Canon EF-M 18-150mm IS STM Review | Real World Useful

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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to do a review of the new Canon 18-150mm
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This is an f3.5-6.3 IS STM lens. the new 18 to 150 stm is canon's newest kit lens for its eos m system the m m2 m11 m3 and m5 bodies
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It becomes the new kit lens for the M5 and also becomes a very compelling option for anybody that's looking for an all-in-one or travel type lens
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It has IS, that's Canon's image stabilization. It uses an STM or stepping motor for focus, which allows it to focus quickly, but also allows it to focus very smoothly during video recording
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And so it really is purposely designed for the mirrorless bodies like the M5
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It is what you might call a super zoom or all-in-one lens
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18 to 150 millimeters means that it has an 8.3 times zoom range
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And whenever you have a lens like that, you will know that there has to be some kind of compromises
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To fit that many focal lengths in a compact body requires a lot of engineering and also some compromises to achieve it
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And we're going to see that that's true here. But we're going to look at how well this lens handles the compromises inherent in the way that it is built
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One thing to note is that it shares a physical body and design that's very similar to Canon's 55 to 200mm zoom lens
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And thus it has the same kind of composite shell on it. It also has a plastic mount
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And in an earlier episode I covered the overall build and design of this lens
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I would encourage you to take a few minutes and take a look at that. If you want to look at how the lens is actually designed and built and some of its basic specifications
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note that this is the heaviest Canon branded EF-M lens now at 301 grams
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The only alternate really to this lens is one from Tamron that came out several years ago
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and it's the 18 to 200 millimeter, and it comes in at actually quite a bit heavier
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almost 50% heavier at 459 grams, and it's a little bit longer, it's a little bit thicker all around
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and I reviewed that actually on the original M, and I felt that it really kind of strained the limit for that lens
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but of course the Canon EOS M series has grown in the M5, it has a much better grip
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and so the Tamron is a valid alternative with one big exception
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And that is that with every new generation of the EOS M body, starting with the M3 and now with the M5, something has changed to where that lens doesn't function at all
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And so there was a firmware update that solved it for the M3. However, when the M5 came out, there is a similar compatibility issue that is not yet resolved
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And Tamron says that they are working on a firmware fix for that
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And so if you don't want to have to deal with sending your lens in periodically
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the people that own that lens, they love it. And it's a great lens, and that's a fantastic focal length
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However, this lens might be a better alternative for a lot of people
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because there's not going to be compatibility issues, and it is smaller and lighter
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And while it lacks that final 50 millimeters, we're going to find that this is a pretty competent lens
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when you look at the focal range that it does have. And on that note, we're going to jump in
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and let's take a look at the image quality and see how this lens is performing
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And so here, if we look towards the edge here, we see that, you know, really at 55 millimeters
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this is still a pretty decent performance right out at the edge
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So you can see that there is a little bit of chromatic aberration, some purple fringing here
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If we move towards the middle, we see, of course, the middle is quite a bit sharper here
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and actually quite sharp here. and if we look towards the right edge we see a similar story really sharpness extending towards the edge pretty well The 55 which is on the right it really quite a sharp lens in the middle of the frame but we can see here that certainly the new kit lens 18 is showing definitely better resolution here
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Now, you'll see that there is an aperture advantage for the 55-200. We're at f4.5 wide open, while we're at 5.6 wide open on the 18-150
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If we look towards the edge here, it's definitely all for the 18-150
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It makes me almost wonder about the copy of the 55-200 that I have here
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as that that is a pretty terrible result there at the edge of the frame
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The same is true over at this side, where it's kind of a smeary mess compared to a fairly decent result
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We will see that there is a little bit less chromatic aberration on the 55-200
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Now, if we compare them apples to apples at F5.6 across the board here, we find that stopping down the 55-200 really hasn't helped a whole lot
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And still, the 18-150 is sharper. In the center here, it's closer now
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And I would say because there is less chromatic aberration on the 55-200, it is slightly sharper in the center to my eye, although the difference is not major
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but again if we look on the side it's a whole different story and you know I would say that
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I mean it's equal on both sides but I would say that there's been some kind of bang or whatever
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that has caused the 55 to 200 to be a little bit de-centered. If we compare at 100 millimeters
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we find once again that the really we've got a great performance out of the new 18 to 150
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For edge performance, this is really actually quite good, particularly in a lens that has such a big focal range as this lens does
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And if we look at the center of the frame, we find that, you know, this is equal apertures and settings that I would say I prefer the look from the 18 to 150
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It's just really performing quite well. And if we look towards edge of the frame, again, it's really no competition
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There's definitely a lot more definition from the 18 to 150. At 150 millimeters, and here the framing, just the way I set up for this, I actually
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thought I was shooting at 150, which is kind of a nebulous spot on the 55-200
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There's a big gap there, and I actually ended up at 135 millimeters instead of 150, but
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at least it gives you a rough equal framing here to compare at
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Once again, we see a nice result from the 18-150. it is the 55 to 200 that's showing a bit more chromatic aberration
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And in the center of the frame, this is where I would say the 55 to 200 shines
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And of course, it's at the middle of its focal range, you know, ish, as opposed to this being
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at the very end of its focal range. And so we see, I would say, a little bit more contrast and a little less light bleeding
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That's a little bit of chromatic aberration there, not on the 55 to 200 in the center
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If we look towards the right edge though, we see once again, the evenness of the 18-150mm
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is pretty impressive, it goes right out to the edge. Now based on this test right here, I wondered if there was some focus breathing happening
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with the 18-150mm, and so I shot a subsequent test to determine focal length and to really
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try to get identical framing. And so I found I was able to achieve basically identical framing pretty close
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I would say it's a little bit tighter here at close focus at 148 millimeters on the 55-200
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Framing is roughly similar, but just a little bit tighter. So maybe 146, 147 millimeters to get a perfectly even framing
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But you know, it's within the range. I found that when I moved out to infinity focus here that I was able once again to achieve what
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I think is pretty close to identical framing. This is framing just a little bit looser at again
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around 148 millimeters and so I would say maybe 147 millimeters but either way it pretty close there That not a bad compromise considering how big of a zoom range we got here and that zoom range is pretty big We going from the framing on the left is at 18 millimeters the exact same shot
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same position, and on the right we see 150 millimeters zoomed in, and so that's certainly
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a very, very useful, a little over 8.3 times zoom range, and so that gives you a lot of
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versatility on what you can shoot with this lens. Now, if we look at the bokeh quality
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you know, don't expect miracles here. This is variable aperture. A super zoom lens is not going
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to be your greatest bokeh performer, and I didn't expect that, and that's not what I got
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But, you know, really, it's not terrible either. I mean, there's some busyness in the center of the
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frame. This inner line is a little bit more defined than what I would like. If we look towards
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the edge of the frame here though bokeh highlights are still pretty circular and you know all told I
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wouldn't say that that's awful there it's not great but it's not awful now another thing to
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look at is that the lens as we saw in our test it does have a bit of chromatic aberration and
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you can see here there's both some green and some purple fringing however I am not really all that
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concerned about it because here let's zoom in on that again so you can see purple you know green
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fringing but here in Lightroom all I've got to do is click one box there's not a profile yet for
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this lens but even just the generic clicking remove chromatic aberration and you can see that
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that has basically disappeared I'm going to uncheck it see green purple fringing click the box and it's
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gone and it doesn't seem to me to be very destructive overall it seems to have cleaned up
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quite nicely. So I'm not very concerned about that. I would say the greatest optical flaw to
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watch out for on this lens is that if you put it in the wrong kind of situation, it most definitely
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will have some ghosting. And in this case, I would consider that to be a destructive ghost effect
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right there in that it's going to be next to impossible to remove that without destroying
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that spot on the image. And so you can see there's a pretty heavy ghosting pattern here
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And of course, Canon persist in not including a lens hood with any of their non-L series lenses
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And frankly, this lens could really use it. To give you another example here, you know, it's all about where you place that sun
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And so I wanted to get the sunburst here. I wanted to shoot through the cactus. But allowing the sun too much there without some of that shading from the cactus resulted in the ghosting here
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and just being a little tighter with that and just getting the very edge of the sun
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to where the glare is eliminated is able to produce a more clean image
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So obviously a much more clean image. And so just be very careful with where you place the sun
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and you can get a decent result. Now, once again, here I've kind of hidden
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some of the glare of the sun. There is a little bit of ghosting down here, but our end result here is a much more artful
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If you look at this out of focus area here, even though this isn't a very big aperture of a lens
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I would say that that's relatively soft, really not too bad. And this is wide open, and when I look here
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I'm quite impressed with that detail. This is a Cholla cactus that is dying
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and so the innards are exposed. And that's really a lot of detail being produced there
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And again, looking at some of the bokeh here, pretty nice and round and reasonably soft, not too bad
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Here's one more example, once again, where I've hidden the sun. So you've got a little bit of haze here
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prismatic haze, but that to me is far more artistic and so the glare isn't as bad here
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And so you can use the lens pointing it at the sun. You just have to be careful
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and really kind of plan for that. But certainly flare resistance could be better with the lens
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One very nice thing about this lens is that it has a very nice 0.31 times maximum magnification
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That's very, very useful. And as you can see, that's not mind blowing sharpness
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at that, but this is still a useful and a credible result
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here of some cactus spines. And so using the minimum focus range
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and maximum magnification is useful on the lens And it just adds to the overall versatility So to sum up we see that the lens really has quite good sharpness across its range and that sharpness is pretty effective at going out towards the edges of the
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frame. It has a nice maximum magnification ratio that makes it even more useful as a general
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purpose or super zoom all-in-one type lens. It does have some chromatic aberrations but fortunately
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those are not all that hard to correct for and as soon as a profile exists in Lightroom and
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Adobe Camera Raw it'll be even easier to repair. There is some vignette but again it's not really
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all that extreme and in many situations it won't be all that noticeable and again fairly easy to
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fix. This lens is flare prone as we saw in our test and beyond that it doesn't come with a lens
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hood. Now that's not in itself is not unusual because one of Canon's cheaping out things that
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they do is if they don't include lens hoods with anything outside of their L series lenses and
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that's something that I have complained about again and again and again to no avail. Beyond that
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however the lens has an effective image stabilizer. You really can handhold this lens at quite low
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levels. Canon claims four stops of assistance and I see no reason to doubt that. The autofocus seems
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to work well. The lens focuses accurately, it focuses quickly, and as far as tracking goes
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you know, it does okay, but not exceptional. But overall, it functions quite well
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One thing to note, however, is that aperture, I mentioned it as we looked at the image quality
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the aperture does close down really, really fast. So yes, it has a maximum aperture on the wide end
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of f3.5 that really literally lasts only until 23 millimeters at 24 to 27 millimeters the maximum
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aperture is f4 from 28 to 31 millimeters wow that's tiny it is f4.5 then from 32 to 42 millimeters
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f5 43 to 59 millimeters f5.6 and then by 60 millimeters you are at the smallest maximum
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aperture of f6.3 and that's where it remains throughout the rest of the zoom range. I kind of
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hope that this lens because of the broader range of its its focal range would actually provide some
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aperture advantage over the older 18 to 55 kit lens. Unfortunately that's not the case and so
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there's not really an advantage when it comes there. The lens is available in two different
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color choices a graphite color which is what I've got pictures of and I'm reviewing here
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There's also a silver colored one right now the lens retails for $499 in the US market and I'll throw linkage down below to a few places where you can purchase the lens
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But unfortunately as has been the trend recently with Canon's new bodies although the lens is only available at the moment still in a kit with the EOS M5 body
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there isn't really any kind of savings for buying it in kit if you buy the body only and the lens
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separately it comes out to really the exact same price which in the U.S. is $14.79 for the
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combination of the two. If the trend remains true I think you'll find that in a few months the first
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discounting will be not on the actual body only or the lens itself but rather on the kit combination
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and then after that you might see some individual price drops. But that's the way that Canon's recent system has been working, so no surprises there
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All in all, this is actually quite a surprisingly competent lens and I see no reason why if you're going to buy an M5 body
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and you would like an all-in-one or travel option, no reason to not recommend this lens
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It really does a lot of things quite well and I was really pleased with the images I got with it
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I'll throw a link down below to both an image gallery And then also I have an article that I wrote on traveling to Arizona, which is where I use this lens for most of the time
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And I've got an image gallery there that includes a lot of photos that I took with this combination right there
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And you'll find that in the description down below. You can also follow me on social media and sign up for my newsletter
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And of course, if you haven't, please click that subscribe button. Thanks for watching. Have a great day

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