Getting Closer

Here it is, the first ever real shot through a telescope using the Canon EOS M. As mentioned before, the main reason for obtaining the EOS M was to dangled it behind a telescope!

If you have seen my web-page, I am mainly interested in wide field astrophotography, using long-exposure modified webcams and wide open fast scopes.
Tonight, I felt more of doing something quick and simple, the moon is showing a nice age, hence, the order of the day, a long lens with a short shutter time.

Canon EOS M @ Sky-Watcher MC90 (1250mm)

Of course, there if so much light that the settings could be really tuned towards low noise.
To establish focus, I actually used Magic Lantern's focus peak, despite my concerns about the health of the camera.

Parameters of this shot:

• ISO 100
• s/13
• WB = daylight
• RAW format
• D=90mm
• f=1250mm
• f/13.9 (obviously)

 This shot was taken on a tripod but w/o any remote shutter release.

Post-processing in GIMP using a bit of noise reduction, a hint of sharpening and desaturation by luminosity. Finally, the image was scaled. No cropping though!

Just for your entertainment, this is what the colored pic looks alike:

Color as seen by the sensor

More to come!

How to Focus with an Old Manual Lens

Using ML (Magic Lantern), there is a really nice option to focus using a manual lens with the EOS M.
With "Focus Peak" enabled, the camera will show where focus is achieved. Really cool, cool as a feature that is...

This option comes with a price. At least my EOS M warms up quite a bit when running ML. Actually, the heat created within the camera made me worried about using ML in this configuration.
However, there is always something to be learned.

The "Focus Peak" option of ML works best with the aperture fully open (I wonder why ;-).
Of course, with the aperture fully opened, the focus plane is rather obvious, even on a small screen on the back of a camera.
What can we learn from this?
To achieve reasonable focus/DoF, open you lens as wide as possible, adjust the focus and finally stop down the lens to the desired DoF.
Using old lenses, of course, you can look up the DoF on the lens housing itself!

Still, the focus peak of ML is a really cool tool... I wished it would keep the camera cool too!

Magic Lantern EOS M Shutter Bug continued

Studying the ML forum gave me the hint of trying different cards for solving the shutter bug issue by means other than torturing the camera.
It seems, the memory card used causes all the problems.
In my case, ML was installed on one of my "legacy" cards, an EMTEC class4 4GB, i.e. not the fastest card on the planet.
Different versions of ML did not solve the problem... hence the decision to try a different card.

The victim was a SanDisk Ultra (class10) 16GB card. Right away, Magic Lantern is booting fine, the Shutter Bug disappeared!

However, the camera develops temperatures, which do not seem natural, and so does the battery!
That's no good!

Not being sure what the camera is actually going through, I decided to not run anything hacky on it for the time being.

Summing up, the shutter bug seems to be related to the memory card used for ML. However, with ML running fine, stuff get hot, indicating that the hardware is not really enjoying the ride...

Up to now, I have not observed anything similar when using CHDK.

Old Glass on the EOS M

Here is another reason for me having obtained the Canon EOS M.

From my early days in photography, I still own some old lenses, mainly M42. Of course they are all manual focus, old skool! Some of those lenses made amazing photographs. It would be a shame to just let them rot in a corner.

Of course, the most obvious choice would be to buy Canon's EF-M to EF-S adapter, making available to the EOS M all Canon AF lenses. And with some additional adapter(s), lenses with all sorts of different mounts. However, Canon's adapter is rather expensive, especially when considering fully manual lenses only (no electrical connections required).

There are some makers/vendors of after market adapters, in particular from China, which offer purely mechanical adapters of decent quality. The price for those are really low, so I gave it a try and ordered  "EF-M to EF-S" and "EF-S to M42" adapters. (to find them: google, ebay, youtube, etc.)

First impression on the rings from China. Machining is very precise and the quality appears solid. Mounting the "EF-M to EF-S" ring of the EOS M shows a feature I am not so happy about, nevertheless can live with. The EOS M's locking mechanism goes "click", but there is no mating means in the adapter ring, hence, the ring can be turned further, with just a little force. Maybe hole for the locking pin is too small.

The "M42 to EF-S" ring clicks in place just fine, no issues here.

For the fun of it, I mounted a 35mm f/2.8 lens, which could be a very good lens for street-photography.

Here come the critical bit connecting the old to the new world:

• Set your lens to manual, so that the iris acts according to your settings ignoring the SLR-command pin.
• In your EOS M, set the Custom Function item 7 "Release Shutter w/o Lens" to "Enable", so that the camera ignores the fact that it can't sense a (high tech) lens.
• Put your EOS M in either "Av" or "M" mode.
• You may want to choose MF (manual focus), although I am not sure if that makes any difference.

In "Av", life is nearly as easy as with a stock lens. Choose your aperture at the lens' aperture ring, focus and shoot. The shutter (and ISO w/ ISO on auto) will be determined by the camera. Of course, if you are old skool (like me), you will set your ISO yourself... At least to my time, there was not "auto film", the only option I had was taking a body with a certain spool inserted to choose an ISO sensitivity, usually either 50 or 400... As I said, old skool!


In "M", life is what it used to be, 30 years ago.

• Select the ISO suitable for the situation, please do not use auto-ISO!
• Decide on a shutter speed according to the task.
• Adjust the aperture while taking meter readings by half-pressing the shutter button.

And here you have it, this is why I think the Canon EOS M is one of the best mirrorless cameras to buy at the moment:

• It has a poor reputation for slow AF speeds...  who cares when manually focusing old lenses?! For that reason, the price for this camera is pretty low presently!
• After market adapters are cheaply available.
• The EOS M is customizable by the Magic Lantern software (*).  

All in all, now that all my parts are in, I hope to be able to do what this camera was intended to in my house: Astro-Photography. First attempts using the 22mm prime lens, see earlier post, were promising.
Manually focusing the EF-M STM lenses proved difficult.
However, now that pure mechanical focusing is possible, using legacy lenses, there is light at the end of the tunnel, literally. In particular since I envisage to use the adapter ring to mount the camera to my T2 equipped telescopes.

(*) For astro-photography, ML promises to replace a setup of a dedicated computer wired up to the imaging camera, i.e. by taking timed bulb exposures.

ML Glitch EOS M (aka "Shutter-Bug")

After having played successfully with Magic Lantern on the EOS M yesterday, I waited for some streaks of good weather to go outside shooting today.
What lens to take? Well, I thought being more versatile, mounting the 18-55mm zoom would be a good idea. Take the bag? Leave the bag? At the end I took the bag with me, with all accessories.
That was a good one, I can tell you!

Found myself a nice motif for the first shot, framed it and pushed the shutter release... and... nothing happened! Ergh?! Pushed playback, yes, that was the last shot of yesterday... hmmm! Let's turn the camera off and on again... ohhh... it would not turn off! Consequently, I removed the battery and repeated the exercise, actually to the very same result... What is going on?!

Still I wanted that shot. Suspecting that ML could have to do something with the problem, I changed the memory card (luckily I decided to carry the bag w/ all accessories!)... and... boooom, the shutter went, and I got my shot.

Strange, I thought, changing back to the ML card, this time with the 22mm prime. All was fine, could do some regular shot and use the extra ML features.

Ah well, just a mishap, back to the zoom lens... NO! Is it image stabilization that prevents taking images? Switched that off... Did the camera take any pictures? NO!
I ran out of ideas and after some additional testing I concluded, Magic Lantern does not like the stock zoom lens of the EOS M. This might be more a problem to ML than it is to me... People who bought the EOS M with the stock zoom (typical option in The Netherlands) might be disappointed by Magic Lantern. And they may have a point to be!

Why am I not feeling as bad about it myself?
Well, as much as I would have liked everything to work, I did buy the EOS M for one particular reason: astro-photography.
Pretty decent low light performance of the camera, combined with the possibility to write scripts to control it, those were the reasons for me. As a secondary aspect, I considered the EOS M as a companion when shooting with the Rebel XT. Concerning everyday P&S-stuff, the Lumix LX7 remains my favorite!

Let's return to the topic! Depending on what you're doing in astro-photography, you might want to have either a very fast lens, or the greatest magnification possible (which usually goes along with a rather slow aperture).
I am the proud owner of a "comet catcher". In my case this is a 6 inch f/5 Fraunhofer refractor (150mm opening, 750mm focal length), which is considered a very fast telescope. As a side remark, I also posses a 6 inch f/8 refractor.
Very obviously, the 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 does not really have the edge in astro-photography. So, what can a 22mm f/2 lens do for us?!
Well, it can collect light very easily, in particular with a long exposure intervalometer, as provided by magic lantern.

In a later post I will go into details of techniques in astro-photography. For now, I would like to conclude that I am disappointed that the stock zoom lens in combination with Magic Lantern causes the EOS M to not trigger.

Update:
Actually, it seems that the effect is known as "shutter-bug" and there are 2 workarounds available, see:
http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=8825.0

It Arrived!

Well, this will be a post potentially dividing my reading audience, in particular since again, I will be writing about stuff outside the box, criticize critics and may even give a commercial recommendation, which I am not payed for...

One of the most controversial  cameras in 2013 was the Canon EOS M. That's for sure. Although enthusiasts have waited for a CSC (Compact System Camera) or mirrorless camera (as other may call those) from Canon for a while, the final arrival of the Canon EOS M was not such a great success, all in all... or was it?!

Personally, I claimed to have never understood the mirror-less movement myself. Wanna point 'n shoot? Buy one! Wish for a changeable lens camera, get an SLR, or DSLR for good measures. I admit, I was an SLR guy for many year, when film was still known and widely available. When times changed, I got myself a DSLR, in the form of a Canon Rebel XT (EOS 350D)... and in landed in a closet for reasons worth another post. Finally, I got it out the closet again, was happy with its results, finally, but hated the weight/dimensions (despite the fact that this was/is one of the smallest DSLRs out there).

Something smaller had to enter my life! Point 'n Shoots play a major role, as you might know, in particular the cheap one from Canon, since an "aftermarket tool" made RAW available. Since the brand Canon seems to appear a lot in this post, I wish to point out that I love my Panasonic Lumix LX7, and are just not prepared yet to spend such an amount of money which would allow me to get a Leica. Pentax is cool too, and so are Nicon and Sony... and Lomo!

Right, that being out of the way, let me focus on what I wanted to write in the first place. My Canon IXUS 140 P&S serves me well recording in RAW when using the CHDK. However, the glass / optics of a P&S is of course limited (by physics). There is just so much one can expect from those tiny zoom lenses.
Also, the sensors in P&S-cameras are not the largest on the market.
So, for 2 particular reasons, I looked into the option of buying the only available Canon CSC, the EOS M:

1. removable lens (using the camera for astro-photography)
2. ability to program the camera by scripts (as known from CHDK)

As to point 1: this very obviously matches many brands of CSC.
Concerning point 2: the only scripting packaged, other than CHDK, I am aware of is ML (Magic Lantern), which again, is based on Canon's DIG!C processors.
There we go... a CSC from Canon... one solution only: EOS M.

Here comes the involuntary commercial part of the post. In the Netherlands, the best price for the EOS M w/ the 18-55mm kit lens is about €360. Not bad, seen that my beloved Lumix LX7 (Leica lens!!!) set me back the exact same amount of money. However, a company in Hong Kong, magenta a silver color in the logo, known from allowing a funny guy putting out crazy videos on youtube (digitalrev that is), offers the very same camera with an additional 22mm EF-M lens and the 90EX mini-speedlite for just over €435.- including free shipping. Here in the Netherlands the very same 22mm EF-M lens is sold for an amount of €200-300, depending on the source. The local price of the 90EX speedlite ranges about €100. Do the maths, the supplier in Hong Kong even offers express shipping!
Referring to the title of the post, I ordered 02.02.2014 @ 22:00 (CET). The stuff was delivered 06.02.2014 @ 13:30 (CET)... which impressed me quite a bit!

Now back to substance. The Canon EOS M received a lot of criticism for slow and confused focus action. Under some circumstances, i.e. experiments I did, I can confirm this observation. However, my observations told that the EOS M (both stock lenses in the test) has difficulties focusing on a white eagle flying through a snow storm on a skiing piste or a black cat climbing a heap of coals in night-time. Yep, that went all wrong!
Probably there are faster cameras out there. However, coming from an EOS 350D (Rebel XT), the delay introduced by the EOS M was not too bad at all.
For low contrast situations, the EOS M (firmware 2.0.2) offer a "AF+MF" option, which switches to manual focus when the camera thought that auto-focus was done. Fair enough, I would say.... in the case AF failed, you can manually focus anyway. Good enough for me.

Now to the more creative (hacking) part of matters. The EOS M is supported by the "Magic Lantern" firmware addition. Actually, the ML software can be installed in a really simple manner (google is your friend!). It took me seconds to have my EOS M booting into ML. In other words, scripts can rule the camera now, scripts that are written in C.

And now, to the poodle's kernel, why did I actually spent this amount of money on a camera as "lame" and crippled. First of all, crippled or not, the EOS M will be the cheapest ever camera to run Magic Lantern (same set-up as the EOS 650D). And secondly missing out on an APS-C camera with 2 lenses for that price?! (not even mentioning the mini-speedlite). All together, this was a no-brainer!

Now that I have the camera (and lenses), I must say, that I have difficulties to follow the critics of this particular device. Ignoring the benefits ML provides, my EOS M is not so slow that I would drop any remark. AF works OK, maybe some cameras are better... but there is nothing to complain about!
Concerning the lenses: Image quality is fine. The 22mm prime produces real nice bokeh! No adverse features were spotted using the 18-55mm so far.

Viewfinder? Yes, I do miss a viewfinder! There might be a solution however. The 22mm lens is equivalent to a 35mm lens for full-frame camera (35mm film) lens. 35mm happens to be the focal length on "single use" 35mm film cameras. Sorry about the 35-confusion... it was not my idea ;-)
Oh yes, viewfinders of singles use cameras... they reflect the field of view of a 35mm lens.
My future solution to that problem will be to dismantle an AGFA LeBox and make the optical viewfinder mountable on a flash-shoe, such that it can be mounted on an EOS M (or an LX7, for good measures).