Mirrorless ILC comparison Canon EOS-M50 vs Lumix G85 14 August 2018

When I started working on  this comparison the two cameras, each with standard kit lens were selling for about the same price in Australia.

Since then the M50 has been discounted while the G85 price has held, presumably indicating the popularity of this model.

The Lumix G85 is the latest and best of Panasonic’s G series models. It was announced in September 2016 so is almost 2 years into its product cycle.

The EOS-M50 was announced in February 2018 so it has been on the market only 6 months.

Panasonic has released 30 mirrorless interchangeable lens camera models since the G1 of 2008.

Canon’s first MILC was the EOS-M of 2012. To date Canon has appeared to treat the MILC segment of the market as a low priority with only 7 EOS-M models released  and most of these pitched to the entry level buyer.

For this comparison I fitted the M50 with the standard 15-45mm (equivalent to 24-72mm) f3.5-6.3 collapsing zoom lens and the G85 with the 14-42 mm (equivalent to 28-84mm) f3.5-5.6 standard kit zoom.

Retail prices vary considerably with various deals and offers but at the time of writing the EOS-M50 was selling for around AU899 with the 15-45mm lens. The G85 with 14-42mm lens from the same vendor was AU1204. I noticed that the G85 body only from this vendor was AU1168 which priced the lens at AU36, making this one of the best lens deals I have ever seen.

You can see in the photos that they are similar in size. The M50 is actually smaller and lighter even though it uses a larger sensor. The M50 fits into a smaller carry bag.

The downside of the M50s smaller size is that there is insufficient space for an in body image stabiliser (IBIS), a full handle and a comprehensive set of external controls. 

I would locate the M50 in the upper entry segment of the market.

The G85 has more external controls which would likely appeal to enthusiasts.

You can read all the details elsewhere but in summary the G85 is more highly specified for stills and video capture, has more features, more capabilities and more hard controls.

You might expect the M50 with its larger sensor (27mm vs 21.5mm diagonal) and more pixels (24 vs 16) to be superior here but that is not what I found.

At low ISO settings the G85 delivered slightly more detail due I suspect, to the higher quality of the kit lens.

I saw no practical difference in highlight and shadow detail or recoverable highlight information from RAW files.

At high ISO settings in the 3200-6400 range the G85 actually produced less luminance noise than the M50 on my tests using Adobe Camera Raw and matched output file sizes.

I have used other copies of the Lumix 14-42mm previously and found all of them to deliver excellent optical and mechanical performance as did the one used in this test.

The Canon 15-45mm was less convincing particularly at the edges and at the long end of the zoom. It was not a bad lens just not excellent.

I also found the Panasonic files cleaner with less color fringing at high contrast edges.

This proved one of the more interesting aspects of the comparison.

Panasonic has  persisted with contrast detect AF without any additional phase detect function. This uses a technology known as DFD to improve the speed and precision of  CDAF.

Canon took a completely different and I suspect, technically more challenging course to develop their proprietary on chip dual pixel phase detect system (DPAF) which has been refined to the point that it works really well in the M50 on still or moving subjects, for still photos or video.

Both systems work very well. The Panasonic is slightly faster in average light levels and slightly more sensitive. It will focus on brush marks in paint and fine textures.

But the Canon system goes straight to the point of focus without the back-and-forth “wobble” of the CDAF system in the Panasonic and the Canon is quicker in video.

One occasional problem I noted with the Panasonic was a tendency to misfocus when presented with multiple small bright light sources, particularly sunlight reflected off foliage on a bright sunny day, a condition quite common in Sydney where I live.

Both systems are highly refined and effective in most conditions but overall I found the Canon system to be slightly more confident and reliable.

The downside of the Canon DPAF system appears to be its adverse effect on sensor performance. The 27mm (diagonal) 24 Mpx sensor in the M50 was, on my tests, outperformed by the ageing 21.5mm 16 Mpx sensor in the G85, particularly at high ISO settings.

In other tests I found the M50 was only just slightly better at high ISO settings than cameras using the much smaller 15.9mm 20Mpx Sony “One inch” sensor. In fact these cameras including the Sony RX100Mk4 and Sony RX10Mk4 were better in low light as they have a wider aperture lens.

The G85 is a quick performer in every respect.  Shot-to-shot times are very short, AF is very fast, the camera responds to all user inputs very quickly and most camera functions operate normally while images are clearing the buffer.

The M50 is also a responsive camera with no serious faults. Most functions lock up while the buffer is clearing which could sometimes be an issue.

The M50 functions with no EVF blackout using single shot or burst drive.

The G85 does have significant blackout between frames which restricts this camera’s usefulness for sport/action type work.

So both perform well but there are significant areas where both could improve.

The G85 was convincingly better here with more and better designed external controls, much better EVF, better handle and better user interface.

I did find however that the M50 had a slightly more responsive touch screen with more user control options. This was more user friendly for moving the active AF area than the similar but not quite as well implemented system in the Panasonic.

Purchase of an interchangeable lens camera represents entry into a system, not just a single product.

And in this case the Micro Four Thirds system (M43) is vastly more developed than the EOS-M system from Canon.

There are now many lenses from Panasonic, Olympus and other makers for the M43 system. . I counted 57 M43 lenses available from a major retailer in Australia. These cover everything from consumer kit zooms through to the most exotic wide aperture primes, ultra wide and long zooms and primes and everything inbetween. This is a mature system with something for everyone from beginner to professional.

Canon currently offers only six EF-M lenses although you can get an adapter so EF lenses can be mounted. It seems to me however that this somewhat defeats the purpose of the EOS-M project which was presumably to offer a smaller and lighter kit than is possible with the standard EF system.

Indeed I wonder about Canon’s commitment to the M system. They are about to introduce an entirely new full frame mirrorless system (or are crazy if they don’t) which will no doubt devour a great deal of their R&D budget.

This will mean they will have:

* DSLR full frame EF

* DSLR crop EF-S

* MILC full frame EF-???

* MILC crop  EF-M

That is four systems. I cannot imagine they will want to continue that many different systems in a falling camera market.  It seems to me something will have to go.

With nothing much in the way of legacy DSLRs, Panasonic fully committed to the Mirrorless M43 system in 2008 so they have to manage only one ILC lens mount and system.

The G85 is a bit larger and heavier and somewhat more expensive but is a much more capable and appealing camera particularly for anyone who is or is planning to become a photography enthusiast. In addition the M43 system has much more to offer than the Canon EOS-M system.

No contest really.