Behold, the day has finally come.

Canon’s successor to the M5 arrives at the end of this month and it’s the first ever affordable interchangeable lens Canon camera to feature 4K video, their first mirrorless camera (EOS M) to have it and the first small camera the company has ever made which shoots 4K video with Dual Pixel AF.

The camera specs however have a lot of question marks as to quite what we’ll be getting.

In the leak to Japanese website Nokishita-Camera the specs are bare-bones, only stating “4K” – no frame rates. Also the new sensor is a 24.1MP APS-C (1.6x crop) CMOS – 24MP is 6K – will Canon crop 4K out of this sensor as they did on the 5D Mark IV, resulting in a tight 2.4x crop like the Samsung NX500? Then it’s practically Super 16! Or will they impress us and do what Samsung already did 4 years ago with the NX1 – a 6K full pixel readout with clean downscaling to 4K on the new DIGIC 8 image processor…

Then there’s the codec – are we FINALLY finally finally going to see H.264?! Or will they stick with MJPEG, which seems like suicide on a camera aimed at so many Vloggers and Youtubers.

Another question mark is whether the camera will get C-LOG. I’d say “unlikely”.

Unfortunately 5 axis IBIS was not on the specs sheet either.

I would say – be prepared for disappointment – and a heavy crop.

It’s a relief however that Canon finally seems to be making better quality video a ‘standard feature’ on future cameras, if something as relatively affordable as the M50 gets 4K.

On the one hand it’s good, because it solves the mushy resolution and moire of Canon’s most recent disappointments (80D, M5, M6, 6D Mark II, almost everything in fact). However if it’s a crap codec and a big crop with none of the nice features of the GH5 or Fuji X-H1 – is there much point, aside from Dual Pixel AF, to buying one?

Don’t get too carried away with the fact it has a Canon badge on it, just yet.

It could be a dollar short and a day late. 1460 days late to be precise.

Basic specs:

24.1 megapixel APS-C sensor (1.6x crop)

Dual Pixel AF

DIGIC 8 processor

4K video

ISO range 100-25600 (extended ISO 51200)

10fps burst rate (with servo AF up to 7.4fps)

EVF 2.36 million dot OLED

Free-angle LCD with 1.04 million dots

WiFi / Bluetooth / NFC

New C-RAW format for photos (compressed RAW) with 40% file size reduction vs uncompressed CR3

Two colour schemes (Black / White)

Pre-orders begin February 27th

Even if this camera would be a great future candidate for a Magic Lantern raw video hack, this might not even be possible. Canon recently switched the underlying platform of the EOS M cameras to that of the PowerShot compacts, whereas Magic Lantern is only designed for Canon’s EOS camera platform.