Photography Blog: Two Ms and a 5DIII

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Two Ms and a 5DIII

There's a well known photography illness known as Gear Acquisition Syndrome or GAS. A variant of GAS is Gear Migration Syndrome of GMS. GMS exists when you're not actually buying gear with new money but trading items with stores or people or selling something and using the money (promptly) to acquire other gear.

At this point my affliction is more GMS than GAS. Back in November I acquired a white Canon EOS M with a third party EF to EF-M adapter. No lens focal length shorter than 60mm would focus at infinity. I had no EF-M lenses and only that one adapter so I couldn't really tell if the problem was the camera or the adapter although I strongly suspected the adapter. I guessed it was a bit longer than it should be.

Right after Christmas, I traded my EOS 7D and some lenses at Ray Supply for a new EOS M3, kit lens and electronic viewfinder. This let me confirm that the original EOS M functioned well and the problem was the adapter. A different adapter, this time a Fotodiox Pro, works well with all lenses on both cameras.

My latest GMS episode was the other day when I sold my 70-300mm DO zoom lens which is a bit soft and doesn't perform well on crop sensor bodies image quality wise. With some of the proceeds, I've ordered the EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 STM lens to use with the 24 megapixel EOS M3.

The two EOS M series bodies with the kit lens, 24mm pancake and 55-250mm zoom lens will constitute a nice little setup for lots of occasions. My full frame 5D Mark III, 24-105mm L series zoom and 40mm pancake lenses will be used for more serious events and occasions. I still have the problem of processing RAW files from the M3 on my MacBook Air but I've a Windows computer I can use if I need to.

I hadn't used the older EOS M for much of anything and decided to try it out with the kit lens for a sunset last evening. One thing the newer M3 is bad at is bracketing exposures. It's much slower than the M. I've been used to the 5DIII at over 5 frames a second and the M at around 3 frames a second. The M3 brackets at about a frame a second.

Here are the three bracketed files from a sunset scene last evening along with the finished product.