Canon T4i Digital Camera Review

Recording Options

Like its predecessor, the T4i employs H.264 compression wrapped up in the .MOV container. Videos can be recorded at 1920x1080px (1080p) at either 30 or 24 frames per second, 1280x720px (720p) at 60fps, or 640x480px (VGA) at 30fps. Find out how the performed in our video image quality test./r:link_to_content

Video Controls

Auto Controls

In any other shooting mode, the T4i takes over control of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. The user only focuses (optionally) and frames the shot—everything else is handled by the processor. The camera does a pretty good job in most circumstances, but in some cases it can be fooled by scenes that have a very broad dynamic range.

Zoom

Interestingly, one of the most-loved features of the T3i's video mode—a 3 to 10x zoom that cropped the sensor to achieve insane focal lengths without loss of detail—has been dropped from the T4i. The only option for zooming is to use the manual zoom action of your lens.

Focus

One of the T4i's most notable improvements is its implementation of Canon's new Movie Servo AF. In this context, "Movie Servo AF" means continuous autofocus during video recording, which has long been something of a holy grail for DSLR video enthusiasts. Few manufacturers have ever gotten it right, whether due to noise from the AF mechanism, too-slow focus acquisition, or other snags. The T4i is almost, almost there. With the 18-135mm STM lens autofocus is really very close to absolutely silent. While it's not blazing fast (it won't ever be mistaken for real focus pulling), in good light it tends to find its subject reasonably quickly/smoothly and without too much hunting. In poor light, however, it can really struggle, and its desperate searching could ruin a video pretty quickly.

Three focus modes can be engaged during movie recording: Face-detect + Tracking, FlexiZone Multi, and FlexiZone Single. All of these work well, and all seem to work at pretty much the same speed. We would have thought that the single point AF would have been a bit quicker in continuous AF, but that wasn't really the case.

Exposure Controls

When the mode dial is set to "M," the T4i allows the user to adjust aperture, shutter speed, and ISO setting, which is great for videographers who like to do it all themselves. You can also change these values while recording, though doing so may cause your video to make sudden jumps in brightness or darkness. White balance can be set in any mode, as can Picture Styles, which are previewed in real time.

Other Controls

Also present in the movie options is a mode called "Video Snapshot." In essence, this mode creates "albums" of short video clips that are meant to be played together in sequence. Canon bills it as a way of creating "dynamic short movies"—a sort of video collage. The short clips can be either 2, 4, or 8 seconds long, and only clips of the same length can be combined into an album. Optionally, music stored on the memory card can be used as a backing track for the video collage.

Audio Features

The T4i has an on-board stereo microphone (positioned just in front of the hot shoe), and also offers an external mic jack on the left side of the body. Within the main menu, sound recording can be set to automatic or manual, or can be entirely disabled. When it's set to manual, the user can specify the recording level. In any of the modes, you can also turn the wind filter and attenuator on or off (note that wind filter only works with the built-in mic) to reduce audio distortions.