Canon EOS M50 Mark II
£589/$599 4K is not its forté, but this updated model has much to offer
An incremental update for this traveland vlogging-friendly CSC
The Canon EOS M50 Mark II has arrived – and, on paper, it’s quite a curious camera. Its 24.1MP image sensor, Digic 8 processor, 2.36 million-dot EVF and 3-inch touchscreen all seem very familiar. And there’s good reason for that: the M50 Mark II is, both internally and externally, virtually identical to the original M50. The same hardware, same ergonomics, same sensor, same almost-everything.
What makes the Mark II different, then? Not a huge amount, but it might make a huge amount of difference depending on what you want to use your camera for.
Key features
The capable 24.1MP APS-C image sensor has a sensitivity of ISO 100-25,600 and a maximum burst shooting speed of 10fps. It renders sharp and appealing stills; and thanks to Canon’s spectacular Dual Pixel CMOS AF, you can expect robust autofocus performance to get your shots sharp.
However, the market that the M50 Mark II is really making a play for is video and content creation. It captures 4K video at 24 or 25p, and 1080p (Full HD) video at 60, 50, 30, 25, and 24p. However, while 1080p features Dual Pixel AF (based on superior phasedetect autofocus technology), 4K video is limited to a more primitive contrastdetect system. In addition, shooting in 4K invokes a 1.6x crop factor. The M50 Mark II can also record social media-friendly vertical video, and can even live stream directly to YouTube – both are significant features to the burgeoning content creation market.
Finally, the Mark II also gets a boost to its autofocus performance thanks to the addition of Eye Detect AF – which detects and tracks human eyes when shooting both stills and video footage.
Build and handling
The M50 Mark II has the same tiny footprint as its predecessor – this
is a truly compact, yet capable, mirrorless camera. It’s smaller than full-frame mirrorless cameras like the Canon EOS R5, and even than Micro Four Thirds cameras like the Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark III. Given that MFT sensors are even smaller than APS-C ones, it’s unusual for an APS-C body to be more compact.
Unsurprisingly, the M50 Mark II packs the same 2.36 million-dot OLED electronic viewfinder and three-inch, 1.04 million-dot, fully articulating touchscreen as its predecessor. Neither are going to blow your socks off, but both are more than up to the job of shooting both stills and video.
The camera only has a single control dial, which lends itself to either fully automatic shooting or a semiautomatic mode like Aperture Priority. However, a quick button tap makes it easy to switch between the different exposure controls if you want to go fully manual.
Performance
We tested the M50 Mark II with a selection of EF-M lenses, as well as full-frame EF glass using a simple mount adapter – and this is a notable
benefit of the EOS M system. While it has a fairly well-rounded ecosystem of EF-M lenses designed specifically for Canon’s mirrorless APS-C format, you can easily mount EF glass on the M50 Mark II instead, although it will be subject to a 1.6x crop factor.
By and large we got rich, detailed shots of all manner of subjects – the 24.1MP sensor may not be new, but it still renders impressive images. We did notice that the newly implemented eye detection isn’t as robust as on Canon’s other cameras, although we have been spoiled by the unparalleled Eye AF on the EOS R5.
While its dynamic range isn’t the best in its category, there is still a lot of data present in the files recorded by the M50 Mark II – which means there is a lot of play in the shadow and highlight areas to ‘pull back’ your shots if they’re over or underexposed, particularly if you shoot raw files.
For vloggers and content creators, the subpar 4K performance we’ve noted may not actually make a huge difference, as most creators shooting for YouTube only record in 1080p anyway – and this is a largely excellent 1080p camera. James Artaius