The Canon EOS M5 Mirrorless Camera Review

Canon’s EOS M5 sounds more like something out of the BMW line up than a camera with 4K videos recording capability. In advance of Photokina it seems that Canon is dropping all the bombs of new tech.

It tends to make one wonder, since they’re seemingly eliminating all the pre event hype what they’re holding back.

Having said that; we present the Canon EOS M5. The camera we presume Canon is offering to compete with the Sony a7.

The Canon EOS M5 is the most enthusiast-friendly EOS M yet.

It’s a 24MP mirrorless camera built around a Dual Pixel APS-C sensor, giving it depth-aware focus across most of the frame.

On top of this it adds a built-in electronic viewfinder, a good number of external controls and a well implemented touchscreen.

This level of direct control puts it in competition with Sony’s a6000 and a6300, and Panasonic’s GX85 (GX80) and GX8 enthusiast models.

All of these cameras aim to offer stills and video capabilities in relatively small bodies but with a reasonable level of direct external control.

Key Specifications

• 24MP Dual Pixel APS-C CMOS Sensor
• 2.36M-dot OLED electronic viewfinder
• 1.62M-dot tilting rear touchscreen
• Electronic video stabilization combines with in-lens IS to give 5-axis IS
• 7 fps continuous shooting (9 fps with focus and exposure locked)
• Wi-Fi with always-connected Bluetooth

In fact it’s the implementation of this touchscreen that we’re most impressed with.

Much like the system developed by Panasonic, the M5 not only lets you use the rear touchscreen to position focus, it also allows its use as a touchpad to move the focus point, when you’re shooting through the viewfinder.

This, combined with decisive autofocus, should be really significant for both stills and video shooting.

The camera has four dials in total: two main dials on the top of the camera, a dedicated exposure compensation dial and a fourth dial encircling the four-way controller on the back of the camera.

This is a much higher level of direct control than offered on the simpler EOS M-series models offered previously, suggesting Canon expects the user to take more hands-on control of the shooting experience.

While the lack of 4K video capability is a disappointment, the ability to use the touchscreen to re-position the focus point with a high level of confidence that the camera will smoothly glide the focus to the right point is highly desirable.

We maintain that, for many applications, easily-shot, good quality 1080 is just as valuable as poorly shot 4K, so we’re not too put off by this development.

The touchscreen-plus-Dual-Pixel-AF combination is also useful for stills shooting – you can not only use the touchscreen to drag the focus point around the screen but also use it to select between available faces if shooting or recording in face detection mode.

The other significant benefit of the M5 finally receiving Canon’s Dual Pixel AF system is that it should now be able to focus adapted EF and EF-S lenses effectively but without being limited to the small central focus area offered when using comparable Rebel / EOSx-hundredD DSLR models.

Canon EOS M5 Compared with its peers

The enthusiast photographer has a good number of choices, when looking for a reasonably sized mirrorless camera with a good degree of direct controls.

Sony offers the a6000 and a6300, depending on how much you need 4K video and how demanding your AF needs are.

Meanwhile, Panasonic offers both the GX85 and GX8, with the more expensive model offering higher resolution and a better viewfinder.

Olympus’s E-M5 Mark II offers a broadly similar feature set and form factor.

All of these models are extremely capable, with ease-of-use being the Canon’s most obvious response to their broadly higher video specifications.

* When using off-brand lenses the GX8 adds distance prediction based on the out-of-focus characteristics of the lens (A system Panasonic calls ‘Depth From Defocus’).