The 'All Canon EF-M lenses' club

nnowak wrote:

MAC wrote:

important trips would get the iphone, the RP + RF 24-105L + M6II + M11-22 + M32 = easy to carry in a relatively medium sized bag on trips and plenty of backup

And there's the rub. No good f/2.8 zoom for EF-M and no good and affordable 50mm for RF means you are stuck carrying two bodies from two incompatible systems.

I've decided to love my 18-55 and 18-150 zooms, which are reasonably sharp even if they don't open to wide apertures. At least they're stabilised, and the sensor is pretty good at higher iSOs.

OOC jpg

nnowak wrote:

MAC wrote:

Sittatunga wrote:

Sittatunga wrote:

Maxmolly7 wrote:

Your aperture calculation is about DOF equivalence, the light capturing remains as stated on the lens.

You need 2 zooms on the RP to cover the range of the Sony. On R7 or 10 it already take 3 lenses to cover wide setting at 24mm. 🤷

It's also about the total number of photons captured to make the image. That governs the total (random) photon and electronic noise, and hence the noise of the total image. The intensity of the light per square mm is governed by the f/number, but there will be less average random noise over a larger area than a smaller area at the same intensity. The noise is roughly proportional to the square root of the number of photons, so also to the square area of the sensor, and also to the crop factor.

By definition, an APS-C outfit will be bigger and better than a 1" sensor superzoom camera, but a ⅔" travel camera will be still smaller and not as good as a 1" sensor. TANSTAAFL.

But of duff proofreading there - I should have said

The signal to noise ratio is roughly inversely proportional to the square root of the number of photons, so it's also inversely proportional to the square root of the area of the sensor, and also inversely proportional to the linear dimensions of the sensors. But somebody knows what I meant.

in laymen's terms, the 1 inch Sony RX10IV doesn't interest me

I'd use the latest iphone instead of a 1 inch RX10IV and get the R7 + RF 100-400 to go long instead

but for me, on trips, going long isn't where I use my cameras.

so long stays at home

important trips would get the iphone, the RP + RF 24-105L + M6II + M11-22 + M32 = easy to carry in a relatively medium sized bag on trips and plenty of backup

And there's the rub. No good f/2.8 zoom for EF-M

true

and no good and affordable 50mm for RF

true

means you are stuck carrying two bodies from two incompatible systems

I'm not stuck

the m6II + m32 + m11-22 are small and easy to carry

the RP + RF 24-105 L is easy to roll with

no, it is not cup half empty

• they share the same batteries
• they share the same cards
• they share my speedlights and odin lighting systems
• they share my EF lenses - eg, I love my 100L on both
• they are light enough to take both on key trips and provide backup

that is a whole lot of compatibility for me

Larry Rexley wrote:

In the past several weeks I picked up a Canon EF-M 18-55mm and a 28mm f3.5 macro from eBay - and realized I have all 8 Canon native EF-M lenses.

I'm curious how many readers have most or all Canon EF-M lenses, and what their experiences are.

I have some 3rd party native EF-M lenses: 2 Rokinons (8mm f2.8 fisheye & 12mm f2) and two Sigmas (16mm and 56mm f1.4) in native Canon EF-M mount, giving me 12 native lenses total.

Here's my EF-M collection, along with a set of EF-M extension tubes:

All of them have their unique uses, and I enjoy them all.

When seen together, it's striking how small these lenses really are. The largest and heaviest is the Sigma 16mm - because of this I only take it when I'm sure I'll need it.

Not shown are my Canon EF-S 55-250 IS STM, Rokinon 135mm f2.0 in Canon EF mount, Viltrox 0.71x EF-EOS M2 speed booster, Kenko 1.5x SHQ teleconverter and Kiron 2x MC7 teleconverters in Canon EF mount.

I shot the above image with a vintage 3rd-party 1970's Star-D 28mm f2.8 lens in Minolta MD mount... I have half a dozen vintage adapted lenses.

I've shot comparison shots with all Canon EF-M lenses the past week, to compare them. I'm not going to show results here: there are too many images and they're not taken under strict, 'ideal' testing conditions.

My impressions of the image quality of the Canon branded EF-M lenses (only) is as follows. They seem to fall into roughly four 'tiers' of IQ:

Tier 1: Astonishing. The Canon EF-M 32mm f1.4 lens. This lens gets its own tier. No other lens I've had matches its IQ. And it's almost as sharp wide open as stopped down.

Tier 2: Excellent: Canon 11-22. Very sharp at all focal lengths and apertures, just not quite as sharp as the 32

Tier 3: Very Good: Canon 55-200, 22mm f2, 28mm f3.5 macro. The 22mm gets sharpest at 2.8 or lower, but all lenses in this tier are slightly softer than my Canon 11-22

Tier 4: Good: Canon 18-55, 15-45, 18-150. The 15-45 is the sharpest in the center of the frame, but is softer at the corners, while the 18-55 is uniformly sharp across the frame and ends up being sharper in the corners than the 15-45. My 18-150 copy is slightly decentered and shows one or two soft corners wide open at the wide apertures, and overall is slightly less sharp than the 18-55 and 15-45 zooms. All 3 zooms in this tier are perfectly capable of making sharp, vibrant images at 4k monitor resolution with a little cropping, and work well for 4k video. Notably of the 3 zooms in this tier the 18-55 has the best build quality --- it's a well-built, solid lens.

As for the Rokinons and Sigmas, I believe they would mostly fall into Tier 2, definitely stopped down to f4 they're as sharp as the Canon 11-22. Wide open, the Sigma 16 and Rokinon 8mm might be more in the Tier 3 category.

I like the Canon 32mm and Sigma 56mm a lot.

Really do like to start off with a fast sharp wide open lens on my M cameras so I can use a low ISO setting and not have to sharpen the photo so much in PP.

I do not use high ISO settings at all with my M cameras except for test shots in DPR threads.

J Peters wrote:

I have two M5 bodies, and have owned every lens apart from 15-45mm.

I sold on my 22mm as I always found it a bit short. I like shooting portraits, animals and flowers.

The one I'm least happy with is the 18-150mm. Focussing issues and poor contrast. I'm on my second copy as the original was even worse. I've just returned from a weekend trip where I only took that one lens, and it cemented my negative options of it. Might ditch it.

Sorry to hear about your poor experiences with the 18-150. How did you obtain the copies, new, used or refurb?

My one copy was off eBay used. It's not perfect, it has some slight decentering so that wide open at 18mm the upper left and lower right corners are a little soft. Optically it is better than the EF-S 18-135 and kit EF-S 18-55 lenses -- a little more sharpness and better microcontrast, on the M6ii's 32 MP sensor.

That being said, it is the weakest performer of all my native EF-M lenses optically. I still find it good enough so that it's one of my most-used lenses as it can do so much --- great range and definitely good enough for 4k video work, and as long as I use it at f5 or dimmer I can almost always get good results out of it.

I had an experience similar to yours with the 15-45 lens. I had given up on it after 3 really mediocre copies, but seeing RLight's amazing copy gave me hope, and after 2 more tries I got a copy that outperforms my 18-150. Very sharp in the center and sharp 'enough' on the edges to work with.

However, I do shoot always shoot RAW and post-process. I find DxO PL5's default optical corrections not strong enough for my imperfect 18-150 copy --- but DxO has very good sharpness and CA options and I can dial in custom settings and get results much more in line with other EF-M lenses with more aggressive optical correction. Here is an example.

First image is with 'default' DxO optical corrections, and no de-noise. Second image has Deep prime de-noise set to 30, global sharpness at +50, CA settings to Intensity 179, size 7, and unsharp mask set to Intensity 0, radius 0.91, Threshold 0, and Edge Offset 225 (!) to sharpen up those soft corners. 'Intensity' setting sharpens the whole image --- setting it to 0 and using only the 'Edge Offset' sharpens the edges and corners progressively and leaves the center alone.

M6ii, 18-150, 18mm, f3.5, DxO default settings

M6ii, 18-150, 18mm, f3.5 (same image) with more aggressive DxO global sharpen, CA, and unsharp mask sharpening for edges/corners

With DxO these kinds of results are good enough for quite sharp 4k video, or 4k images to post in camera club competitions or for most web and PC applications, as long as there is not too much cropping needed.

Larry Rexley wrote:

ITier 1: Astonishing. The Canon EF-M 32mm f1.4 lens. This lens gets its own tier. No other lens I've had matches its IQ. And it's almost as sharp wide open as stopped down.

It's almost solid glass inside. There are more elements than you can count.

Tier 2: Excellent: Canon 11-22. Very sharp at all focal lengths and apertures, just not quite as sharp as the 32

Yes, excellent, sharp corner-to-corner. The problem is the large off-axis intensity fall-off, although I can't say that that has affected any of my pictures adversely.

Tier 3: Very Good: Canon 55-200, 22mm f2, 28mm f3.5 macro. The 22mm gets sharpest at 2.8 or lower, but all lenses in this tier are slightly softer than my Canon 11-22

I agree about the 22mm. Mine, which was defective, sometimes showed a severe tilt of the focal plane when focused closer than infinity, but was otherwise quite sharp and very good.

I haven't seen the others.

Tier 4: Good: Canon 18-55, 15-45, 18-150. The 15-45 is the sharpest in the center of the frame, but is softer at the corners...

Yes, absolutely. The 15-45 is fine for people and other subjects that are mostly centered, and it's very convenient to use, especially if you need to be inconspicuous.