Disappointment only comes with expectations. Fortunately, the leaked specifications of the Canon M50 published a few days ago on the internet prepared us for the worst. It’s beyond that.
Pathetic Battery Life
We were used to poor battery life with Sony cameras but Canon decided to join the race to the bottom with a certain success. The M50 will run out of power after only 235 pictures. At least Sony corrected this bad trend on the new A9 and A7 cameras.
Fake 4K
Announcing 4K video on this camera is misleading. The implementation of high-resolution video is only worth the value of the “4K” sticker on the box. With a crop factor of 1.6x (or 2.56x total crop relative to full-frame) the video mode is almost unusable. In respect to the full-frame field of view, a 22mm EF-M lens mounted on the M50 is equivalent to 56mm in 4K mode. Adding insult to the injury, Canon decided to disable the fantastic Dual Pixel Auto Focus when filming in 4K. Another missed opportunity for Canon to dominate the gimbal work sales. This light and compact camera would have been perfect for this type of job. Perhaps Canon is not able to deliver the technology because of the lack of power of its DIGIC processor? However, since most entry-level smartphones and GoPro knockoff can now deliver 4K, I would be inclined to blame the “Executive Crippling Department” at the company headquarter. Sadly, this service dominates the R&D and marketing teams of the Japanese firm.
Poor Value
At $780, the M50 is not cheap, especially when examining the limited selection of native lenses. Six years after the introduction of its mirrorless segment, it seems that Canon never seriously considered the EF-M mount. Most of the seven lenses available today are slow zooms except for the unique 22mm f/2 prime lens.
The poor battery life, the absence of usable 4K, and the lack of sensor stabilization which becomes the norm on most mirrorless cameras make it hard to recommend this product. Knowing the level of Canon's technology, the dynamic range of the M50 will probably lag behind the competition.
Finally, there is nothing else to say about the uninspiring M50. On the DSLR front, Canon announced a “new” camera today; the 4000D, which is nothing more than a reheated 400D from 2008. Fun fact: the lens mount is made out of plastic. Who says Canon did not innovate?
Cropping the sensor coverage for 4K does not mean it's "fake", UNLESS the crop only covers less than 3,840 pixels per line and is upscaled for 4K. This is similar to many GoPro knockoffs and dashcams. Having said that, the most likely reasons Canon chose to crop may be because the sensor is not fast enough to deliver at least 24fps if the full sensor width was read and/or that the camera's processor can't downsample the larger resolution fast enough (remember, the CPU still has do do other things such as real-time encoding). But Canon did miss a critical opportunity by not allowing Dual-Pixel focus in 4K, further compounding the 4K feature set.
lol, I don't see the point of attacking the messenger.
Oliver Kmia is just telling the truth, the cold hard fact. If all the people who bash him can close their eyes for one second, take a deep breath, they will see the writing on the wall: Canon M50 is a piece of half baked junk,
I thought I remembered reading somewhere that the DPAF system used a secondary layer of the sensor or something like that, so the reason you're getting it disabled may be that they're using that secondary layer to provide you with the higher resolution image instead. Just me making a semi-educated guess. That might also explain the strange super crop as well.
So disappointing that Canon even put this camera out. It makes them look totally out of touch with what other camera manufacturers are doing.
People concentrate too much on 4K. There are other features of the camera I like. I'm a photographer and not a videographer and 1080p is adequate for me. It's a good vlogger camera with it's articulating screen. When you use the 11-22 M lens 4K cropped is useable.
Canon needs to compete with the A7Rlll and use, if at all possible, the EF mount lens we all have so much money invested in. The M50 just is a non-starter... (I bought an A7Rlll and a metabones adapter. Sorry Canon : (
Reading the comments was more fun than reading the article... to be honest, the author has obvious issues and is blatantly biased against Canon... not sure if he should have been the one to 'review' (if you can call this one)... Canon M50 might be a disappointment, but so is this article... Yes! everyone has the right to their opinion, but if you start writing for masses, i believe being biased is not the way to go about it...