The new Canon EF-M 18-150mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM lens is being marketed as the ideal ‘all-in-one’ lens for uses of the EOS M system.
You can buy it as part of the kit with the newly launched EOS M5 compact system camera. It offers an equivalent focal length of 29-240mm (remembering that the APS-C format of EOS M camera is a 1.6x crop). The Canon EF-M 18-150mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM lens is constructed of 17 elements in 13 groups, and there are 7 diaphragm blades. An image stabiliser offers 4 stops of compensation, and the lens uses an STM AF motor. The closest focusing distance is 0.25m at 18-50mm, or 0.45m at 150mm. The maximum magnification of 0.31 is available at 150mm. If you want to buy the Canon EF-M 18-150mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM lens separately from the EOS M5 camera, you can purchase it for around £429 / $499.
The Canon EF-M 18-150mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM lens is available in two colours, black, and the silver version we were supplied with. Only the outer of the lens is silver, if you twist it to zoom the lens, you’ll see that the inside is black.
There are two rings around the lens, the large ring in the middle of the lens allows you to zoom the lens in and out. This portion of the lens is textured so you can easily find it. Zooming in and out is quick and fluid – but it’s slow enough to feel measured, and like you’re not going to accidentally move the lens too far one way or the other when you don’t want to.
The second ring is in front of the zoom ring, and is a much thinner ring. Half of the ring is covered with a texture, so you’ll find that you can identify it easily by touch – feel for the smooth part immediately followed by texture after the zoom ring. The focusing ring only comes into action when you’re using manual focus – something you will have to select on-camera as there’s no switch or button to switch from AF to MF on the lens itself.