Canon

One man's Odyssey through a collection of pinholes and a bunch of cameras leads to an unexpected cup of T. Stephen explains...

Why has Leica abandoned the art of good viewfinder design. In the past an accessory viewfinder used to be an enhancement. The latest Visoflex is not an attractive piece of work. Could it be that Canon is showing the way?

Make the mistake of carrying around a Leica and Mike will come up and talk with you. He is brazen about it. But look who he met on a casual saunter through the Georgian splendours of Bath.

Canon omitted the EOS M4 from the succession and went straight to the M5 because four is an unlucky number in Japan. Should they have considered the fate of the Leica M5?

The EOS M mirrorless camera from Canon has never been a great success. Although it was a perfectly nice little touch-screen camera it just didn't grab the imagination as Canon imagined it would. Now comes a much more serious version, the M5.

There is no denying the Canon EOS was not a major success. I wrote about it last June and even bought a bargain-basement version just out of interest. I tried it with Leica lenses with some success. I liked the touch screen controls and I enjoyed using it with a a 35mm optical viewfinder matched to the rather good 22mm prime lens. But it didn't last. There were no compelling reasons to pick up this camera in preference to, say, a Fuji X-E2.

This gallery is work in progress. I am planning to review the Canon EOS M, not as an overpriced £800 mirrorless wannabe but as a cheap and very cheerful £199 APS-C camera that is actually very competent. The EOS was damned by reports of slow autofocus. But is a solid camera, built in Japan, and performs well. The touch-screen interface is one of the best. Even the autofocus actually isn't all that bad after the latest firmware update.

I bought the Canon EOS M because it was cheap. £199 for an APS-C compact with an 28-88mm (equivalent) zoom has got to be worth considering. As I explained a couple of days ago, this camera started off as a much more expensive beast but seems to have been unloved. Perhaps there are better competitors out there at the original £700-plus price. But at £199 it takes some beating.

So often in life we see what we want to see. I was aiming my new £199 Canon EOS M across a busy London road when, out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed what looked like a vintage camera, a Leica no less, on a bus advertisement. I punched the rear screen of the Canon right in the middle of poster as the bus passed. My eye registered the words Hector and Happiness at the same time.