Recommendation of travel lens for Canon

[quelle]

I have a Canon 500D with Tamron 17-50mm and the fifty fifty bought 10 years ago but haven't been using for a long time as I shifted to mirrorless.

Recently bought a Canon M50 after my Olympus pen spoilt and tried mounting my old lenses with an adapter.
The tamron lens is infested with fungus hence very blurry and sharpness cannot be compared to the kit lens of the M50 which is 15-45mm. The nifty fifty works and looks fine.

I'm looking for an all rounded lens for travelling with fixed aperture, with a budget of $500. Don't mind a third party brand like tamron or sigma or pre-owned. Don't mind canon EF-S lenses instead of restricting to EF-M lenses since I have adapter and I don't rule out going back to DSLR in the future. Travel lens will be used for general shooting from portrait to food to street and most importantly not too heavy. Or should I spend the money to clean the tamron lens instead?

 

[Octarine]

Maybe the next thing to buy should be a dry cabinet?
For fixed aperture and your budget there's no solution in the EF-M line up. There are the usual super zooms (18-200) but no fixed aperture.
In EF-S line-up you have the 17-55 as only constant aperture lens, but noticeable bigger (laws pf physics). That leaves the EF lenses, with the commonly used 25-105 as travel lens. But here, the lens starts weighing more than the body, size is even bigger and it slowly defeats the purpose of a small camera kit for traveling.
There aren't many third party vendors for EF-M mount, the ones for EF-S and EF have the same problem of weight and size.
I would go with the 15-45 for now, that's pretty ok for traveling. Add your 50mm and maybe get a second hand 85mm 1.8 for the portraits.
Don't overdo the camera equipment, enjoy the traveling.

 

[quelle]

Maybe the next thing to buy should be a dry cabinet?
For fixed aperture and your budget there's no solution in the EF-M line up. There are the usual super zooms (18-200) but no fixed aperture.
In EF-S line-up you have the 17-55 as only constant aperture lens, but noticeable bigger (laws pf physics). That leaves the EF lenses, with the commonly used 25-105 as travel lens. But here, the lens starts weighing more than the body, size is even bigger and it slowly defeats the purpose of a small camera kit for traveling.
There aren't many third party vendors for EF-M mount, the ones for EF-S and EF have the same problem of weight and size.
I would go with the 15-45 for now, that's pretty ok for traveling. Add your 50mm and maybe get a second hand 85mm 1.8 for the portraits.
Don't overdo the camera equipment, enjoy the traveling.

I kept it in a dry box but will invest in an electronic dry cabinet I guess.

I am thinking of sigma 17-50mm f2.8 to be used with my adapter. A pre-owned cost only about 300ish. It's a little heavy but still acceptable. Just wondering if the image quality will be significantly better than the kit 15-45mm or else it defeats the purpose

 

[thoongeng]

Reading reviews, seems like the EF-M 15-45 is quite sharp except at the 45mm end and only at the corners
The Sigma 17-50mm should be similar except that it has the f2.8 advantage
The 2nd hand price for the Sigma looks quite good, probably can buy it to test out yourself to see if there's any big difference to justify

An alternative I can think of is to get the EF-M 22mm f2 instead, use it with the 50mm when situation arises that needs the larger aperture. Disadvantage is that you have to change lenses more often.

 

[Octarine]

Many tests have the Sigma on APS-C bodies and the 15-45 on EOS M body, one cannot compare the results directly across different platforms. But I would think they are quite close in their performance. The only noticeable problem with 15-45 is the vignetting of several stops (!) in the corners. LR and Canon image program will correct this using the lens profiles, though. If you shoot JPG then just apply the lens correction profile in the camera.
My travel set has the EF-S 24mm, EF40mm and sometimes either 50mm or 85mm depending on destination. First two lenses with M5 or 77D body not only give a lightweight travel set, but also a less obvious and intrusive setup.
Changing the lenses to 10-18 and 24-105 f/4 gives a noticeable jump in weight and catches far more attention.