Wide Choice Narrowed

The Canon EF-M 11–22mm is the fi rst wide-angle lens from the company’s mirrorless camera segment. Shridhar Kunte puts it to the test.

- Shridhar Kunte

Ever since Canon launched its M-series lineup, this is their third lens for this system. With this attempt, Canon is trying to answer some uncomfortable questions raised by the company’s aficionados, who bought into their mirrorless cameras. Prior to this, the lens choices were limited to the EF-M 18–55mm and EF-M 22mm. Given that it is not particularly easy to support multiple product lines, the question is whether Canon will be able to reinstate the confidence in the Canon EOS M system users, with this launch.

Features

If you are a Canon EOS M system user, then this is the only wide angle zoom option available. This is also the first wide angle lens from Canon which has IS. In 35mm parlance, this lens offers a focal length of 18–35mm. It uses Canon’s proprietary Super Spectra Coating technology to control ghosting and flare. The optics consist of three special elements, out of which two are aspheric and one is UD (low refractive index and low dispersion). The lens contains a total of 12 elements arranged in 9 groups. There are 7 blades in the aperture diaphragm. But this is not critical to bokeh performance because of the much larger DOF present in wide lenses of this nature.