M6 mark II shutter shock with EF-M 15-45mm

Hi, I've bought an M6 mark II with kit lens recently and did some testing of the kit lens to check if I got a decent copy. I was really disappointed with its performance at 45mm. Photos were really unsharp. After testing various hypotheses I was able to pin point the problem to shutter shock. I did some ca 1 sec exposures from a tripod and they went out good using both electronic and mechanical shutter, so I tested shorter exposures handheld with IS and voila! Here are the results (the test was not as thorough as in the existing shutter shock thread, but the results leave no doubt.

I expected to be happy with the new camera with much improved sensor and was going soon to buy more lenses for it and an EF adaptor for my already owned EF ones. Now I wonder if I should return it and keep my 700D or maybe make a warranty claim. I get same kind of softness also at 1/125 and 1/160. This is unacceptable in my opinion. I'm going to contact Canon support about it, but have little hope to get a helpful reply.

To other M6 mark II users - do you notice shutter shock with this lens with the same level of blurring as on those 100% crops from the centre of the frame?

Please contact Canon.  If we get a new thread here every month then maybe we’ll get a firmware update out of Canon.

R2

Contacted them as well. Though I don't expect much from Polish branch (nor any other to be honest ;-)). Probably more threads in not what we need, though in a way - if there were more of them maybe more customers would be warned about this issue. Now that I researched the issue I know there's a single sentence about it on DPR review (without a sample photo), but before buying I didn't notice it and I skimmed and watched many reviews.

I've seen the samples by Hoka Hey and there weren't bad (of course after noticing the issue), so maybe there are worse and better cases and making a warranty claim makes sense. Probably reasonable thing to do would be to just return it, but you know... once you get a hang of something it's not so easy to part with it, especially as there's no alternative with similar set of features in Canon's ecosystem.

Your samples don't look too bad - wonder if copy variation comes to play here. I've got another sample from my camera (see below) - 1/80 sec, camera laying on a table. It's perfectly reproducible and not acceptable in my opinion. You don't upgrade from say 18mp to 32mp just to get pictures that are worse or to worry and constantly check if your shot hasn't been affected. Still would like to have a camera with M6 mark II features, so it's a conundrum.

Hope that some more samples here will help people assessing the severity of the problem. The only one so bad on the forum that I've seen was from user Helen, who returned her camera.

dpr4bb wrote:

I ended up returning my M6II because of shutter shock. Shutter shock is just a hassle. It randomly spoils photos, and I just didn’t want to deal with it. I don’t understand why Canon decided to skip EFCS on this model.

Was it so bad as my samples? Here's another one (and also one has been posted another post in this thread). I could live with slight degradation, but mine's severe to my eyes. People often bash the EF-M 15-45, but in this case I think it's not bad as long as I use electronic shutter.

PhilM oz wrote:

MichalEs wrote:

Hi, I've bought an M6 mark II with kit lens recently and did some testing of the kit lens to check if I got a decent copy. I was really disappointed with its performance at 45mm. Photos were really unsharp. After testing various hypotheses I was able to pin point the problem to shutter shock. I did some ca 1 sec exposures from a tripod and they went out good using both electronic and mechanical shutter, so I tested shorter exposures handheld with IS and voila! Here are the results (the test was not as thorough as in the existing shutter shock thread, but the results leave no doubt.

I expected to be happy with the new camera with much improved sensor and was going soon to buy more lenses for it and an EF adaptor for my already owned EF ones. Now I wonder if I should return it and keep my 700D or maybe make a warranty claim. I get same kind of softness also at 1/125 and 1/160. This is unacceptable in my opinion. I'm going to contact Canon support about it, but have little hope to get a helpful reply.

To other M6 mark II users - do you notice shutter shock with this lens with the same level of blurring as on those 100% crops from the centre of the frame?

Ouch - not good at all.

I tested my 15-45, 11-22 and 22 prime and I can't see any noticeable difference between mechanical and electronic shutter. Tried 1/60 and 1/80 second exposure.

The 22 prime does not have IS so I would have thought it would be more susceptible to shutter shock; but I can't see any difference.

From what I've read, when there is shutter shock it is actually caused by the IS, so lenses without IS don't have it. None of my primes show it. I was able to see it a little with my 11-22 in the 1/20-1/100 range. It's not an issue for me, because I can simply use electronic shutter with the 11-22 if the speeds are going to be in the affected range. The only other lens with IS that I use a fair bit with the M6II is the 70-200 F2.8L IS II. But I use that for sports, and am never shooting at slower speeds than 1/500 with it, so I've never seen shutter shock with it. I haven't bothered testing, to see whether it can be affected by shutter shock at slower speeds.

Perhaps there's an issue with your 15-45 lens. Do you have any other lenses to test?

Phil.

R2D2 wrote:

Please contact Canon. If we get a new thread here every month then maybe we’ll get a firmware update out of Canon.

R2

Nice attitude R2 .... I Hate the posts which dumb down Shock complaints calling the Complainees Trolls etc because Canon will not fix something if they can get away with it - Its the Squeaky wheel which gets Greased !  ......

I`m very interested in the camera as there would appear to be no M5-II on the horizon but will not buy it until they`ve put EFCS in the firmware like the 90D has .

From what I've read, when there is shutter shock it is actually caused by the IS,

It`s not Caused by the IS, it`s caused by the M6-II`s first mechanical curtain , there are no such issues with IS lenses on any other M series body because all of them have eletrconic first curtain as does the DSLR version of the M6-II, the 90D  ..

so lenses without IS don't have it. None of my primes show it. I was able to see it a little with my 11-22 in the 1/20-1/100 range. It's not an issue for me

well its an issue for a lot (Most I`d say) and it needs sorting, Period . the camera ships with the 15-45 as a kit and that lens has IS - the best quality native zoom for the system is the 11-22 and even you have seen it with this also (I use this lens as a "kit" lens, barely touched the 22mm prime since getting it)

I`ve Mailed canon about it (to the point of saying that I won`t buy the camera until its sorted and suggest that anyone even remotely interested in the M6-II does also, even if you use one prime or only shoot over 500th sec as one day you`ll want to use that 11-22 or 15-45 and not want to use wobbly E-Shutter mode - the problematic shutter speed area is the most common . Its the Squeaky wheel which gets Greased !

If they didn`t want to have people leave EFCS on all the time because of the occasional bokeh issue they could copy what Olympus did and only have it activated in the affected shutter speed area

Quotes from DPR's review of the M6II:

"We saw very slight shutter shake at moderate shutter speeds in Mechanical shutter mode" and "we were hard-pressed to find it impacting our images in more casual shooting."

They also found it so minor that it was'nt even mentioned in the conclusion nor in the "What we don't" list.

The Camera got the GOLD Award and 85%.

Yeah, what a serious problem. LoL.

AdamT wrote:

From what I've read, when there is shutter shock it is actually caused by the IS,

It`s not Caused by the IS, it`s caused by the M6-II`s first mechanical curtain , there are no such issues with IS lenses on any other M series body because all of them have eletrconic first curtain as does the DSLR version of the M6-II, the 90D ..

It's caused by interaction between the mechanical shutter and IS. Thus it is caused by the IS, in the sense that the IS is what determines, in the M6II, whether you'll see any (often very slight) shutter shock. My point, which shouldn't have been hard to understand, was that you don't get shutter shock with non-IS lenses. The meaning of what I wrote was obvious, and I'm surprised to see that you didn't understand it (or perhaps willfully misunderstood it).

so lenses without IS don't have it. None of my primes show it. I was able to see it a little with my 11-22 in the 1/20-1/100 range. It's not an issue for me

well its an issue for a lot (Most I`d say) and it needs sorting, Period . the camera ships with the 15-45 as a kit and that lens has IS - the best quality native zoom for the system is the 11-22 and even you have seen it with this also (I use this lens as a "kit" lens, barely touched the 22mm prime since getting it)

I`ve Mailed canon about it (to the point of saying that I won`t buy the camera until its sorted and suggest that anyone even remotely interested in the M6-II does also, even if you use one prime or only shoot over 500th sec as one day you`ll want to use that 11-22 or 15-45 and not want to use wobbly E-Shutter mode - the problematic shutter speed area is the most common . Its the Squeaky wheel which gets Greased !

If they didn`t want to have people leave EFCS on all the time because of the occasional bokeh issue they could copy what Olympus did and only have it activated in the affected shutter speed area

plantdoc wrote:

Very well done testing. What was Canon thinking? Really not acceptable flaw in expensive, top model in my opinion. Really glad that I stuck with M5 and a couple M 4/3 cameras that have solved this problem.

Greg

So you do most of your shooting with IS lenses at shutter speeds between about 1/25 and 1/200 in conditions where you can't use e-shutter? In that case, good decision.