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Canon EF-M 55-200mm f/4.5-6.3 STM IS Review / Test |
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Lens Reviews -
Canon EOS (APS-C)
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Page 1 of 3
Review by Klaus Schroiff, published February 2018
Introduction
Canon EOS M owners aren't exactly blessed with choices. If you are interested in tele-zoom lenses, there is exactly one - the Canon EF-M 55-200mm f/4.5-6.3 STM IS. Seems as if Canon wants to give you a communist feeling here. It is quite affordable but, consequently, also quite slow. It is targeting the budget market which it is why it is also often sold as part of 2 lens camera kits. In full format terms it has a range of "88-320mm" which should be plenty enough in the target market.
Unlike most of its in-house mates, it is a plastic fantastic lens down to the lens mount. Technically there is nothing wrong with this. At just 260g it is light-weight enough so that it doesn't really require a metal mount. It does, however, feel a little cheap. The two control rings operate smoothly. The focus ring is quite small though and lacks haptic feedback. There's only a slight degree of wobbling of the inner lens tube when fully extended to 200mm.
The lens uses Canon's stepping motor (STM) for focusing. If you are into sports, you have bought the wrong system here - the speed is adequate for most applications but action photography is not among them. In manual mode, you are driving the STM motor when turning the focus ring. The manual focusing precision is fine also because the focusing path is very long.
Canon's image stabilizer (IS) is rated with a gain of up to 3.5 f-stops. As usual, expect a little less than that in real life.
| Specifications |
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| Equiv. focal length | "88-320mm" (full format equivalent) |
| Equiv. aperture | "f/7.2-10" (full format equivalent in terms of depth-of-field) |
| Optical construction | 17 elements in 11 groups, 1x aspherical and 1x ED element |
| Number of aperture blades | 7 (rounded) |
| min. focus distance | 1.0m (max. magnification ratio 1:4.8) |
| Dimensions | 60.9x86.5mm |
| Weight | 260g |
| Filter size | 52mm (non-rotating) |
| Hood | barrel-shaped, optional |
| Other features | STM, IS |
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