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Home โ†’ Reviews โ†’ Cameras and Lenses โ†’ Canon EOS M Review

Canon EOS M Review

By Nasim Mansurov 19 Comments
Last Updated On May 1, 2023

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ISO Performance at Low ISOs (ISO 100-800)

Let’s take a look at how the Canon EOS M performs at low ISOs. Here are some 100% crops at ISO 100, 200, 400 and 800:

Canon EOS M ISO 100 Crop Canon EOS M ISO 200 Crop

Both ISO 100 and 200 look very clean with no visible artifacts, even in the shadows.

Canon EOS M ISO 400 Crop Canon EOS M ISO 800 Crop

ISO 400 adds a tiny amount of noise. At ISO 800 we see even more noise, but the image still looks very good with no loss of details anywhere in the image, including the shadows.

High ISO Performance (ISO 1600-25600)

Let’s see what happens when ISO is boosted to much higher levels:

Canon EOS M ISO 1600 Crop Canon EOS M ISO 3200 Crop

ISO 1600 increases the amount of noise and the grain size now looks bigger and more noticeable, especially in the shadows. Increasing ISO to 3200 nearly doubles noise and now we are starting to see some artifacts in the shadows. Both ISO levels are very usable though and a single pass of noise reduction software will deal with it pretty well since most details are preserved.

Canon EOS M ISO 6400 Crop Canon EOS M ISO 12800 Crop

Further increasing ISO to 6400 adds a lot more noise and now we are at a point, where we are starting to lose details in the shadow area. And by ISO 12800, the image looks pretty much unusable to me, although down-sampling the image might produce acceptable results for the web.

Overall, the ISO performance of the Canon EOS M is pretty good. Let’s see how it fares against other cameras. Select the next page below.

Table of Contents

  • Overview and Specifications
  • Autofocus Performance, Metering and Dynamic Range
  • ISO Performance
  • Camera Comparisons
  • Summary
  • More Image Samples
  • Reader Comments
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