Is EF-M mount worth investing for a new user

jackwelch wrote:

Maxmolly7 wrote:

1" sensors are quite good in decent light. Higher ISO can be cleaned with Topaz tools.

The G3X is small and light 24 to 600mm without changing lenses, but 1 frame per second in RAW is killing it's usefulness.

The next best but expensive thing is Sony's RX10IV. It is far better than APS-C with Tamron 18-400 and it holds up well against EF 100-400mm IS mk1 on M6 mk1.

The 100-400mm IS alone is heavier than the RX10IV.

I have no comparison vs. M6II yet.

The proposed M100 is okay for general travel photography but not for wildlife.

I totally agree with a lot of your viewpoints and also the previous posters but none of these are in the ball park of $400 - its totally an unfair comparison. Of course the M3 will be inferior but for those starting out and don't want to spend too much, the M3 is fantastic bargain (if you still can find one new that is).

To sum up my point - consider the M3 but only if you can get a great price, because if lets say the M6, the M50 or the RX10iv (or anything better than the M3) is within the same price bracket (eg or within a $100 margin), then by all means go for that cause it is definitely better.

The question here is this, can you match the price point of the M-system for a system like below? In all honesty, i really think for $400 you're paying for the lenses and the M3 is like a freebie here.

But for $400 you're getting a new M3, plus EF-M 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM and EF-M 55-200mm f/4.5-6.3 IS STM lenses. Now lets look to ebay for new prices on these lenses:

EF-M 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM

EF-M 55-200mm f/4.5-6.3 IS STM

M3 Body only (I tried to find new but can only find pre-owned prices on ebay)

Is the entire $400 M3 kit you are looking at all "new"?  You hadn't mentioned that in your original post and I think we all assumed everything was used given the age of the M3.

nnowak wrote:

Is the entire $400 M3 kit you are looking at all "new"? You hadn't mentioned that in your original post and I think we all assumed everything was used given the age of the M3.

Yes new with Canon warranty.

Cannon has a promotion this year anything bought from them will get 3 years warranty as long as you register online. Unfortunately M3 is not covered under this promotion so it only will get 1 year, the lenses should be covered for 3 years though according to the T&C, I'll know for sure once I've bought them and registered the devices online.

Previously bought a G3X that fell under this promotion and successfully registered it for 3 years warranty.

jackwelch wrote:

nnowak wrote:

Is the entire $400 M3 kit you are looking at all "new"? You hadn't mentioned that in your original post and I think we all assumed everything was used given the age of the M3.

Yes new with Canon warranty.

Cannon has a promotion this year anything bought from them will get 3 years warranty as long as you register online. Unfortunately M3 is not covered under this promotion so it only will get 1 year, the lenses should be covered for 3 years though according to the T&C, I'll know for sure once I've bought them and registered the devices online.

That changes the calculus a bit.  It definitely makes it a much better deal.  Given all of the shortcomings of the M3, I am still not sure this kit would be good for you.  However, you could immediately resell the M3 and put the money towards a much better body.  Even a used M100 would be much better than the M3, and would be very close to the value of the resold M3.

Just a thought... there is a good chance the internal clock battery of the M3 will be trashed after sitting unused for so many years.  This would be a valid warranty claim.  Canon generally does not repair M bodies, but instead swaps them for refurbished units. Refurbished M3's and even M6's are long gone.  Canon might replace a warrantied defective M3 with a refurbished M6 II.

nnowak wrote:

Just a thought... there is a good chance the internal clock battery of the M3 will be trashed after sitting unused for so many years. This would be a valid warranty claim. Canon generally does not repair M bodies, but instead swaps them for refurbished units. Refurbished M3's and even M6's are long gone. Canon might replace a warrantied defective M3 with a refurbished M6 II.

Thank you for the tip, speaking of this the G3X actually has this issue where when turned on, sometimes the date and time is re-setted asking you to input the latest date and time, at first I actually thought it's cause I took out the batteries or I didn't power it on a few days. But now could be what you exactly mentioned. Not really a big issue for me for the time being but I can consider the route you outlined in the future.

KEG wrote:

I am kind of curious which camera the op would get if brand new M3 fails.

Fail as in not working? Then I'll return it and get a refund.

Fail as in not living up to expectations? Probably will sell the body as others have advised and get something better or even make a warranty claim in hopes for an exchanged refurb unit of something better.

Edit: ignore this post, I just understood what you meant!

Edit 2: most probably an m200, a lot of those still in retail here where I am at.

Maxmolly7 wrote:

I am sorry about your negative experience with M3. Mine Was better than M in all aspects.

Side note... I was one of the people that imported the M3 from Japan on initial launch, which was several months before it was officially released in the USA.

I think a lot depended on how you used the camera and which lenses you were using.

The adapted EF 50mm f/1.4 was my most used portrait lens on crop (Sigma 56mm did not exist, nor did the EF 50mm STM) and it was completely unusable on the M3.  It ended up on an official list from Canon as being incompatible, but the lens works fine on every other M body.  My EF 100-400mm L was another lens that worked much better on the M than M3.

AF speed depended a lot on which lens you were using and how out of focus everything was at the start of the AF sequence.  If the image was not too far out of focus at the start of the sequence, the M3 would be faster.  If the image at the start of the sequence was a featureless blur, the M3 would get lost and give up.  The original M was slow, but it was predictable and would almost always get there.  I saw more red failed focus warnings on the M3 than any other camera I have ever owned.  If you were only using the 18-55mm kit lens, you may not have seen many of these issues.  I was often using lenses with brighter apertures and/or shallower depth of field, though I could repeatedly induce an AF dailure on the M3 with the relatively dark EF-M 55-200mm.

Then there were the firmware bugs/ommisions. Shooting a bracketed exposure in burst mode resulted in an unexplainable slowdown to one frame per second.  The "My Menu" shortcut lacked the ability to add "format" to the list.  On my M, format was one of the only things I put on the list and used it frequently.

I "downgraded" to the M2 and sold the two week old M3.  The M2 was faster than the original M in all regards with none of the shortcomings of the M3.

However, I agree that M6 I is a better deal.

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KEG wrote:

nnowak wrote:

Maxmolly7 wrote:

I am sorry about your negative experience with M3. Mine Was better than M in all aspects.

Side note... I was one of the people that imported the M3 from Japan on initial launch, which was several months before it was officially released in the USA.

I have a late 2015 one which was bought locally, it is not impossible to think that there are actually differences between early production and late production.

Seriously?  Can you add "format" to my menu?  Does you bracketed burst rate run faster than 1fps?  Did Canon issue an amended list of incompatible lenses that shows the M3 supporting the EF 50mm f/1.4?

Given Canon's reluctance to ever issue firmware updates, the odds that you 6 month older M3 had better firmware are basically zero.  Also, just because you purchased your M3 a few months later does not mean it was actually built a few months later.

Yes, manufacturers often make mid-run production changes, but anything significant enough to fix the problems I was having would require a full firmware update.  These were not hardware problems, but sloppy coding problems.

I think a lot depended on how you used the camera and which lenses you were using.

The adapted EF 50mm f/1.4 was my most used portrait lens on crop (Sigma 56mm did not exist, nor did the EF 50mm STM) and it was completely unusable on the M3. It ended up on an official list from Canon as being incompatible, but the lens works fine on every other M body. My EF 100-400mm L was another lens that worked much better on the M than M3.

AF speed depended a lot on which lens you were using and how out of focus everything was at the start of the AF sequence. If the image was not too far out of focus at the start of the sequence, the M3 would be faster. If the image at the start of the sequence was a featureless blur, the M3 would get lost and give up. The original M was slow, but it was predictable and would almost always get there. I saw more red failed focus warnings on the M3 than any other camera I have ever owned. If you were only using the 18-55mm kit lens, you may not have seen many of these issues. I was often using lenses with brighter apertures and/or shallower depth of field, though I could repeatedly induce an AF dailure on the M3 with the relatively dark EF-M 55-200mm.

Then there were the firmware bugs/ommisions. Shooting a bracketed exposure in burst mode resulted in an unexplainable slowdown to one frame per second. The "My Menu" shortcut lacked the ability to add "format" to the list. On my M, format was one of the only things I put on the list and used it frequently.

I "downgraded" to the M2 and sold the two week old M3. The M2 was faster than the original M in all regards with none of the shortcomings of the M3.

However, I agree that M6 I is a better deal.

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May THE LIGHT be with you!

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KEG