Review on Canon Mirrorless Camera 18 55Mm Stabilization by Gary Christon

A few years ago, Peng-To and I were talking about mirrorless cameras. I spent some time with the EPL-1 back then. The EPL-1 did a good job of pretending to be a good camera: shutter speeds were fast and the preview image looked sharp and nice. But once you've imported the images into Lightroom, the results are ugly: you quickly realize that the focus was out of focus most of the time, and while the images were usable at times, you were never proud of them. Even point shots and shots like the S90 were better. Peng-To and I agreed that Canon was going to enter the mirrorless market, and in the right way. A few years ago, Canon really got into the mirrorless market with the EOS M, but it got it all wrong. Apparently the autofocus was so terrible I didn't even look at the camera. Peng-To bought one but was disappointed. One thing Canon got right was that the image quality was excellent, but it clearly wasn't enough to overcome all other shortcomings. Canon had an EOS M3 sale over the holidays (and it's still going on). At $430 it's not cheap (though on par with say the Sony A6000), but online reviews have shown that Canon has addressed the in-camera autofocus issues. The photography community seems to think that Canon isn't serious about mirrorless cameras, and in a way they're right: there are only 4 dedicated EFM lenses, and the M3 doesn't have any high-tech features like a built-in image. stabilization, and Canon doesn't have full-frame mirrorless cameras like Sony. The benefit of doing this, however, is that you can also attach full-frame EF lenses to the camera for any long-lens work. Sure, the lens is huge compared to the camera, and you could shave a few hundred grams off the lens if you don't carry as much glass, but when you have a long lens the difference in weight really gets lost in the noise. . Also, these full-frame mirrorless cameras from Sony are very expensive, and if you hit the same price point as the EOS M3, you get cameras like the Sony A6000. Even a cursory glance at the sample images comparing the EOS M3 and A6000 to the kit lens shows that the combination of Canon lens and EOS M3 completely defeats the Sony counterpart in terms of image quality. And if you know your way around, you won't be shooting with a kit lens! With that in mind, I took the plunge and bought my wife an EOS M3 for her birthday. Along with the body I bought an EF-M 22/f2 lens and an EOS M mount adapter. We also bought an EFM 18-55mm zoom lens and brought it back. The magnification was surprisingly good but had an odd color cast that I didn't find attractive. My philosophy when designing a new system is to build it around prime numbers whenever possible, which roughly doubles the focal length. Along with the EFM-22, I took out my old EF 50mm/1.8. The two lenses give the full frame equivalent of a 35mm and an 80mm, covering the 'normal' range well, while the 80mm is a great portrait lens. The 50mm lens together with the EF mount weighs only 80g more than the zoom, but offers a maximum aperture of 1.8, which allows you to isolate the subject in its surroundings. If Canon released a wide-angle EF-M Prime lens, I'd buy that too, because that's exactly what's missing. When the camera arrived I was impressed by its small size, especially with the 22mm main lens attached. It was tiny, slightly larger than the Sony RX100. But what struck me was that my wife tried the camera and then explained that she was no longer just taking photos on the phone. The biggest feature for her was the wireless transfer of photos from the camera to her smartphone via NFC. She's always hated having to use Lightroom to pull photos from her camera; on the contrary, photos stored on their smartphone are immediately available for sharing and sharing on social media. And the difference in quality was clear: it was clearly a point-and-shoot DSLR. If you're already a Canon user, the EOS M3 is great as all of your existing accessories will be compatible with it. My flashes and my collection of EF lenses were instantly compatible. When you pair this with quality prime lenses, it blows away anything anyone could have done with a crappy 18-200mm zoom instead of a decent lens. To wrap it all up, we went to a brick and mortar store and bought a Think Tank Mirroless Mover 25i (after trying a few other bags). It includes a flash, mini tripod, charger and other accessories for serious shooting. In practice, Xiaoqin usually only wore them with the 22mm/f2 lens attached. With an image output of 24 MP, even heavy cropping ensures acceptable photo quality. In practice, the camera delivers images of excellent quality. Low-light performance is impressive: the camera's main downside is that shot-to-shot timing is slow in single-shot mode, and 50mm tends to yaw a bit. (Upgrading to the latest and greatest 50mm STM will likely fix this issue). But by far the biggest advantage is that the camera is more likely to be used when traveling than my old EOS 5D2. This alone made my wife keep the camera rather than sending it back to Revain. As I'm not a main user of this camera, don't expect long-term feedback from me. But if you're a Canon user looking for a travel camera (especially if you're a scenery lover who needs a camera for camping or cycling), I'd have no hesitation in recommending it. Image quality is excellent, it's small and light (it's even smaller than the G series) and the landscape shooter won't have any trouble timing shot to shot. Canon may not have 'got it right' yet, but for those with two kids who want to travel with a serious camera that's still light enough to take on trips, the M3 is a great DSLR alternative and produces by far better photos than even the Sony RX100. Recommended.