Should I get the EF-M 55-200mm to replace my dead EF-S 55-250mm STM?

RebeccasPhotos wrote:

It's that thread again! Comparing those two lenses.. kind of.

I owned the EF-S 55-250mm STM which I only purchased a little over a year ago. I was originally weighing up the options and went with this as I liked the idea of the extra reach and heard anecdotal reports that it was a sharper lens.

Absolutely loved that lens, a bargain at the price I paid for it I felt. It has been my most used lens.. but unfortunately it met an untimely death last weekend with water damage from rain which I didn't realise until a week later, the adapter is also bust too.

The lens was sharp and really comfortable to hold with the lens hood. I never shot it at 250mm as I felt it was soft beyond around 230mm. I've just looked through all of my photos taken and whilst there are the odd one or two taken at beyond 200mm - the bulk are shot at less than 200mm. There are a lot of shots at the wide end too, as well as quite a lot around 180mm to 200mm.

So.. really I'm asking - is the EF-M 55-200mm as sharp as the EF-S 55-250mm STM at the widest and longest ends? If the EF-M is softer at 200mm than the EF-S is then it's a complete non-starter..

And whilst I find the idea of a smaller lens setup much easier to carry around - I loved the feel of the 55mm-250mm with my M6II when I was actually holding it. The EF-M looks like it might be quite awkward to hold steady?

Alternative thoughts.. I was thinking a 70-200mm F4L IS? Though I may miss being able to shoot at around 55mm-70mm..

edit - forgot to mention I don't mind that the EF-M is a slower lens also. Majority of shots on my EF-S were taken at f5.6 or above.

I stopped by a pawn shop yesterday, and to my surprise they had an EF-M 55-200 lens in mint condition for sale... managed to snag it for $150.

I've previously posted a lot of info and photos from the EF-S 55-250 IS STM, especially using it with a 1.5x and 2x teleconverter with good results. It's one of my most-used lenses. I was very curious to compare the EF-S 55-250 with the EF-M 55-200...

I shot a scene on the Hillsborough River in Tampa last night as part of my testing. It's the Sheraton hotel and other buildings on the Tampa Riverwalk, there is a lot of fine detail in many parts of the image, so it's a good scene for telephoto comparisons.

The lenses I compared are the EF-S 55-250 IS STM, EF-M 55-200 IS STM, EF-M 18-150 IS STM, and Sigma 56mm f1.4 lenses, doing comparisons around 55mm, 150mm and 200mm.

All shot in RAW with Canon M6ii at 32 MP resolution and processed in DxO PhotoLab 5 using HQ de-noise at standard luminance of 40, daylight white balance, color rendering was generic rendering 'neutral color, neutral density,' default DxO lens corrections with additional unsharp masking to sharpen the slightly soft corners all the tested lenses have (intensity 0, radius 1.2, threshold 0, edge offset 100). All images were processed identically, converted to JPG quality 100 at full resolution. All shots handheld using lens IS with electronic shutter at ISO 100.

Here are the results:

55mm

EF-S 55-250mm IS STM - 55mm - f4

EF-M 55-200 IS STM - 55mm - f4.5

EF-M 18-150mm IS STM - 54mm - f5.6

Sigma 56mm f1.4 DC DN C - 56mm - f4

Sigma 56mm f1.4 DC DN C - 56mm - f1.4

150mm

EF-S 55-250 IS STM - 157mm - f5.6

EF-M 55-200 IS STM - 151mm - f5.6

EF-M 18-150mm IS STM - 150mm - f6.3

200mm

EF-S 55-250mm IS STM - f5.6

EF-M 55-200mm IS STM - 200mm - f6.3

EF-S 55-250mm IS STM - 200mm - f8

EF-M 55-200 IS STM - 200mm - f8

I must say I was surprised by the results, they were not exactly what I was expecting. My impression from this set of images and other images I took of different scenes is that the EF-M 55-200 IS STM is optically better than the EF-S 55-250mm IS STM lens.

Results at 150mm and 200mm show that the EF-M 55-200 lens is resolving slightly more detail than the EF-S 55-250, and with slightly more contrast as well. At 55mm the performance of both lenses were similar --- I thought the EF-M lens was sharper in the center but the EF-S lens was sharper in the corners. It looks like my copy of the EF-M may be ever so slightly de-centered as I notice the left edge of the image was a little soft wide open at 55mm.

I thought the EF-M 18-150mm IS did fairly well for a super-zoom, but wasn't as good at any focal length as the EF-M 55-200 or the EF-S 55-250.

The Sigma 56mm prime set the sharpness standard at f4, as expected... clearly resolving the most detail even in the railings of the balconies of the more distant buildings.

Based on the testing with my copies of these lenses --- I'd say the EF-M 55-200 IS STM is optically slightly superior to the EF-S 55-250 IS STM, which I wasn't quite expecting. Couple that with the fact that it's much smaller and lighter, and doesn't need the adapter, and I'd say it's a lens worth owning and using, and I'm going to start using it instead of the EF-S 55-250 IS STM much of the time!