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Canon EOS M50 - an accidental 4K Digital Bolex


Andrew Reid
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4 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

@MdB seems to just want to argue. He called me a sheep and I don't even shoot Canon or have any plan to! He seems unable to process that people actually hate the ergonomics of the a6xxx cameras and prefer a more traditional DSLR body. Weird guy and a bit of a jerk. 

Have YOU used the M50? It’s a really simple question. 

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3 hours ago, Kisaha said:

As we do not have a physical presence, we are mostly  "judged" from what we say/type. My e-time lately is too limited to waste on such individuals. This guy came here to have a fight, not to learn anything. I will just pass.

Let me ask you Mr Genius, how much can 'I' learn from 'you' regarding the M50? I own one. You do not. Let's be really really clear on that. I am sharing my experience, you are bitterly arguing based on nothing AT ALL but your bias against another particular brand. Your comments are truly worthless, yet you want to critique me? I would tell you the same thing to your face, if we were having this discussion at the pub. I don't tolerate fools, this much is true. You are showing yourself as an absolute fool. 

@Kisaha @newfoundmass

I think both of you have looked at the camera based solely on photos on the internet and determined that because it is 'shaped' like an SLR type camera (and is a Canon) that it must feel and handle like a Canon SLR (or like the NX1 etc). This couldn't be further from true. Understand this: I don't care whether you hate the ergonomics of the A6xxx series, couldn't care less - It's completely up to you. I am not trying to persuade you that those are good handling cameras. Let me repeat that: I am NOT trying to convince you that those cameras you dislike the handling of have good handling. What I AM saying is regardless of what you think about the A6xxx series cameras, the M50 is hands down worse. The M6 and M5 are better in many ways, but the M50 is unequivocally worse. 

Can you wrap your heads around that? 

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On 8/7/2018 at 12:01 PM, MdB said:

Me either! Who cares what brand is on the front? I love my Canon gear, but I am deeply disappointed at how poor this particular product is. I feel like those reviewing it just have a really distorted perspective of what else is out there. Like the number of people I read who talk about Canon mirrorless as being good, who haven't used any of the other mirrorless systems at all. None. I had the M6 and I've had a bunch of M1's. The M50 is just so disappointing. Nothing to do with brand allegiance. 

I've never really enjoyed the A6xxx series. In fact I don't particularly like any of the Sony ILCs, but it isn't really about the 'ergonomics'. In fact the later A7 series have excellent ergonomics (apart from maybe a few minor things), but I just don't really love the cameras. The A6xxx are reasonably capable and as mentioned I think they simply outclass the Canon in every way. 

Where I am the A6300 is cheaper at the moment the M50 cost me. 

I am really struggling to find things I do like about this camera. I think that its actually pretty ok when I pair it with my 22mm pancake as a basic point and shoot. So yes. But there are so many other cameras that fill that roll just as well if not better to much, much better. An X-E3 comes to mind - A WAY better camera than this thing. Again going off prices where I am. 

I mean, this is kind of interesting if you have a load of these lenses. However this has been an option with cameras like the GX85 for a long time now. That camera is WAY better than this M50. Yes Canon colour is appealing, their 4K is nice too, but the rolling shutter plus EIS just work totally against it. I'm not fussed by the crop either. The lack of DPAF is quite sucky though. 

Maybe. If you can get over how awful it is to use first. Still think there are better options out there. 

Yes I really should have held off. People like Andrew and Dave were just saying such nice positive things about this little camera I was so temped to have a nice compact Canon option. The M5 II would be really interesting with this processing and with a faster sensor. 

Then there is the complete lack of lenses. Sure adapt people say, well it's still missing really key lenses. 35mm f/1.4 is meant to be coming. They need a 50-60mm f/1.8 or similar too. Heck what they REALLY need is Sigma to release their DN series primes for the mount. The 16/30/56mm f/1.4s on the M5 II could be quite a thing. Canon just need then to sort out their controls a bit better and unify their menus and they'd have a very nice product on their hands. 

As it stands now I give the M50 1-star. 

Thanks for the news MdB, I was thinking to get a M50 in the near future, but now based in your reviews I think I will wait for the next Canon release, if at least the M50 had DPAF in 4K I will get it anyway, the price is really right (around $500 now), I hope M5 II is released soon....

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10 hours ago, hijodeibn said:

Thanks for the news MdB, I was thinking to get a M50 in the near future, but now based in your reviews I think I will wait for the next Canon release, if at least the M50 had DPAF in 4K I will get it anyway, the price is really right (around $500 now), I hope M5 II is released soon....

It sure had some promise, we all know it was a bit 'gimped', it was far more exciting in the rumour stage. M5 II will be a much better product. This does finally show Canon can process 4K in a small consumer camera - Something up until now they have been completely unable to. I look forward to the next one. In the mean time I might grab a cheap X-T2 or X-E3 to replace this thing. 

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1 hour ago, Andrew Reid said:

Unable or unwilling?

Evidence suggests unable. Using MJPEG is not about protecting their product lines, they could do that with any codec. It is that they didn't have the processing to compress 4K images to MPEG4 on the fly in a small and power efficient form factor. Therefore they had to use the enormous MJPEG which required CF cards as they didn't have the write speed to SD in any comfortable way. So only models with CF or Cfast got 4K. That's 1DC, 5D IV and then C-series (but even then only the recent C200 have been able to do really compressed 4K). 

Digic 8 is what has enabled MPEG4 compression on the fly in such a tiny camera and onto SD cards. XF400 seemingly uses a similar camcorder version of that processing (and C200 maybe). At present they don't seem to be able to downsample on the fly, which is why we still get windowed modes on all of these cameras. The next generation of sensor may be able to provide a 4K full sensor feed right off the sensor, so the image processor still just needs to compress that 4K feed. 

The M50 is the only camera I know of from Canon that outputs 4K over HDMI (the C300 II might? - I'm sure someone knows the answer to that). All others that have 4K downsample the 4K out to 1080p. It is also possible to get nearly clean 4K out.

So that's all quite a big jump in the technology available in this little camera. I DEFINITELY think the DPAF being disabled is about being unwilling. They crippled it on purpose. Typical Canon.  Canon have promised to be much more focussed on video in the next wave of products starting with this, which is already a big leap (for them). Really looking forward to see what Canon launch in the next 12 months. 

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33 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

They were unwilling.

Is that because they just don't like making good products? 

33 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

This is the company that brought out the 5D III originally with no 1080p HDMI output, claiming the hardware was unable.

Your suggestions are that they have the capability but don't want to allow it in their products, in other words: protectionism. In this case I can't see any evidence of that (Canon are well known for it and I actually thought the same for a long while). Protectionism would imply that they want to sell you a different, more expensive product that has that feature. The Clean 1080p HDMI was something that was available on the C100, so they wanted to push users up to that model. Until recently this capability however was simply unavailable anywhere in their product range. Maybe they were trying to direct customers to competing brands? 

Additionally, if it is simply the case that they just didn't bother to switch it on, then why would they enable it in THIS camera, their lowest end model. The features in this camera are causing it to be their most popular / sold model deferring buyers away from the more expensive M5 and 80D. Why would they do that if they were just simply holding features back to try and upsell? Wouldn't they just 'magically' enable it in those cameras and leave the poor little M50 the runt of the litter? Surely instead of the deep discounting on the brand new 6D II, they could have dropped a 'magic' firmware update to make it better than the M50? Instead people are buying the latter rather than the higher value former. 

Yes we know magic lantern has been able to coax great things off the sensors of older Canon camera, but the processing is simply not capable of highly compressed output. So most of the hacking that goes on simply can't write to cards fast enough, no matter how much they can coax off the sensor. 

And for those cameras that do do 4K and could 'magically' just enable more advanced compression schemes, again why wouldn't they roll that out? Why would they let the little M50 eat their lunch? What is the market advantage of those cameras only doing MJPEG? 

Lastly, why now? Why did they release a product in that level of the market with these capabilities now? It's not like 4K is new to the market and they are releasing their first 4K product. 

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  • 5 months later...

Looks like the speedbooster isn't hindering auto focus much. Good option for a sub $1000 full frameish Canon camera. (Less if you use a cheaper speedbooster) No clog and looks like 6400 iso isn't very usable. Still interesting option (oh you also get a flippy screen haha). Honestly if I was doing vlogging I'd get this camera. EOS R is no doubt better though you pay for it. 

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  • 5 months later...

The thumbnail looked promising... the actual video quality actually disappointed me a little because of the expectation.

The EOS-M6 Mark II is rumored... the rumored specs seem a bit out there, but hopefully we're getting to higher CR-values and closer to a launchdate soon enough.

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1 hour ago, Shell64 said:

Agreed. Especially if you only need 1080p. The quality is a lot better than previous low end canons and you get fantastic DPAF and canon colors. Part of me wants this over my g7 as I mainly shoot 1080p on it. 

I wouldn't say the quality is a lot better, is still pretty mushy on any kind of wide and lowlight is disappointing. Fun little camera though

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The 1080p on the M50 is mushy and soft. I much prefer the 1080P ML RAW from the EOS M.

Mind you, ML on the M50 would solve that, but notwithstanding the genius of the ML team, there's no likelihood of that in the foreseeable future.

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1 minute ago, Shell64 said:

How is the 1080p compared to the sl2 or 70d?  Is it really that bad?  

It’s my understanding it’s better.  Some people are using it as b-cam for their C100. 

47 minutes ago, ade towell said:

I wouldn't say the quality is a lot better, is still pretty mushy on any kind of wide and lowlight is disappointing. Fun little camera though

What sub-$500 camera has detailed wides and is great in lowlight?

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Just now, mercer said:

It’s my understanding it’s better.  Some people are using it as b-cam for their C100. 

Is it at a similar level to my g7?  Cause similar quality but fantastic DPAF would be nice. I don’t use 4K nearly as much as I thought I would. 

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