Canon EOS M5 DSLR Full Review

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Short Description
The Canon EOS M5 is the most enthusiast-friendly EOS M yet. It's a 24MP mirrorless camera built around a Dual Pixel APS-C sensor, giving it depth-aware focus across most of the frame. On top of this it adds a built-in electronic viewfinder, a good number of external controls (including twin control dials) and a well implemented touchscreen.

This level of direct control puts it comfortably ahead of Sony's a6000 and a6300, and more on par with Panasonic's GX85 (GX80 in some markets) and GX8 enthusiast models. All of these cameras aim to offer stills and video capabilities in relatively small bodies but with a reasonable level of direct external control.

Key Specifications





**24MP Dual Pixel APS-C CMOS Sensor
***2.36M-dot OLED electronic viewfinder
**1.62M-dot tilting rear touchscreen
**Electronic video stabilization combines with in-lens IS to give 5-axis IS
**7 fps continuous shooting (9 fps with focus and exposure locked)
**Wi-Fi with always-connected Bluetooth

Full Details
The Canon EOS M5 is a very approachable camera, despite all those buttons and dials. In fact, it's the implementation of this touchscreen that, in general, we're most impressed with. Much like the system developed by Panasonic, the M5 not only lets you use the rear touchscreen to position focus, it also allows its use as a touchpad to move the focus point when you're shooting through the viewfinder. This, combined with decisive autofocus, has proven to be significant for both stills and video shooting.

The camera has four dials in total: two main dials on the top of the camera, a dedicated exposure compensation dial and a fourth dial encircling the four-way controller on the back of the camera. This is a much higher level of direct control than offered on the simpler EOS M-series models offered previously, suggesting Canon expects the user to take more hands-on control of the shooting experience.
While the lack of 4K video capability is a disappointment, the ability to use the touchscreen to re-position the focus point with a high level of confidence that the camera will smoothly glide the focus to the right point is highly desirable.

The touchscreen-plus-Dual-Pixel-AF combination is also useful for stills shooting - you can not only use the touchscreen to drag the focus point around the screen but also use it to select between available faces if shooting or recording in face detection mode.
The other significant benefit of the M5 finally receiving Canon's Dual Pixel AF system is that it is now able to focus adapted EF and EF-S lenses very effectively - overall performance isn't quite the same as an 80D in Live View mode, but it's leaps and bounds ahead of any previous M camera. You're also no longer limited to the small central focus area offered when using comparable Rebel / EOS x-hundredD DSLR models, and focusing is almost DSLR-quick and decisive.