13Oct Canon EF-M 22mm f2 STM lens – First impressions
The Canon EF-M 22mm f2 prime is a must for Canon EOS-M owners. Currently the only prime designed specifically for the EF-M mount, it’s 22mm design gives you a 35mm field of view on a crop sensor body. Even though f2 isn’t exactly ground breaking in the world of prime lenses, the $99 (with free shipping on Amazon) price tag really makes this little lens attractive.
As the smallest lens I currently own, the Canon 22mm f2 without the caps is thinner than the EOS-M body. With the 22mm f2 attached it’s easy to mistake the Canon EOS-M for a slightly heavy set point and shoot. Size can be an issue though as the biggest downside to the lens’s size is the fly by wire focus ring.
The focus ring on the Canon EF-M 22mm f2 lens operates in much the same way as the Canon 40mm f2.8 lens. A half press of the shutter button gives you access to the focus control on the lens and after a few seconds focus control goes away again. This can be adjusted in the menu, but it’s not exactly the best method for manual focus.
Besides being a reasonably wide and very affordable prime, the Canon EF-M 22mm lens also offers up a surprisingly short minimum focus distance of 5.88 inches (14.94 cm). This allowed me to fill the entire frame of this test shot with Hero’s (a 4 pound pomeranian) head. Having the option to get this close to your subject really gives you that shallow depth of field look even at f2 or even f4. You can download the raw file here.
There aren’t many new lenses in the $100 price range that don’t completely suck. The Canon EF-M 22mm lens provides a good value in a handy focal length at a very affordable price. If you have a Canon EOS-M body, you should probably have this lens.
11Oct Canon 5d mark III $2575
There is a one day sale on the Canon 5d mark III on ebay right now. For $2575 you can pick up a 5d mark III body from seller bigvalueinc. This is the same ebay store that I picked up a 6d body from a few weeks back for just $1499. These deals are sporadic and unpredictable so if you’re in the market for a 5d mark III, now’s your chance to save almost $700
. This is the lowest price I’ve seen the 5d mark III since the announcement of raw video at the beginning of the year.
09Oct Canon FD 35-105mm f3.5 lens on the EOS-M body
The Canon FD 35-105mm F3.5 lens can be had for well under $100 on ebay and offers up an equivalent 56-168mm field of view on the Canon EOS-M body. That range easily covers medium to close up shots making it an ideal and affordable zoom to pair with the Canon EOS-M. (Above) The lens is shown with the EF-M to FD adapter already attached which pushes the total length to just over 7 inches (around 18 cm). Even with the adapter it’s a pretty small package for a zoom with this much range.
Just to give you a better idea of the size, I’ve set the Canon t2i with the Sigma 24mm f1.8 lens on top of it. The extremely thin body of the EOS-M adds very little length to the overall footprint of the Canon FD 35-105mm F3.5 lens
and the whole package is small enough to shoot hand held or on a rig.
As with the Canon 55mm f1.2 FD lens I wrote about last week, the Canon FD 35-105mm F3.5 lens is a little soft in the photography department as are most FD lenses and vintage lenses in general. There is a bit of color fringing and some other random imperfections wide open and things start to clean up as you stop down. The image color is also a little different on the 35-105mm f3.5 lens, images look a little “warmer” do to the leaded glass used in the lens optics.
For HD video the Canon FD 35-105mm F3.5 lens softness does come through just a bit more than modern lenses, but image quality is still great for a sub $100 fixed aperture zoom. Build quality is excellent, the whole barrel of the lens is made out of metal and feels very solid in the hand.
The focus action on this lens is nice and smooth, but theres a catch. The front element of the Canon FD 35-105mm F3.5 lens rotates as you focus your image which isn’t a problem for the lens itself, but could be an issue when combined with a polarizing filter. So keep that in mind when using this lens.
The test shot (above) this time is of the Canon 6d with the 24-105 f4 attached. You can download the raw file (here) and take a closer look. Scaled down the image looks fine, but zoom in full scale on the raw file and look at the Canon logo at 1:1 magnification and you’ll see a bit of Chromatic aberration as well as some color fringing on the EOS 6d logo. Also at full scale, you’ll see what I mean when I say “a little soft”, but scale down your 18MP image by a 1/4 or 1/2 and that softness becomes much less noticeable. By the time you get to the relatively small 2MP image size that 1080p offers, that softness is far less noticeable.
The Canon FD 35-105mm F3.5 lens can also be converted to work with a normal Canon EF body without using any optical adapter. For around $140 (more than double what I paid for the lens) you can buy the kit on ebay
. Basically it requires you to remove a few chunks off of the back of the lens and re-attach an adapter to get things working. It’s not the most elegant solution, but it might make sense if the price is right.
I’ll be posting more lens options for the Canon EOS-M over the next few weeks and eventually follow that up with a full roundup of my top lens recommendations on a budget. The Canon FD35-105mm f3.5 is definitely on the list, a great value for the price.
07Oct Canon EOS-M HDMI output
A few people were asking about the HDMI output of the Canon EOS-M. In this case I have the magic lantern overlays enabled, but basically it’s a cropped 1080p signal that’s very similar to the Canon 7d‘s hdmi output. There isn’t any change to the hdmi output when you hit record and no blinking to deal with.
Because the resolution is still 1080p (cropped), the 1:1 scaling on the Sony CLM-V55 monitor still works. One quick press and you can have the image shown without scaling. This gives you an 800×480 view of the center of the cropped 1080p signal making it pretty easy to check focus.
Like most other Canon cameras (5d mark III excluded) you lose the on camera display as soon as you connect the HDMI monitor. This aspect does make menu navigation a little tricky on the Canon EOS-M‘s touch heavy interface when trying to change settings. Basically you have to hit the Q button a few times until you get to the settings you’re looking for then click and scroll your way through menu’s and make changes 1 setting at a time. Not exactly the best way to make changes, but still doable if you plan on using a field monitor.
Magic Lantern menus are accessed with a two finger touch. So if you need to adjust feature in the Magic Lantern menu, you should make those changes before you plug in a monitor.
03Oct Low price wireless DSLR Controller solution
DSLR Controller is an app I’ve demonstrated with the Nexus 7 as a monitor and controller for your camera. Now they’ve released an update that allows you to use a Google TV style dongle with a usb battery brick to accomplish the same thing via wifi.
You can download the app for your dongle here and the DSLR controller app for your phone or tablet here. If you’re interested in checking out the complete guide, you can find it here. It’s not as elegant as some of the other solutions out there, but it’s roughly $200 cheaper than the competition. If you need wireless control of your camera this might be worth looking into.
02Oct Gigabit speeds via wireless AC with ASUS AC68 adapter
I’ve been very happy with my Freenas build. Theres plenty of storage in a small form factor and it’s very reasonably priced. The only problem is that since i’ve moved I haven’t had access to a hardwired connection. I’ve upgraded my wireless router to something that supports 802.11ac, however the first PCI-e card I picked up from ASUS (ASUS AC66) didn’t actually work with my upgraded Haswell Z87 motherboard. Apparently there were some design issues with the ASUS 802.11ac AC66 cards that allowed them to work with older Z77 boards with Ivy Bridge processors, but caused them to fail when installed on a Z87 board.
Asus has finally fixed this problem with the PCE-AC68 release. It appears to be the same basic design, with the same basic specs, however now it doesn’t cause BSOD’s every 30 min on a Haswell Z87 board. Strangely, you can find the new AC68 model for around $15 to $20’s less than the older AC66 version at most stores. Maybe Asus is trying to discourage people from buying a somewhat defective product.
Fitting that much transmitting power into a PCI-e slot does tend to generate more heat than a standard wireless card. With the giant heatsink I was actually expecting this card to really warm up my case, but it seems ASUS was simply being extra cautious with the design. With large file transfers going via wifi the heatsink is only warm to the touch and the passive cooling seems to be more then enough.
With the antennas placed straight up, the included base unit is the size of my forearm. Not exactly something I want taking up space on my already crowded desk. Thankfully the triangular base is magnetic and I was able to attach it to one of the legs under the desk which ends up being a nice way to keep the antennas out of the way.
Speeds are very impressive. The wireless router is on the first floor in the front of the studio attached to the Freenas box. My desktop is in my office on the second floor somewhere near the middle of the building and I’m getting a solid 1.3Gbps connection. The speeds are fast enough that I can access lightroom archives and editing video from the server at the same speed as files stored locally. There doesn’t seem to be anything bottlenecking performance.
I paid $130 used for the ASUS RT-AC66U router and another $95 for the ASUS AC68 PCI-e card which puts the total project cost at $225. If you have the option to hardwire things together with ethernet cable, the price probably would have been closer to $30 or $40. A wireless 802.11ac solution isn’t exactly the cheapest way to go, but if you are in a location where hardwiring ethernet cable isn’t practical, it still seems to be a viable alternative to achieve the same speeds.
01Oct Canon 55mm f1.2 FD lens on the EOS-M body
In the past I’ve strongly recommended against using FD glass on modern Canon cameras. This is because the flange distance on a normal Canon DSLR requires you to use an optical adapter or in some cases a specially machined adapter that only works with some lenses and is very expensive for what it is ($70 or more). The optical adapter reduces the amount of light hitting your sensor, softens your image, and screws up your focal length and the other type of adapter only works at some focal lengths and requires you to modify your FD lens. Some will say that the second type of adapter
works with all FD lenses and that’s sort of true, but it causes heavy vignetting which isn’t always desirable.
However with the Canon EOS-M, the flange distance is small enough that you don’t need an optical adapter. Instead you can use a very affordable FD to EF-M adapter which is basically just an open tube. The lens is placed close enough that it covers the entire sensor without any optical trickery and your F-stop, image quality, and focal length are left intact.
Since the FD lenses were designed to use a reduced flange distance, the lens designers were able to achieve common focal lengths in a smaller package. In this case I have the Canon 55mm f1.2 FD lens attached to the EOS-M body and you can see that it looks far more reasonably sized then the Sigma 30mm f1.4 on the EOS-M body. This lens effectively gives you an 88mm f1.2 focal range (55mm x 1.6) in a very compact and affordable body.
Don’t get me wrong the lens is still large when compared to the ultra compact Canon EOS-M body, but for a focal length that’s comparable to a Canon 85mm f1.2 it’s relatively tiny. The price is also a lot easier to swallow. I paid $160 for this Canon 55mm f1.2 FD lens
and you can currently find it on ebay for between $160 and $300 depending on the condition. Sure it’s a little pricy, but an f1.2 lens for under $300 is still very affordable when compared to other options.
My wife was kind enough to sit in for this test shot and you can download the raw DNG file here. In the photography department most FD lenses and vintage lenses in general are a little soft with a bit of color fringing and some other random imperfections wide open and things start to clean up as you stop down. Still (pun intended) these lenses are completely usable for photography, just not as good as modern options. However in the video department scaling along with all the other random compression applied to the image coming from the sensor makes these imperfections negligible at best. Anything that would make you complain about the Canon 55mm f1.2 FD lens becomes a thing of beauty in video mode.
FD lenses aren’t the complete answer to all of your lens needs for the Canon EOS-M body, but they do cover the medium to telephoto range pretty well. I’ll be posting more lens options for the Canon EOS-M over the next few weeks and eventually follow that up with a full roundup of my top lens recommendations on a budget. If you play your cards right, I think a complete set of lenses, a Canon EOS-M body, some audio gear, and middle of the line tripod could be had for under $800. More on that soon.
30Sep Canon EOS-M – first impressions
I think the Canon EOS-M might be my new recommendation for filmmakers on a tight budget. I used to recommend the Canon t2i, but the price of the EOS-M makes it very attractive. You get a much smaller form factor, more lens options thanks to the flange distance, and you no longer have to deal with a 12 minute recording limit which makes it great for events and interviews. Basically it’s a camera with improved features over the t2i that sells for around $100 less.
If you want to use this for photography the EOS-M will be a big disappointment when shooting subjects that move at anything faster than a walk. The auto focus speeds are horribly slow on this camera and you’d be better served with the Canon t2i. However for video, this camera has pretty much everything you’ll need to get you started.
I picked up the EOS-M with the kit 18-55mm lens for just over $300. The kit lens isn’t anything amazing and f3.5-5.6 is about what you’d get out of a consumer handy cam. There aren’t really any controls on the lens and it requires some menu browsing in order to enable/disable IS. In the limited testing i’ve done so far, the IS does seem to make a difference and if you set the aperture to f5.6 you won’t have to deal with any image darkening as you zoom in and out. For the price of the lens, it’s worth having around, but you could always sell it for $140 and get something more useful if it doesn’t fit your needs
When you set the Canon t2i and EOS-M side by side, it’s a little easier to see how small the EOS-M actually is. The back of the camera is almost all screen and that screen looks nice. The t2i’s slightly smaller display isn’t bad, but the upgraded screen on the EOS-M does make a difference.
I always disliked the idea of using a touch screen, but after playing around with the EOS-M I’ve warmed up to the idea. Touch screen operation is fast and snappy and most commonly used functions like ISO, F-stop, and shutter speed can be assigned to buttons if needed which allows you to avoid the touch screen all together. Navigation is a lot better than I originally expected and menus are easy to use with the scroll wheel or touch screen.
One thing that made the t2i so popular was Magic Lantern. There is an alpha of Magic Lantern available for the Canon EOS-M and you can find the latest builds here. Just remember you’ll need to download a copy of Magic lantern 2.3 as well as the latest alpha build and put everything in the same folder on your memory card in order to get ML working on the EOS-M. You’ll also need to prep your memory card in the same manner as any other Magic Lantern install.
Once you have ML installed you can access the menu by touching the screen with 2 fingers. This brings up the basic ML menu system which has been touch enabled for the EOS-M. You’ll also notice “Headphone Mon.” displayed on my screen. I haven’t had a chance to test this yet, but it appears headphone monitoring might actually be working on the EOS-M. I’ll let you know what I find out once I find my adapter cable.
On screen audio level meters seem to work fine when recording but don’t seem to register when recording has stopped, focus peaking works well, as does most of the advanced photography controls like the built in intervalometer. The touch screen implementation ML isn’t as polished as Canon’s menu system but everything is still very usable.
You can pick up a generic EF to EF-M adapter on Amazon for around $60. This allows you to get the same functionality out of any EF lens as you would out of any other crop sensor body. Above I’ve attached the Sigma 30mm f1.4 with the EF to EF-M adapter. The Sigma 30mm f1.4 is a fairly small lens on a normal body, but it looks like a giant when attached to the EOS-M. The camera body is much smaller than I expected and takes up very little space. This could make it ideal as a backup or second camera for filmmakers.
I have an FD to EF-M adapter on it’s way and I’ll be posting some low price lens recommendations once I’ve had a chance to test a few FD lenses out. There are a lot of very affordable FD lenses on the market that could be great when combined with the EOS-M body.
So far I’ve been using the Canon 85mm f1.8 and Sigma 30mm f1.4
and both have performed nicely with the EOS-M adapter. Focus speeds in live view mode are actually slightly faster on the EOS-M than live view mode on the t2i. Often it’s easier to focus a shot using a half press of the shutter before you press recorder, if you use this method for quick focus checks the EOS-M actually does a decent job. I’ll post some more info once I’ve had a chance to spend some more time with the EOS-M.
30Sep Canon 6d body $1499
Canon 6d’s on sale again at$1499 it’s as low as I’ve seen it and ebay has it on sale yet again. This is a one day only deal and limited quantity so if you want one you should probably jump on it. It’s the same ebay seller I bought my 6d from a few months back, reasonably fast shipping and my camera wasn’t gray market, plus it’s an ebay promoted sale. The 6d is a great body for that price.
26Sep Canon 22mm f2.0 EF-M $106
I actually had a lot of stuff planned for this week, but my truck was attacked by a pack of wild dogs (no joke) while I was working on a job. They actually ate the wiring harness, ABS wires, hydraulic lines, and managed to dislodge the front bumper. Feels like something you’d in an e-mail chain letter.
Regardless, I now have a Canon eos-m in for testing. At it’s original price, the EOS-M was a waste of money, but now that the body is on sale (almost every other weekly for under $200) it’s a very good buy. If you do end up with the body only or the version that comes with the 18-55mm kit lens, you might still want to have the only ef-m mount prime available for this body. Right now you can find it new on ebay for just $106 with free shipping, that’s around $80 less than anywhere else.
Now that I’ve got my truck in the shop and a replacement rental car, life is somewhat “back to normal”. Flooding is still a problem, but at least the roads are opening back up. I should have some more info and first impressions up on the Canon eos-m this weekend. I’ll keep you posted.
