Canon Announces the EOS M50 Mirrorless Camera

[Dominion003]

At this point, im still wondering whether to get the M50 or go to M5/M6 as a travel camera. I preordered the M50 just in case, but hesitant to keep the preorder or maybe just cancel and get a M5/M6.

 

[ritholtz]

Taking a 1:1 crop from the middle of the lens is terrible for quality... the 'sweet spot' would need to be impossibly sweet to get total clarity.

This would mean that you need a lens that resolves all 24 megapixels perfectly when you zoom in 1:1, and then you take the middle UHD resolution and use that for video.

We get more noise and less color detail since the image needs to be debayered... and on top of it all we have an AA filter blurring things, so it can never be pixel perfect, even with a perfect lens.
The 1.6x crop on top of the APSC crop is just too much.

Just to be clear... it seems 'good enough' for this price point... but there are many things that can be improved upon in more expensive models.

Most of current Canon crop cameras comes with 3x - 10x crop mode. One of the crop mode does 1:1 which produces better quality video. Like with M50, there is no dpaf with crop mode. Not sure about 4k crop quality with M50.

 

[neuroanatomist]

Actually... to be quite precise:

Actually, not quite precise. Or to phrase it more appropriately, not quite accurate... But that's ok, I fixed it for ya.

5D mark IV (two processors total)
Digic 6 for metering and tracking color/face detection
Digic 6+ for image processing and AF

1DX mark II (three four processors total)
Digic 6 for metering and tracking color/face detection
Dedicated AF microprocessor
Dual Digic 6+ for image processing, assists with AI Servo AF at high fps

1DX (two four processors total)
Digic 4 for metering and color/face detection
Dedicated AF microprocessor
Dual Digic 5+ (no DPAF and no 4K), assists with AI Servo AF at high fps


So, I guess it takes this single Digic 4 or 6 processor just for autofocus tracking color/face detection and metering... for 4K DPAF... with no processing power left over for actual data processing.

I guess the Digic 6+ is doing the encoding work for video, etc.

BillB beat me to it... hehe

 

[alienman]

I have too many of these sluggish, half-hearted cameras to give another one a try.
Look at this: the M6 (and M5) are almost new, and the M50 comes out with 4K, CR3, and other goodies, but the usability is crippled with barely any control dials or buttons.
Canon just refuses to go all in on any of these mirrorless cams

This is a camera aimed at beginners. Less dials and controls may actually be better. We are in a generation where everything is operated via touchscreen, which Canon has the most logical layout of all the camera manufacturers.

The only concern that stopped me from pre-ordering the M50 is the 4K AF. I wanted to use it for my kid's school events. If this is not good enough, I will get a GX85 as a stop-gap until M5II is released (if the M5II doesn't address this, then I will probably be disappointed).

Get the G85 better stabilization, AF, fully articulated screen and weather sealed for a similar price.

 

[Chaitanya]

Unboxing and video quality of M50(for 4k video quality watch from 10min mark). That camera cannot even keep face in focus with face detect AF.
https://youtu.be/GCchn2dH5cU

 

[Don Haines]

Taking a 1:1 crop from the middle of the lens is terrible for quality... the 'sweet spot' would need to be impossibly sweet to get total clarity.

This would mean that you need a lens that resolves all 24 megapixels perfectly when you zoom in 1:1, and then you take the middle UHD resolution and use that for video.

We get more noise and less color detail since the image needs to be debayered... and on top of it all we have an AA filter blurring things, so it can never be pixel perfect, even with a perfect lens.
The 1.6x crop on top of the APSC crop is just too much.

Just to be clear... it seems 'good enough' for this price point... but there are many things that can be improved upon in more expensive models.

You do realize that video is HEAVILY compressed and that you are not going to get "pixel perfect" from any video on any "introductory" camera.....

BTW, the 4K video is at 120 Mbits/second.....
That's 15Mbytes per second....
That's 625Kbytes per frame....
Each frame is 15.82Mbytes.....
In other words, the video is compressed to 4 percent of the original size..... "Pixel perfect" will not survive such compression.

 

[mistaspeedy]

neuroanatomist:
Thank you for providing more information than wikipedia has to offer.
It seems that we get more and more detailed information with each additional person contributing to the thread

Don Haines:
All I'm saying is that things would take a nice step upwards in quality with a bigger sample area and resolution. The situation is quite far from ideal.... but I dont expect ideal from a camera at this price point.

Ideally we would have a sensor whose 16:9 4k sampling resolution is 7680 x 4320... plus the extra pixels in height to get 3:2 for photography.... but that would be far too many pixels on a small sensor.

 

[stevelee]

I think that the touch and drag autofocus is with the rear touchscreen.....

That has to be it. Getting your finger inside the camera would seem to be really difficult.

And with video, I think that it is the bitrate that truly measures the quality.....

I would expect that, too.

 

[spice5.com]

Wow, no DPAF in 4K. Never mind, no longer interested. Maybe next time, Canon.

Ditto. What a bummer no DPAF in 4K.

 

[Don Haines]

neuroanatomist:
Thank you for providing more information than wikipedia has to offer.
It seems that we get more and more detailed information with each additional person contributing to the thread

Don Haines:
All I'm saying is that things would take a nice step upwards in quality with a bigger sample area and resolution. The situation is quite far from ideal.... but I dont expect ideal from a camera at this price point.

Ideally we would have a sensor whose 16:9 4k sampling resolution is 7680 x 4320... plus the extra pixels in height to get 3:2 for photography.... but that would be far too many pixels on a small sensor.

It would take a 37.5 megapixel sensor.... I think we will get there, but not for many years.... perhaps the next digit chip will have the additional computing power to take a 12X12 pixel block and convert into 8x8 blocks for 4K on the fly.... that would get rid of a lot of the sensor cropping of the video......

 

[justaCanonuser]

As expected. The 'Canon must offer 4K' (or they're doomed) mantra has become 'Canon must offer high IQ 4K' (or they're doomed).

Complainers gonna complain.

I foresee the 8K debate coming soon. Today already the internet is clogged with bad full HD vlogs. Did anyone already scientfically investigate the CO2 emissions caused by underwhelming vlogger's ego shows? Climate change caused by deadly boring 4K+ vlogging may have to be included in future ICTP reports.

Caution: this post is meant ironically!

 

[hne]

And with video, I think that it is the bitrate that truly measures the quality.....

I would expect that, too.

Bitrate is not a useful measure of visual quality. This details some alternatives: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4000353/

A 9.8Mbps MPEG2 DVD is not going to look better than a 5Mbps FullHD h.264.
The former is over 1 bit/pixel and the latter not quite 0.1 bit/pixel. Still, anyone would say the latter looks better.

Not even keeping the codec identical makes it possible to say anything using bitrate as a measurement. I've seen 1.5Mbps h.264 look better than 2.5Mbps h.264 between two encoders encoding to the same video spec.

 

[transpo1]

As expected. The 'Canon must offer 4K' (or they're doomed) mantra has become 'Canon must offer high IQ 4K' (or they're doomed).

Complainers gonna complain.

I must be the only person in the world who *likes* the idea of a crop - as I'd use 4K for wildlife work with longer lenses. For those needing wide, the 11-22 EF-M lens is cheap. For people doing ultrawide 4K work, this is clearly not for them (but surely they are a minority too?).

~~~

My overall reaction to this camera was, it's really well priced, even here in the UK! As for its limitations, some people had assumed from leaked specs it would be above the M5, but now we know the compromises - I still think it sounds a lot of camera for the money.

+1

If they want ultra wide video, why are they messing around with a crop camera???

Ha, good point! Although even then, for under £1000, you can get a 4K equivalent FOV of ~28mm, which is a lot cheaper than any FF (Canon - maybe others, I'm no expert on this) options. I think Neuro says, the chief advantage of APS-C is price, and that seems still to be the case.

Yes, and the thing is an introductory level camera... an introductory camera that , for some reason, people want to outperform the 1DX2.....

It could have been better, it could have been worse, but all in all, it seems like a good deal to me.....

I eagerly await the reviews.... and BTW, the CR3 files are supposed to be a 14 bit format....

There is another issue, too. In order to eliminate crop factor, it's necessary to scale whatever native resolution of the sensor is to 4k. I frankly do not know (or care) whether a resized 24 megapixels to 8.3 megapixels (3840 × 2160) looks better or worse than the center 8.3 megapixels of a sensor, though I suspect that on consumer grade lenses with cruddy corners, a center crop may be favorable. Perhaps Canon decided that the latter was superior output.

Also, as has already been stated by many people ~ 28mm full frame equivalent is very wide anyways; I'm not sure what the demand for wider than that on an entry level 4k camera is.

The centre of the lens is the sweet spot, so taking the 4K crop from the middle of the sensor makes sense....

To do anything other than the crop means pixel bining.... and anything other than an integer amount requires significant processing time.... if you had a 7680 pixelwide sensor, you could do a 2X2 bin.... but you don’t have that many pixels so it is either cropped or nothing.... or wait for more computing power and hope that the camera does not overheat....

Let’s say you have a 15mm lens on your crop camera and you want to shoot the widest 4K you can.... the cropped 4K is going to make your Apparentl focal length 22.5 mm and the Apsc crop makes it 36 degrees. That’s you practical limit for the camera..... go ff and you can use a similar lens and get a 23mm equivalent....

If it’s a technical limitation of processing power / speed / heat, then it can be understood. But with a new Digic processor, 2.5x crop seems a little ridiculous. I can’t imagine that Canon, with all its engineering capability would have to resort to that unless they wanted to. They were clearly just trying to hit the marketing term “4K” without really making a decent 4K product.

 

[Equinox]

Lets be honest, for the price point this is a solid mirrorless spec. This M50 is a perfect cam to get new enthusiasts into their ecosystem.

Really looking forward to reading / watching the reviews on how this one performs, if this is the specs of their entry level mirrorless then their flagship offerings (I am looking at you M5 MK II) should prove to be a very nice cam(s) indeed.

IMHO I think Canon will pull all the stops out to regain lost users. I see a lot of people with Sony's with Canon L glass mounted, but it will have to be a lot of stops to catch up with the mirrorless kings thats for sure.

 

[Sharlin]

If it’s a technical limitation of processing power / speed / heat, then it can be understood. But with a new Digic processor, 2.5x crop seems a little ridiculous. I can’t imagine that Canon, with all its engineering capability would have to resort to that unless they wanted to. They were clearly just trying to hit the marketing term “4K” without really making a decent 4K product.

On the contrary, it seems to me that crop makes little sense except if it's for engineering reasons. (Well, of course engineering reasons are ultimately economical reasons, but still. If they just wanted to differentiate this from eventual higher-end bodies, without other constraints, they could have dropped the bitrate instead.)

 

[dak723]

Taking a 1:1 crop from the middle of the lens is terrible for quality... the 'sweet spot' would need to be impossibly sweet to get total clarity.

And you know this how?

I would say the exact opposite. Glad they are cropping from the center. Much better quality than using the entire sensor.

See, anybody can say anything!

 

[Talys]

Taking a 1:1 crop from the middle of the lens is terrible for quality... the 'sweet spot' would need to be impossibly sweet to get total clarity.

And you know this how?

I would say the exact opposite. Glad they are cropping from the center. Much better quality than using the entire sensor.

See, anybody can say anything!

This is exactly why, when I brought up this issue originally, I said that I didn't know whether the 1:1 crop or a resized crop would be better -- I don't know that many (or any?) of us at this forum know the answer authoritatively to that, especially as it pertains to the quality of video, as opposed to the quality of a single still.

Aren't a lot of 4k 1" broadcast video sensors 1:1? And as I said previously, a lot of people using EFM to record video will be using EFM lenses; and most of those are better in the center than the corners.

If a 1:1 is about the same quality as a resized image, what would be the advantage of going uncropped? The maximum field of view at 11mm is the equivalent of 28mm full frame, which is very wide for video, and as others has pointed out, is about as wide as it gets in pro video rigs.

Now, if someone wants show 1.6 crop Canon video and say, "that is terrible quality video compared to this uncropped one!" I'm happy to click and compare. But otherwise, the whole crop thing just sounds like bellyaching. I mean, someone could whine the other way, and say, hey, this 1.0 crop is horrible -- I don't get as much effective magnification.

 

[Don Haines]

Taking a 1:1 crop from the middle of the lens is terrible for quality... the 'sweet spot' would need to be impossibly sweet to get total clarity.

And you know this how?

I would say the exact opposite. Glad they are cropping from the center. Much better quality than using the entire sensor.

See, anybody can say anything!

This is exactly why, when I brought up this issue originally, I said that I didn't know whether the 1:1 crop or a resized crop would be better -- I don't know that many (or any?) of us at this forum know the answer authoritatively to that, especially as it pertains to the quality of video, as opposed to the quality of a single still.

Aren't a lot of 4k 1" broadcast video sensors 1:1? And as I said previously, a lot of people using EFM to record video will be using EFM lenses; and most of those are better in the center than the corners.

If a 1:1 is about the same quality as a resized image, what would be the advantage of going uncropped? The maximum field of view at 11mm is the equivalent of 28mm full frame, which is very wide for video, and as others has pointed out, is about as wide as it gets in pro video rigs.

Now, if someone wants show 1.6 crop Canon video and say, "that is terrible quality video compared to this uncropped one!" I'm happy to click and compare. But otherwise, the whole crop thing just sounds like bellyaching. I mean, someone could whine the other way, and say, hey, this 1.0 crop is horrible -- I don't get as much effective magnification.

Bingo!

I'd like to have the 1-1 crop from the middle of the sensor for shooting wildlife in 2K video mode.... makes the equivalent lens length longer.....

Conflicting demands are hard to reconcile.

 

[stevelee]

And with video, I think that it is the bitrate that truly measures the quality.....

I would expect that, too.

Bitrate is not a useful measure of visual quality. This details some alternatives: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4000353/

A 9.8Mbps MPEG2 DVD is not going to look better than a 5Mbps FullHD h.264.
The former is over 1 bit/pixel and the latter not quite 0.1 bit/pixel. Still, anyone would say the latter looks better.

Not even keeping the codec identical makes it possible to say anything using bitrate as a measurement. I've seen 1.5Mbps h.264 look better than 2.5Mbps h.264 between two encoders encoding to the same video spec.

There's a certain amount of "all other things being equal" assumed, and of course, all other things are rarely equal. I'm reminded of the IPB vs. ALL-I compression discussion. The lack of the latter in the 6D2 is cited as reason Canon is doomed. The latter would seem inherently superior, but in the real world, ALL-I at twice the bitrate is not likely to be as good quality as IPB. ALL-I's main advantage seems to be when editing video on older, slower computers. I'm not going to blithely assume that shooting 4K with my iPhone is going to produce higher quality than shooting 1080p with one of my real cameras.

 

[crazyrunner33]

Bingo!

I'd like to have the 1-1 crop from the middle of the sensor for shooting wildlife in 2K video mode.... makes the equivalent lens length longer.....

Conflicting demands are hard to reconcile.

The Rebel T3i from 7 years ago had this feature, it allowed you to shoot 1080 over the whole sensor, or 1080 from a 5x center crop(10x as well, but resolution loss). The GH4 and GH5 has this feature as well.