Published: June 23, 2017
The Canon EOS M5 is a 24.2MP mirrorless APS-C digital camera. It uses dual-pixel autofocus for fast and accurate focus. The 2.36M-dot OLED electronic viewfinder, tilting touch LCD screen and an array of external control buttons and dials provide a high level of direct control and a significant upgrade over the previous EOS M-series cameras. The M5 uses the DIGIC 7 processor and is capable of up to 9 fps continuous shooting, or 7 fps with autofocus.
The Canon M5 has a single SD card slot and supports UHS-I. The M5 was tested using 120 SD cards. The write speed for continuous shooting was tested for each card. Additional results are provided for continuous shooting using RAW+JPEG, RAW and JPEG image modes for 30 seconds of continous shooting. Following the tables, a detailed analysis has more details about the camera and difference between memory card performance in the camera. Finally, the fastest SD cards are recommended for the Canon M5 based on the test results.
The Canon M5 is tested on a tripod with a remote release timer. The subect is a detailed test scene with controlled lighting. A manual lens and all manual settings are used to provide consistency.
Write speed is determined using the buffer full condition. This begins when the buffer has reached capacity and is unable to sustain the full frame rate. In this condition shooting is limited to the rate at which the buffer is emptied. During extended shooting in buffer full condition, the shot interval can be used to determine the write speed of the card. This eliminates the need to use the card access light for write speed calcuation. The total bytes written divided by the total time gives the average write speed. Results are presented in megabytes per second, where 1MB = 1,048,576 bytes.
To test continuous shooting, the camera shutter is activated for 30 seconds. The number of shots using each image mode: RAW+JPEG, RAW, and JPEG are recorded. The time does not include buffer clearing time. The JPEG image setting is large, high quality. The M5 is set to continuous high drive mode. The detailed test scene produces 39.3 MB RAW files and 13.8 MB JPEG files.
The Canon M5 supports UHS-I SD cards including the fastest SDR104 mode that can theoretically reach up to 104MB/s. The highest average write speed during continuous shooting was 80.1 MB/s. This is very good for UHS-I performance in a camera.
The test uses both UHS-I and UHS-II cards. While the Canon M5 does not support UHS-II, the cards are backwards compatible and operate in UHS-I mode in the camera. They offer minimal benefit in the camera compared with fast UHS-I cards. However, in devices that support the UHS-II interface, the UHS-II cards can be up to three times as fast. This allows very fast download speed for transferring images to a computer.
Its buffer captured up to 18 shots in RAW at full frame rate before it was limited by its buffer. Slow cards reduced this to 16 shots. The slowest card sustained less than 0.4 fps with the buffer full, compared with 2.0 fps with the fastest card. These results were using a detailed test scene, using a less detailed subject may increase them slightly, according to the file size created.
Shooting RAW+JPEG resulted in 15-16 shots at full frame rate. After this the frame rate dropped according to card speed, with the slowest card maintaining less than 0.3 fps, while the fastest card continued at 1.2 fps. Switching to shooting JPEG only, the camera captured between 22-29 shots at full frame rate, with faster cards allowing more shots. The frame rate then dropped to 1 fps with the slowest card and up to 5.3 fps with the fastest card.
The fastest cards in the Canon M5 are Lexar Professional 2000x UHS-II and Sony SF-G 300MB/s UHS-II cards. These are UHS-II cards, but they operate in UHS-I mode in the M5 so their speed is limited by the camera. The reason one might choose a UHS-II card is their superior speed to transfer from the card to a computer where they can reach up to 300MB/s read speed in a UHS-II card reader. However, these cards a lot more expensive compared with fast UHS-I cards.
For the M5, fast UHS-I cards perform nearly as fast as UHS-II cards, but come at a much lower cost. Two fast UHS-I cards to consider for the M5 are SanDisk Extreme Pro 95MB/s UHS-I cards and Kingston U3 90/80 MB/s UHS-I cards. Various capacities of the SanDisk Extreme Pro UHS-I card offered practially the same speed as the fast UHS-II cards in the camera.
The Canon M5 has a built-in USB 2.0 port that allow it to be directly connected to a computer. Three different cards were tested in the M5 to evaluate download speed. The camera was connected to a computer with a fast SSD drive. Each card contained 150 RAW images, totaling 5.8 GB. The Sony SF-G Series 300MB/s UHS-II 32GB averaged 32.7 MB/s, while the SanDisk Extreme Pro 300MB/s UHS-II 32GB averaged 31.0 MB/s. The SanDisk Extreme Pro 95MB/s UHS-I U3 V30 32GB averaged 33.2 MB/s. While this performance is good considering it is near the limit of USB 2.0, an external USB 3.0 card reader can reach much higher speed. The UHS-I cards typically reach above 90MB/s transfer speed, while UHS-II can attain over 250MB/s download speed. More card reader tests are available in the Card Reader Reviews.