Canon EOS M5 review: Canon's best CSC yet

Digital SLRs still dominate among professional photographers and amateur enthusiasts of a certain age, but those who grew up with Thundercats instead of Thunderbirds are more likely to own a compact system camera (CSC). Also known as mirrorless cameras, they’re smaller and lighter than SLRs, tend to be better for video, can match SLRs for image quality and increasingly beat them for performance.

Canon dipped a late and rather apprehensive toe into the CSC market with the EOS M back in 2012. It was essentially an EOS 650D SLR squeezed into a point-and-shoot body and stuck permanently in live view mode, which meant dire performance.

Five years later, Canon’s SLRs are much faster in live view mode, thanks to its Dual Pixel technology, which incorporates phase-detect autofocus directly on the image sensor. It’s a good omen for the firm's latest CSC, the Canon EOS M5.

It isn't cheap, though. At £1,050 for the body only, £1,150 with a 15-54mm kit lens or £1,400 with the 18-150mm lens we were sent for review, it goes head to head with some highly capable CSCs including the Panasonic GH4, Sony a6300 and Fujifilm X-T20 (review coming soon). In such distinguished company, Canon can’t afford to slip up.

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Canon EOS M5 review: Ergonomics and controls

The M5 looks like an ultraslim SLR rather than a bloated compact camera, and it’s all the better for it. The electronic viewfinder is mounted centrally, just above the lens, which feels comfortable and familiar. The outer shell is made from plastic rather than magnesium alloy but it feels reassuringly solid. I’d have preferred a slightly chunkier handgrip and at this price a bit of weather sealing doesn’t seem unreasonable. Otherwise, it looks and feels like a proper enthusiast's camera.

The electronic viewfinder is a high quality 2.4-million dot OLED unit but it’s smaller than rival CSC’s viewfinders. Canon doesn’t publish a magnification value but I’d estimate that it’s around 0.6x. The LCD touchscreen is bigger and sharper than usual, at 3.2in and 1.6 million dots. It tilts up by 90 degrees and down by 180 for self-portraits, although that’s not so useful if you’re using a tripod. When tilted upwards, the eye-level sensor often mistook my finger for an eye and automatically switched the screen off and enabled the viewfinder.

Touch & Drag AF is Canon’s new name for a great feature that seemed to have appeared by accident on the EOS 750D. When using the viewfinder, the screen is off but it can still be used as a touchscreen to move the autofocus point. This is much quicker than nudging it around with buttons or a mini joystick. The M5 takes this feature to its logical conclusion, with options to make the changes absolute or relative; the latter behaves more like a laptop touchpad than a touchscreen, with adjustments made by swiping the screen. It’s also possible to enable only half or quarter of the screen, thereby eliminating accidental adjustments when your nose touches the surface of the display.

As for physical controls, you're well catered for here, with dual command dials plus a dedicated exposure compensation dial and a rear wheel, making this one of the most tactile cameras on the market. Some people will prefer the single-function, labelled dials of the Fujifilm X-T20 but the EOS M5’s controls work well. Pressing the Dial Func button in the middle of the rear command dial cycles through a short list of options, which can be customised differently for various shooting modes.

It’s surprising there’s no button for drive mode or autofocus mode but these can be assigned to the rear command dial, the M-Fn button (which is unassigned by default) or six other buttons dotted around the camera. As with Canon’s SLRs, calibrating white balance is unnecessarily laborious as it involves taking a picture and then navigating to it from the main menu.

Sadly, the M5 hasn’t inherited its SLR siblings’ customisable Auto ISO mode. The maximum allowable ISO speed can be set by the user but there’s no control over the relationship between the ISO and shutter speed in low light. This is because the camera’s algorithm for determining this relationship is quite complex, taking into account the available light, lens focal length, movement of the camera and detected movement in the scene. Faster shutter speeds (and thus, ISO speeds) are selected when a moving camera or subject increased the likelihood of blur.

In practice, I found that the camera needed to be held steady for about a second before the shutter button was pressed to reassure it that it wouldn’t be subjected to shaky hands. I often lift the camera to my eye and quickly half-press to focus before taking a shot, but in this scenario it would often pick an unnecessarily fast 1/250s shutter speed, pushing up the ISO speed and increasing noise levels. Subsequent shots of the same scene tended to use much slower shutter speeds of around 1/60s.

This only happened for ISO speeds up to 1600, though, so image quality was never damaged too much. People who know what exposure settings they want can always set them manually, but it’s handy not to have to think about it. That’s not always the case here.

Canon EOS M5 review: Performance, Wi-Fi and video

Autofocus performance is considerably better than any previous EOS M model, however. I measured 0.2 to 0.3 seconds from pressing the shutter button to taking a shot in most shooting conditions. Shot-to-shot times averaged 0.5 seconds, putting it up there with the fastest CSCs in normal use. However, the autofocus struggled in very low light, especially with moving subjects, sometimes taking well over a second to focus and at other times failing to find its subject at all. The Panasonic G80, which I was testing at the same time was much quicker and more reliable in the same conditions.

Continuous shooting was at 9fps and reached 28 JPEGs before slowing to 5.3fps, while enabling continuous autofocus delivered 6.4fps. In RAW mode it started at the same speeds but slowed to 0.9fps after 16 exposures. These are solid results that broadly in line with rival cameras.

I’ve found Canon’s previous Wi-Fi implementations to be cumbersome to set up, but pairing the M5 with an Android phone worked first time. The inclusion of NFC means it’s a simple matter of holding the devices together to establish a connection. The camera also includes Bluetooth to simplify setup with iOS devices that don’t support NFC. The app’s remote viewfinder function has touchscreen-controlled autofocus and quick access to exposure compensation and ISO speed.

Dual-pixel autofocus is great news for video, as it virtually eliminates the focus hunting that often spoils video recordings. The large touchscreen on the Canon EOS M5 makes it easy to specify which part of the scene to focus on, and responsive subject tracking and face detection mean the camera often does the work for you.

Full manual exposure is available for videos and settings can be adjusted on the fly using the dials or the touchscreen; the latter avoids audible clicks spoiling the soundtrack. The camera uses a combination of optical and electronic stabilisation to keep shots steady. And where most Canon cameras stop recording without warning when the file size reaches 4GB, the EOS M5 spans multiple files until its 30-minute ceiling is reached.

With such a strong set of video-related features, it’s disappointing that the resolution is limited to 1080p. The Panasonic GH4, Sony a6300 and Fujifilm X-T20 all support 4K. 1080p is fine for casual use but any serious video production should really be shot at 4K. Even if you only plan to export at 1080p, the extra detail means makes it much easier to manipulate footage without degrading quality.

^ The EOS M5’s 1080p videos can’t begin to compete for detail levels with the 4K footage from its competitors such as the Sony a6300 

Canon EOS M5 review: The EOS M system

A key selling point of any CSC is the ability to change lenses, but the EOS M system has lagged behind its rivals in terms of lens range. It has improved a little since last time we checked in, with seven made by Canon and around a dozen third-party lenses, but that’s still not as comprehensive as its competitors. In particular, there’s a notable lack of wide-aperture primes, with the 22mm f/2 coming closest.

Still, it’s great to see a versatile 18-150mm (29-240mm equivalent) model available as a kit lens. If that’s too pricey, there’s a more conventional 15-54mm kit lens available with the body for £1,150.

Canon also sent me its new 28mm macro lens, which integrates a pair of LED lights to illuminate subjects. Then there’s the EF-EOS M mount adapter, which lets you attach Canon’s SLR lenses to the camera. This adapter costs around £95 but it’s bundled with the body-only version of the M5 for £1,050. I’ve never been particularly sold on the idea of mount adapters for CSCs, as SLR lenses tend to be bulkier and the camera ends up being very front-heavy. However, the mount adapter and 50mm f/1.8mm STM lens didn’t look out of place on the M5, and it performed extremely well.

Canon EOS M5 review: Image quality

With the same sensor as the Canon EOS 80D, the M5 gets off to a good start for image quality. Colour reproduction in JPEGs is excellent, and details at low ISO speeds are smooth, clean and natural. Noise levels are kept in check as the ISO speed goes up, and it had no problem seeing off the Panasonic GH4 for photo quality in low light.

The Canon EOS M5, Sony a6300 and Fujifilm X-T2 all use 24-megapixel APS-C sensors and are hard to separate in our studio tests at slower ISO speeds (the X-T20 uses the same sensor and processor as the X-T2 so we can expect similar results here, too). The X-T2 edged ahead by ISO 1600, though, and showed a clear lead by the time I'd reached ISO 6400.

^ Noise reduction at ISO 12800 takes its toll on fine details. The Fujifilm X-T2 comes out on top here

Real-world tests revealed superb handling of dense, subtle textures such as foliage, skin ad hair. The surprisingly fast ISO and shutter speeds sometimes took the edge off fine details but pictures still looked pretty good at ISO 1600 so it wasn’t a significant problem. There was a slight softness towards the edges of frames with the 18-150mm kit lens but, again, it wasn’t a big issue. The 28mm macro and 50mm f/1.8mm EF-S lenses both produced excellent results in their specialist fields.

^ Lots of dense detail and subtle variations of colour in this brightly lit shot. Focus trails off slightly towards the edges of the frame with the 18-150mm kit lens, though. (1/400s, f/5.6, ISO 100, 45mm equivalent)

^ This high-contrast scene is handled well by the metering system, with the overcast sky just short of clipping and nicely exposed foliage. The 1/250s shutter speed is excessively fast, raising the ISO speed to 400. There’s a very slight loss of fine detail as a result. (1/250s, f/3.5, ISO 400, 29mm equivalent)

^ The moving subjects in this scene means the 1/250s shutter speed is justified. Picture quality is holding together well at ISO 1600. (1/250s, f/6.3, ISO 1600, 118mm equivalent)

^ This brightly lit indoor shot exhibits detailed, natural skin and hair textures and a rich colour palette. (1/60s, f/3.5, ISO 200, 35mm equivalent)

^ Noise is more noticeable at ISO 2000. The camera has sensibly given up trying to raise the shutter speed to avoid blur as this would lead to lots more noise. (1/40s, f/5.6, ISO 2000, 83mm equivalent)

^ It’s still turning in passable shots at ISO 12800 — just about. (1/15s, f/3.5, ISO 12800, 29mm equivalent)

^ Switching to a 50mm f/1.8 lens (connected via a mount adapter) gives great low-light performance and a shallow depth of field. (1/320s, f/1.8, ISO 500, 80mm equivalent)

^ The new 28mm macro lens incorporates dual LED lights to illuminate subjects. I stopped down to f/8 to keep more of the subject (some cherry tomatoes with an outbreak of mould) in focus. The resulting ISO 2500 setting hasn’t damaged quality too much. (1/60s, f/8, ISO 2500, 45mm equivalent)

Canon EOS M5 review: Verdict

The Canon EOS M5 has plenty of weaknesses. It lacks 4K, which makes it a no-go for anyone who’s serious about video, and that’s a big disappointment considering how well appointed its other video features are. The relatively small viewfinder is another aspect that takes the shine off, and the relative sparsity of EF-M lenses is a major drawback.

Yet, there are signs of life here. Compatibility with EF-S lenses (via an adapter) may swing the pendulum back the other way for Canon SLR owners, and the controls and ergonomics are mostly excellent, particularly the Touch & Drag AF system.

Canon will need to do more than this to warrant a five-star review, but the EOS M5 is its most credible mirrorless camera to date and, I hope, a taste of great things to come.