples about 1 EV 'brighter' with the M50ii than with the M6ii. The M50ii also seems to need slightly more aggressive "luminance" settings with Deep Prime than M6ii images. If I had to guess I'd propose that the M6ii's higher pixel resolution is providing more information to the image to work with --- when reduced to the same final image size (my default of 2160 px high) the M6ii has a slight advantage.

- interestingly, with the M50ii I was able to use a 2x teleconverter with vintage Kiron optics and the EF-S 55-250 IS STM, and get almost pixel-sharp images with DxO processing. This is something I have not gotten with the M6ii with the same lens combination using Canon DPP 4 --- I may have to go back and try M6ii images again with DxO. This might be due to better DxO lens correction capability... I have a feeling perhaps DxO has more flexibility sharpening and removing CA from images manually than DPP 4 does. But I found the 2x TC images from the M50ii totally usable. This might also be partly due to the M50ii's larger pixel size which is more forgiving of diffraction at f11 (max aperture of that lens combo).

M6ii output

Canon M6ii, EF-M 18-150 IS STM, 52mm, f5.6, 1/100s, ISO 100

M50ii output

Canon M50ii, EF-S 55-250 IS STM + Kiron 2x MC TC (non-reporting to EXIF), 250mm x 2, f11, 1/200, ISO 100, cropped to about 50% of original image height

Canon M50ii, EF-S 55-250 IS STM, 70mm, 4.5, 1/200s, ISO 2000

Canon M50ii, EF-S 55-250 IS STM + Kiron 2x MC TC (non-reporting to EXIF), 250mm x 2, f11, 1/125s, ISO 1250, cropped to about 75% of original image height

Canon M50ii, EF-S 55-250 IS STM + Kiron 2x MC TC (non-reporting to EXIF), 180mm x 2, f11, 1/400, ISO 160

Canon M50ii, EF-S 55-250 IS STM + Kiron 2x MC TC (non-reporting to EXIF), 225mm x 2, f11, 1/1000, ISO 3200 - cropped to nearly 50% of original image height

 Larry Rexley's gear list:Larry Rexley's gear list
Canon EOS M6 II Canon EOS M200 Canon EF-M 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM Canon EF-M 22mm f/2 STM Canon EF-M 11-22mm f/4-5.6 IS STM +21 more
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