When I first covered the Canon EOS M50 in Blackmagic “Pocket” Cinema Camera 4K vs competition: Canon, JVC, Panasonic and Sony (link ahead) in April 2018, all available published information indicated that this camera was segregated (“framerate restricted”) in the US, and both worldcam (“unlocked”) and cheaper in Europe. Now, published specs from a major US dealer have changed —haphazardly— and several verified purchasers have offered conflicting responses. Ahead are their responses and a link to Why we should only use worldcams.
Conflicting updated published specs
Above you will see what B&H photo’s website currently shows as the video framerates available in this camera, the Canon EOS M50. Even though it says “Yes, NTSC/PAL” at the top, PAL-derived framerates like 25 and 50 are strangely absent in all of the video formats listed.
Question and answers
I decided to write a question on B&H’s forum. The question I asked was:
Does this version of the Canon EOS M50 sold by B&H really have PAL-derived framerates (25p and 50p)? The specs says NTSC/PAL, but neglects to show 25/50.
I was hoping to get an answer either from a B&H rep or a Canon rep. Instead, so far I have received 6 conflicting answers from different verified purchasers of the Canon EOS M50 camera from B&H:
(Because the responses appear in a miniature popup window, it’s impossible to capture the answers in a single screenshot, so I did it in two steps. Here is a link to the thread.)
It is alarming to see how conflicting the answers are, especially since some of them were purchased only one day apart, so they are likely the same batch. It is possible that some of them didn’t know how to find the option in the menu, that there are different firmware versions or —despite the close dates— different batches.
Regarding firmware, the palindromic 1.0.1. posted by Canon mentions the following improvements, but no related to this worldcam issue.
1 . Fixes a phenomenon in which some images captured with the Adobe RGB color space may not successfully transfer to a smartphone.
- Fixes a phenomenon in which some JPEG images, that were converted from RAW images may not successfully transfer to a smartphone.
Moral of the story
Given the conflicting responses from verified purchasers and published specs means that if you live in the US and want to purchase the Canon EOS M50, you should only purchase it from a dealer who guarantees this feature before opening the box in front of you or offers refunds.
Links to related articles
- Why we should only use worldcams (illustrated above)
- Tony Dae clarifies Blackmagic “Pocket” 4K camera crop
- Blackmagic “Pocket” Cinema Camera 4K vs competition: Canon, JVC, Panasonic and Sony (illustrated below)
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