Canon 9694B011 24.2MP EOS M3 Mirrorless Digital Camera (Black)

Canon 9694B011 24.2MP EOS M3 Mirrorless Digital Camera (Black)

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• 24.2M[ APS-C CMOS sensor
• DIGIC 6 image processor
• 3\" 1040k-dot touchscreen tilting LCD
• Full HD 1080p video at 24/25/30 fps
• Built-in Wi-Fi connectivity with NFC

Buy Now : Canon 9694B011 24.2MP EOS M3 Mirrorless Digital Camera (Black)

Brand : Canon
Category : Electronics,Camera & Photo,Digital Cameras,Mirrorless Cameras
Rating : 4.5
Review Count : 235

Canon 9694B011 24.2MP EOS M3 Mirrorless Digital Camera (Black)

• (Edited a month later after returning from my long vacation using the body, see second half below)I just received this camera and have been prepping two of them for our European vacation. Unlike prior wildlife trips I\'ve decided to try traveling light this time. Usually I take the full menagerie (5DM2 body, 6D body, 100-400 4.5-5.6L, 50mm(1.2L), 24-105L, plus backups). So obviously with the M3 I got the adapter so I could bring along one or two of my L lens. My wife will be lugging the M3 with the stock 18-55 M-lens. I will be lugging the M3 with my full-sized 50mm and my 24-105 zoom only. I won\'t be bringing along my 100-400. So this review is mainly for folks who have regular glass and are interested in the M3. I\'ll edit the review when I get back from the trip, so far this is just initial testing at home and in the yard.First thing to note is that you won\'t be taking pictures as quickly as on a 6D, nor would I expect to be able to. That said, generally speaking, once it gets a focus lock the single-shot shutter button is nice and snappy. The focus lock speed depends on the lens. It is pleasantly quick with the stock lens and the adapted 50mm. In fact, with the 50mm I was very pleased with the very quick focus response! With the 24-105 it is quick about 50% of the time and lags a little 40% of the time and has real problems 10% of the time (runs the gamut or gives up). But for that 90% it is still much faster than a point-and-shoot. With the 100-400 it is quick about 20% of the time and lags a bit 50% of the time and has real problems 30% of the time. As other reviewers have noted, if the focus is already close it tends to be quicker.The focus, once locked, is essentially perfect and even less error prone with the 50mm at F1.2 than the 6D, so I\'m happy in that camp. Manual focusing is possible with zoom mode but not even remotely as easy as the 6D with an S-type focusing screen. But not necessary unless you want to be defocused in an artistic way. Note that \"MF Peaking\" mode only works with the stock M lens, not with external lens (it can\'t figure out when you are manually focusing, it would be nice if they added that feature since it would be easy to detect via the sensor). In anycase, I\'m extremely happy with the AF when using the 50mm 1.2L prime.Continuous AF mode should not be used with any adapted lens, though it almost works \'ok\' with the 50mm. Driving larger lenses continuously will drain your battery quickly and the sound can be annoying. Similarly, Servo mode doesn\'t work all that well with adapted lens because it tends to get confused quite often and can\'t track.Second item... don\'t expect to be able to use the built-in flash with a full-sized lens. Theoretically you can tilt it backwards with a small wedge for a 45-90 degree ceiling bounce but it doesn\'t seem to have the feature natively. But hey, the M3 has a hot-shoe (but I won\'t be bringing my external flash, not with the F1.2 50mm available). You can laugh when you put a real flash on this diminutive camera.In-camera image-review and storage: Works as expected but I always take pictures in RAW mode and with RAW-only the review doesn\'t do any cleanup on the photo and it is fairly difficult to use it to check fine detail or focus. The review looks much better when a JPG is available, so be aware of this and use something like RAW+S2 (RAW+S3 is worthless). Needless to say, nobody in their right mind should be using this camera without at least a 64GB SDXC card (x a couple), and nobody in their right mind should ever use JPG-only storage mode for stills. Always use RAW or RAW+something. I didn\'t test movie taking but I\'ve found generally that a 400x (speed) card is just fine and it is a waste of money to buy a 1000x or faster card, but YMMV.ISO operation is pretty much as expected. My one recommendation here is to go into the menu system and reduce the max auto ISO from 6400 to 800 or 1600 for stills, and learn to set the ISO manually when you need to go higher. You will be happier. I usually leave exposure safety-shift turned off for myself and on for my wife. Movies can use higher ISO values. As with most recent sensors, higher ISOs have less noise when more light is available, allowing for quicker shutter times so YMMV. I leave the auto max at 6400 for my wife.Resolving power using the L lens seems to be down the pixel on this 24Mpix camera, so for vacation shots I don\'t think I will have any trouble framing in post-production. I intend to use mostly the high-end 50mm prime for its fine depth of field.The M3 has a solid feel. The M3 with the 18-55 also has a solid feel though the manual focusing ring is a little rough when moving it (considering that it isn\'t mechanical, it shouldn\'t be rough). The adapter pushes the L lens out a bit the overall result has a reasonably solid feel to it. The 50mm certainly, and also the 24-105. The 100-400... well, it\'s hard not to laugh at the tiny camera connected to a big lens. Don\'t torque the camera mount!Negatives: #1 Honestly, Canon needs to produce more lens for this form factor. They are deathly scared of losing volume in their higher-end DSLRs but HEY CANON! EITHER LOSE VOLUME TO YOUR OWN PRODUCTS OR YOU WILL LOSE VOLUME TO A COMPETITOR\'S PRODUCT! WAKE THE HELL UP! Other than that the M3 was what I expected. #2 The AF, which is all software, could be significantly improved for adapted zoom and telephoto lens and I eagerly await a firmware update from Canon. The servo AF is also pretty bad and could easily be improved. #3 There doesn\'t seem to be a picture-in-picture zoomed focusing mode for manual focusing, which is a shame. Current manual focus helper features are not well designed. I hate it when the camera flips between magnifications when taking a shot, it\'s stupid and unnecessary and frankly it is inconvenient because the shutter button half-pressed is very sensitive, making it difficult to hit other buttons at the same time. #4 If you use auto-review mode (e.g. like set to 2 seconds or something), you can\'t hit the \'Q\' (magnify) button while it is reviewing the shot to automatically go into the normal review mode. You have to hit the normal review mode first, then magnify. This would be a trivial software fix for Canon to make.What I can\'t comment on yet: #1 Battery life, I\'m taking extras on the trip, will report back. (Note to new camera buyers, it takes several full charge cycles for a new lithium-ion battery to reach full capacity!). #2 I did not do any resolution tests on the stock 18-55 M lens, will report back (wife is using that lens). Quick tests looked reasonably good (or at least, as expected, which is to say I\'m not trying to compare this baby to a 5D/6D/7D/1D or similar camera).---- VACATION RESULTS ----I took this body on our month-long European vacation, and specifically did not take my larger DSLR (6D) body. I really wanted to see how I felt using the M3 in a setting where I wanted good pictures, but wasn\'t doing wildlife shots (which the M3 definitely cannot do). Here is my take after returning.First the pluses - The body is much lighter than the 6D. Handling of the camera in my hand was fine even with the EOS 50mm F1.2L and 18-105L zoom. Obviously my left hand was mostly holding the lens and my right was around the camera. I was able to take the pictures I wanted without too much trouble. The only real trouble I had was taking pictures of moving birds. The M3 AF just couldn\'t handle it.Now the negatives - and there are many.* Reading other reviews I bought a second battery, and boy did I need it! Two batteries got me through a day without any problems but one battery definitely wasn\'t enough. If you intend to do any significant photography with the M3 you need at least one extra battery, and be sure to charge everything up overnight.* Mode changes did some fancy mode-change graphics on the display and ignored my attempts to get back to display mode (half pressed) or to register other function changes until it finished with its fancy graphics. REALLY ANNOYING. The camera is useless for ~3 seconds or so after every mode change.* Display stuttering. In numerous situations the camera did not immediately go into live mode or execute the AF, but \'froze\' for a second or so, causing me to lose the moment. Also true after taking a picture. It was decently fast taking multiple pictures with the shutter button held down but the moment I released it it couldn\'t take another picture for ~2 seconds or so.* AF search non-optimal. This was expected. It did fairly well with the 50mm and a bit less so with the 28-105, but sometimes couldn\'t lock focus and would give up for no reason. When it did lock focus, it did a good job in most cases. The one case where it got confused with with the 50mm at F1.2... the very thin depth of field confused it if the focus box encompassed a range that couldn\'t be focused (i.e. dead center in focus, edges not due to the depth of field, which is what I wanted but the camera was often not happy doing AF in that situation). I feel that Canon could easily fix the most egregious AF issues with a firmware update if they put their mind to it.* Way too easy to mess-up settings due to the controls being so sensitive. The screen touch wasn\'t too bad and I left it on, but it was just too easy to hit the multi-way rocker. I\'m used to reviewing all settings while taking a picture but my wife is not and half her shots were messed up due to accidental key/rocker-presses.* The pop-out screen was useful, but it also popped out on several occasions when I didn\'t intend it to.* Similarly the flash sometimes popped out when not intended (and of course the built-in flash is unusable with any EOS lens attached, so I didn\'t want to use it at all).* Software regressions. I think Canon explicitly degraded some of the software features to differentiate the camera (unnecessarily) from their higher-end DSLR bodies. HEY CANON, THAT\'S STUPID! YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE YOUR MARKET IF YOU KEEP DOING THAT S***.* The best use of the M-fn button was to set it to \'display-off\'. I started with it set to stop the camera down to show the depth of field, but the battery life was so abysmal and the timeout settings in the menu so badly designed that I soon changed it. I set the display timeout to a high value in the menu so it wouldn\'t keep turning off on me while I was fiddling with my EOS lens (such as when doing manual focusing), and then set M-fn to turn off the display. Hitting the button after taking a shot was more optimal, despite the camera wanting to turn the display on again with almost any action (so e.g. when putting the camera back into my camera shoulder bag it would often turn on again). Canon really needs to rethink the display timeout stuff in the software.* Camera uses higher ISO values too aggressively. There needs to be a menu option to skew in favor of a slower shutter speed. I was focused to change the menu setting for max auto ISO back and forth depending on whether I was doing day, evening, or night shots to work around the problem. 800 is a reasonable max auto-ISO during the day, ~1500-ish evening, and 3200 at night.My final update is to drop it to 3 stars for the reasons listed above. The low battery life is totally unacceptable. The flash and display pop-outs both need to be redesigned. And the camera firmware is totally unacceptable considering how long Canon has had to work on it. Please note that despite my dropping it to 3-stars, I was able to get some very nice (non-wildlife) photos out of the camera with my EOS lenses.-Matt
• A few years ago, Peng-Toh and I were talking about mirrorless cameras. At that time, I\'d spent some time with the EPL-1. The EPL-1 did a good job of pretending to be a good camera: shutter speeds were fast, and previewed images looked sharp and beautiful. But once you imported the images into Lightroom, the results were ugly: you quickly discovered that most of the time, the focus was off, and while the images were sometimes usable, they were never ones you were proud to share. Even photos from point and shoots such as the S90 were better. The consensus between Peng-Toh and I was that Canon would enter the mirrorless market, and do it right.Canon did enter the mirrorless market a few years ago, in the form of the EOS M, but it did everything wrong. Apparently, auto-focus was awful, so much so that I didn\'t even consider the camera. Peng-Toh did buy one, but he was disappointed. The one thing that Canon did right, apparently, was that the image quality was superb, but that was apparently insufficient to overcome all the other flaws.Canon had an EOS M3 sale during the holidays (and it\'s still running today). At $430, it\'s not cheap (though in the same ballpark as say, the Sony A6000), but online reviews indicated that Canon had solved the autofocus issues with the camera. The photo community seems to think that Canon isn\'t serious about mirrorless, and to some extent they\'re right: there are only 4 dedicated EFM lenses, and the M3 doesn\'t sport any high end features such as in-body image-stabilization, and Canon doesn\'t have any full frame mirrorless cameras like Sony.Pit against that, however, is that for any long lens work, you might as well stick the full frame EF lenses on the camera. Sure, the lens is huge compared to the camera, and you could have shaved a couple of hundred grams off the lens if you weren\'t carrying so much glass, but when you have a long lens that weight difference is really lost in the noise. Furthermore, those full frame mirrorless Sony cameras are very expensive, and when you come down to the same price level of the EOS M3, you get cameras like the Sony A6000. Even a cursory glance at the sample images comparing the EOS M3 to the A6000 using the kit lens easily reveals that the combination of a Canon lens and the EOS M3 utterly destroys the Sony equivalent as far as image quality. And if you\'re knowledgeable, you won\'t be shooting with the kit lens!With that in mind, I took the plunge and got the EOS M3 for my wife on her birthday. Along with the body, I purchased the EF-M 22/f2 and the EOS M mount adapter. We also bought and returned the EFM 18-55mm zoom. The zoom was surprisingly nice, but it had a strange color cast that I didn\'t find appealing.When building a new system, my philosophy is where possible build it around primes that provide roughly a doubling of focal length. So paired with the EFM-22, I got out my ancient EF 50mm/1.8. The two lenses yield a full-frame equivalent of a 35mm lens and an 80mm lens, which nicely covers the \"normal\" range, with the 80mm providing a great portrait lens. The 50mm together with the EF mount weigh just 80g more than the zoom, but provide a 1.8 maximum aperture which lets you isolate a subject in its surroundings. If Canon had made a wide angle prime EF-M lens, I would have bought it as well, since that\'s what\'s missing.When the camera arrived, I was impressed by how small it was, especially with the 22mm prime attached. It was tiny, just a bit bigger than the Sony RX100. But what blew me away was that my wife tried the camera, and then declared that she wasn\'t going to shoot with just her phone again. The biggest feature for her was the NFC wireless transmittal of photos from the camera to her smartphone. She\'d always hated having to use lightroom to extract photos from a camera: by contrast, photos that go into her smartphone are immediately available for sharing and posting onto social networks. And the quality difference was obvious: this clearly is a DSLR in a point and shoot body.The nice thing about the EOS M3 if you\'re already a Canon user is that all your existing accessories work with it. My flashes and my collection of EF lenses were immediately compatible. When you put that together with high quality primes, it blew away anything produced by anyone who owns a crappy 18-200mm zoom instead of a decent lens. To put it all together, we went to a physical store and picked up a Think Tank Mirroless Mover 25i (after trying a bunch of other bags). It fit a flash, a mini tripod, the charger, and various other accouterments for serious shooting. In practice, Xiaoqin mostly carried it around with just the 22mm/f2 attached. With a 24MP image output, even severe cropping still grants usable photo quality.In practice, the camera produces superlative images. Low light performance is impressive:The biggest flaw in the camera is that shot-to-shot times are slow in one-shot mode, and the 50mm tends to hunt a bit. (An upgrade to the latest and greatest 50mm STM would probably solve this problem) But by far the biggest benefit is that the camera\'s much likely to be traveled with than my ancient EOS 5D2. That alone made my wife decide to keep the camera instead of sending it back to Amazon.Since I\'m not the primary user of this camera, don\'t expect any long term reviews from me. But if you\'re a Canon user looking for a travel setup (especially if you\'re a landscape person who needs a camera for backcountry camping or cycling), I won\'t hesitate to recommend this to you. The image quality is superb, it\'s small and light (it\'s smaller than even the G series of point and shoots), and a landscape shooter won\'t have any issues whatsoever with the shot-to-shot times. Canon might not have \"done it right\" yet, but for someone who\'s got 2 kids and would like to travel with a serious camera that\'s nevertheless still light enough to bring on a trip, the M3 is an great alternative to the DSLR and produces far better photos than even the Sony RX100.Recommended.

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