Canon EOS M50 Review - Performance

Canon EOS M50 Performance

The performance section is where we look at the image quality performance of the camera. Additional sample photos and product shots are available in the Equipment Database, where you can add your own review, photos and product ratings.

Speed - We took a number of shots to test the camera's responsiveness, from switch on to first photo, shot to shot, focusing speed etc. We take a number of shots and then use the average to ensure accurate and consistent tests, making it easy to compare with other cameras.

Shutter response and focus speeds are very impressive, particularly in good light. This slows in low-light. Shot to shot time is also very impressive, although the flash will slow this down. We were able to shoot at 8.5fps in high-speed continuous shooting mode and could take 39 JPEG shots before the camera slows down. This is reasonable, but sports photographers are likely to want to shoot more than this. 

Canon EOS M50 Sample Photos

Sample Photos - Colour reproduction is excellent, and the same as you get from other Canon EOS cameras, with good colour saturation. Skin tones are good, and detail captured by the kit lens is quite impressive. The flash performs well, with no signs of red-eye visible. Dynamic range captured is good, with the "Auto Lighting Optimizer" giving a boost to shadows. 

Canon EOS M50 Lens test images

Lens Performance - We shot with the 15-45mm kit lens, which gives reasonable performance, with good macro focus for a "kit" lens. The lens also has built-in optical image stabilisation, which helps in low-light. The lens does feel quite "plasticy" but the compact size and lightweight helps keep the camera system small. The camera has a number of options in the camera to correct for any lens distortions, including peripheral illumination correction (vignetting), distortion correction, digital lens optimiser, chromatic aberration correction, and diffraction correction. This means that almost all of these issues should be corrected automatically when switched on, although we did notice some vignetting at the wide-angle end of the lens.

For portraits, we switched to using the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 lens with the EOS-M adapter. In the photos, you can see the benefit of a bright prime lens for portraits and significantly better subject separation. The Canon EOS M system is really crying out of a range of bright prime lenses, such as a 35mm f/1.8, 50mm f/1.8, and 85mm f/1.8, or brighter, which would be particularly useful for portraits. 

Face and eye-detection work well and is something that's available on most other mirrorless cameras. It's nothing new, and has been around since the Olympus OM-D E-M5, which came out in 2012, but is completely new for Canon, and of course a welcome addition, particularly useful for portraits and photos of people. 

Canon EOS M50 ISO test images

ISO Noise Performance - The M50's ISO range can be extended to ISO51200. Higher than other Canon APS-C cameras. For the lowest noise and best detail possible we would recommend using ISO100 to ISO3200, as images have low levels of noise and good levels of detail... For lower light situations ISO6400 to ISO12800 still provides good results, although noise increases and detail is reduced. At ISO25600 noise levels become strong and we would recommend avoiding this setting if possible, although results may still be useful if resized and used on the web. ISO51200 is best avoided as noise is extremely high, and detail is very low.

Noise compared to the competition...

The M50 gives slightly worse noise performance compared to the G1X Mark III at ISO6400/ISO12800, however, images are slightly sharper, but with more noise. Noise is also slightly more prominent at these higher ISO speeds when compared to the Canon EOS 800D. The M50 does give the option of ISO51200, which is new for Canon, but as with most cameras, the highest ISO speed is best avoided. (Editor's note, we complain when cameras don't offer ISO speeds up to ISO51200, but then when they do, we complain that there's too much noise).

Canon EOS M50 White-balance test images

White Balance Performance - Auto White Balance (AWB) gives a warm result under tungsten lighting. Using the AWB: White priority setting it's possible to get a much more accurate result under tungsten lighting. The Tungsten preset gives a warm result. AWB also gives a warm result under mixed lighting. AWB performs well under fluorescent lighting so that you shouldn't need to use the preset, however, if you do, then the fluorescent preset also gives a good result. 

Canon EOS M50 Digital filters

Digital Filters - Digital Filters can only be used when shooting JPEG only, and can't be shot when shooting both JPEG+Raw images. There is no built-in automatic panoramic mode. You can choose picture styles, for example, "Portrait", "Landscape", "Fine Detail", and there are options to adjust sharpness, contrast, saturation and colour tone. 

Video - The M50 records 4K UHD video at 25fps with stereo sound. The focus system does not use dual-pixel focus during video recording, so can be a little slow at times. The ISO speed can be extended up to ISO25600. High-speed video is recorded at 100fps, at a resolution of 1280x720.

The crop factor when using digital IS is quite strong. The 4K video recording has a 1.56x crop, which increases to 1.75x with digital image stabilisation (IS) enabled, or 2.26x crop with enhanced IS. FullHD video recording uses the full width of the sensor (with digital IS switched off). There's an option for "Auto level" and you can manually set the sound recording level. There are also options for wind filter and attenuator. 

You can adjust the colour settings for recording video (and for taking photos), however, there aren't any "Flat" or "C-Log" profiles available. The closest would be Neutral (and you can adjust sharpness, contrast, saturation, and colour tone). We used Standard colour for this video.