James is 6

My incredible nephew celebrated his sixth birthday over the weekend. I brought along my new camera, the Canon EOS M, to test it out. Family members, enjoy the pictures. Camera enthusiasts, I've included some of the settings for the pictures.

Shot on program mode, ISO 400, 22mm lens, 1/60th, f 4, flash

The tiny flash included with the kit has impressed me. I shot this across the room and both these kids have ridiculously blue eyes that normally turn red. It hit them with plenty of light to stop that from happening.

Shot on program mode, ISO 400, 100mm macro lens, 1/60th, f 4, flash

I also purchased the lens converter, which allows the point and shoot sized camera work with all of my bigger lenses. I wanted to see if the flash would reach past a longer lens with a lens hood on. To my surprise, it did.

Shot on manual mode, ISO 3200, 40mm pancake lens, 1/60th, f 4, no flash

Typical portrait of James these days. The 40mm lens is also new, because I wanted another tiny lens to go along with the camera. Loving the results so far; it's crisp and fast.

Shot on program mode, ISO 400, 40mm pancake lens, 1/200th, f 11, flash

My brother decided to photobomb this picture. Thanks, bro.

Shot on manual mode, ISO 800, 40mm pancake lens, 1/80th, f 2.8 no flash, window light

I was blown away by these shots; beautiful results that I would've gotten with my DSLR. Having super cute kids to photograph doesn't hurt either.

Overall, my first impression of the Canon EOS M is that I'm liking it. It's nice to get sharp pictures from a smaller camera. I'm still going to use my DSLR for important shoots, but this is a great alternative to my point and shoot camera. The battery life on the camera is a little short. I've used it 3 times and it needs to be recharged. Granted, this camera only has the LCD display for a viewfinder, so that is eating up the juice pretty quickly. I'm used to having multiple batteries for each of my cameras, so this isn't going to bug me much. The focus is a bit slow at times. I'm still playing with the auto assist beam on it and I'm not sure if that will help it focus better. The good thing is that with my other lenses, I can flip on the manual focus to get around it. I'm still undecided on the touch screen LCD. While it's nice to be able to touch the screen to tell the camera where to focus and to take a picture, I've noticed that I accidentally hit it often. It's a minor annoyance which can be disabled, so again, not a big deal.