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.
Since then there has been a Mark II version which didn’t make it to the UK. Now Canon has launched the EOS M3 which, by all accounts, is going to come over here. This is not the big makeover that Canon owners had hoped for. It is very much business as usual but with a few tweaks. There are more physical controls in a nod to the enthusiast market and the option of mounting an electronic viewfinder is definitely welcome. The limited lens range, however, remains a big disadvantage.
But the biggest problem faced by the new M3 will be one of credibility. The original model started off at £800 in a kit with the 18-55 zoom lens. Now it sells for £199 and there are even cheaper mint-condition models on the used market. Will this off-the-cliff depreciation also plague the new version? Will many be brave enough to find out?
The EOS in all its versions has been extremely well made and solid, with a real feeling of quality. It is also one of the smallest, if not the smallest, APS-C cameras on the market. It ought to be successful; and it is likely to play well with legacy manual lenses as I showed in my article. I want to like it but I think I will sit on the fence until I can see how it fares on the secondhand market.
