Sony's A5100 is available to pre-order from Adorama

Sony announced its A5100 yesterday. It has been referred to as both a replacement for the NEX-5T and as a camera sitting between the A6000 and the A5000. It has a 24.3 mepagixel CMOS sensor, auto-focus that's been described as 'lightning fast' (although not quite as fast as the A6000), upper sensitivity of ISO 25,600, a pop-up flash, wi-fi, and a touchscreen. But there's no EVF.

It'll come in black or white and Adorama has them available for pre-order. Body-only, it'll cost $550; if you'd prefer an A5100 with the 16-50mm lens, that'll be $700.

St Jude be praised! The Canon EOS M won an award!

It seems scarcely believeable but the much-derided Canon EOS M has managed to bag itself an award. I can hear you muttering and imagine you scratching your heads quizzically: just what was deemed award-worthy about the mirror-less camera with criminally slow auto-focusing speeds and risibly bad balance, and by whom? It would seem that the iF Design Award jury considered that its user interface was deserving of the Product interface: iF Communication Design Award 2014.

To give the EOS M its due, while its auto-focus was referred to as 'glacial', just about every review that I have read has lauded its touchscreen interface. At least Canon got something right there, then.

Canon also happened to pick up three other iF awards for its cameras: the 5D mark III, 100D, and the Powershot N. There were more its camcorders, printers, and projectors.

Canon EOS M2 announced in Japan. When next the rest of the world?

Finally! There have been months of rumours and speculation swirling about the upgrade to Canon's mirror-less EOS M camera and at last the great unveiling has taken place. At least, in Japan. The rest of the world must wait to see if Canon has put any guts and determination into this model. When the EOS M was launched last year, I was convinced that a late, single entry into the mirror-less market by Canon would have made it a camera worth waiting for. Canon would crack the mirror-less market and take the photography world by storm. Sadly, I was desperately mistaken when all that one heard about it was how mindbendingly slow the auto-focus was and it felt more like a camera that Canon felt obligated to produce, rather than one it had engineered with heart and soul. I'm not convinced that the EOS M2 is going to rekindle any verve or sparkle in the notion of a Canon mirror-less camera, either.

The M2's new Hybrid CMOS AF II auto-focus system is meant to be 2.3× faster than that in its predecessor, but the impression that I have is that they'd have to actively try to make it any slower, so this doesn't say very much. I'm seeing a few raised eyebrows that the M2 isn't capitalising on the dual pixel technology seen in the 70D, which makes for smoother and faster auto-focusing when in live view mode.

The M2 still uses an 18 megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor powered by a DIGIC 5 processor, but there's now wi-fi and it's approximately 8% smaller than the original EOS M. But why-oh-why when the Sony NEX-6 has a frames-per-second rate of 10, does the EOS M2 languish with 4.6? When you're not producing an entire range of mirror-less cameras, you need your solitary flagship to stand out from the crowd.

Apart from seeing if the auto-focus has improved, there's nothing about the EOS M2 that makes me want to pick it up and try it. There's no sense of excitement or innovation about it. It's coming over as just another camera and dammit, I don't want that.

Engadget is pricing it at ¥84,800 with a kit lens, or ¥64,800 body-only, due out later this month. Those prices equate to roughly $820 and $625, but you should never make straight conversions. When the EOS M2 does reach Europe and the US, it'll likely be more pricey.