New to the Forum with an M50 Mark II

I just swapped my Sony a6000 for a M50 Mark II, and since I’ll now be hanging out in this forum I thought I’d say hello and, uh, gush a little about what a great little camera this is.

I spend my time here mainly in the Adapted Lens forum. When I last bought a body, four years ago, I used exclusively older, adapted, manual-focus lenses. I bought an a6000, as all APS-C bodies were pretty similar for this purpose and the a6000 was the cheapest. However, three years ago in search of better quality at a reasonable price in wider and standard zooms, I started to adapt EF-S and EF lenses using a Metabones adapter, eventually acquiring several and using them more often than my older lenses.

Shortly after the start of the pandemic, I got into wildlife photography, and all of a sudden autofocus became more important. Also, as I became more comfortable with autofocus, I began to want it to perform better when photographing people. And here the a6000 with the Metabones adapter doesn’t quite do what I want: one-shot (AF-S) is fine, but servo (AF-C) is very limited.

I decided to get an M50 Mark II with the Canon EF to EF-M adapter, largely on the hunch that a Canon EF-M body would do a good job for focusing my Canon EF and EF-S lenses: 10-18/4.5-5.6 IS STM, 18-55/4-5.6 IS STM, 18-135/3.5-5.6 IS STM, 24/2.8 STM, 50/1.8 STM, and 55-250 IS STM (which normally gets used with a Kenko TELEPLUS-HD 1.4× extender to give 350/8).

Ready for a day birding with the EF-S 55-250 IS STM and Kenko 1.4 × extender.

And ready for a night on the town with the EF-S 24/2.8 STM. Not as compact and fast as the EF-M 22/2, but a beautiful little lens nevertheless.

I used it over the weekend with several of my lenses, both during a family hike and a quick birding session. I am not disappointed:

• AF just works in both one-shot and servo modes. It’s much more reliable than with my previous kit as the light fades. Subject tracking seems to be reliable and easy to use. Moving the AF point or selecting a subject using the touchscreen is very convenient. The body gives extended AF coverage (143 points in a 13 × 11 grid with 88% horizontal and 100% vertical coverage) with all of my EF-S and EF lenses.
• The body is small, but comfortable in my hand. With the adapter and my heaviest lenses, the whole package weighs about 1 kg, but I feel I have a good grip. The build quality seems to be a step up from my previous kit. I think it's quite a looker.
• Focus peaking seems to be wildly promiscuous to the point of being useless. However, I have magnify programmed onto a button and moving the magnification point using the touchscreen is convenient.
• The AF/MF button on the body only works with EF-M lenses. For MF with an EF or EF-S lens, I have to use the switch on the lens or use FTMF in one-shot AF operation. However, I've reprogrammed the AF/MF button to something more useful.
• I note that I cannot program both AE lock and AF-ON/AF-OFF to buttons, as these three features can only be assigned to the * button. I’ve chosen AF-OFF.
• Unfortunately, there are no custom shooting modes.
• The flippy screen is great for family portraits and shooting at odd angles. It’s also useful to be able to twist away from the Sun for better visibility.
• The viewfinder (2.46 Mdot) is a step up on the a6000 (0.9 Mdot).
• I get a 2018 Canon user interface rather than a 2014 Sony user interface, and for me this is positive. I can use my phone as a GPS tracker using Bluetooth.
• The battery life seems fine. I got through a couple of hours of family shooting and a couple of hours of birding on one charge. I’ve bought a couple of extra batteries for heavier or longer use. Since there is no in-body charging, I have bought an external USB charger for travel.
• The mechanical shutter makes a quiet but satisfying sound. That the silent shutter is only available in an automatic mode with no control over the exposure parameters seems like an unnecessary limitation. However, my previous kit had no silent shutter.
• The standard JPEGs seem to have ridiculous amounts of smoothing on skin, but I’ve can turn it down. I tend to use raws, but JPEGs can be quickly shared to my phone and then onwards. The camera has basic in-body raw processing, and that might be useful.
• My daughter thinks it is cool and wants one too.

I’m sure none of this is news to you.

As evidence of the improved AF for birding, I managed to get a recognizable image of a bushtit. These are small and constantly move within trees, and were impossible with my previous kit. The light and pose isn’t great in this image, but I'm encouraged by this as a technical achievement.

Canon M50 Mark II with Canon EF to EF-M adapter, Kenko TELEPLUS-HD 1.4x extender, and Canon EF-S 55-250 mm f/4-5.6 IS STM at 350 mm (cropped to about 515 mm) , f/8, 1/500 seconds, and ISO 320.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to getting to know the people here and their photography, learning about my new body, and contributing to the Adapted Lens thread.

Regards,

Alan