mmurph
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I have it. I think it is a great camera!
I bought it primarily for video at first. But right from the start, I was very happy with the 9 point auto focus that I unde5rstand was inherited from the 60D. Much, much better than the auto focus on the T3i.
I like the articulating LCD screen (that the T3i also had.) The touch screen LCD for focusing in Live View mode - with "face" trackling capability - is very responsive. It is also very useful to set all of teh camera parameters in Live View mode on teh touch screen. A big, big plus!
I bought my T4i along with the 40mm Pancake lens. The 40 mmm and teh new 18-135 mm have the newest STM focusing in Live View mode. This is a silent focusing more that can be used along with auto focus for video, a first fopr a Canon DSLR.
It works incredibly well for video. It "floats" into focus in a calibrated, step fashion from one focus distance to the next in a way taht looks perfect on video. IT usually does not "hunt" in bright light teh way that older lenses would, which lookl terrible in a video.
Probably the two best way sto use that are:
1) Use the "face" (or any still object) tracking by touching on the LCD screen. The nice part about using this with a "non-face" is taht you can focus on an object of interest in a video, and that object will stay in focus as you pan or recompose.
2) When you need to shift focus in a scene, you touch the new point of focus on the LCD, and teh focus shifts at a rate that looks good on video, and it usually "nails" the new focus piint without huntiung (in bright light.)
The STM lenses, including the new 18-135 mmm STMM kit lens, focus very well in reguilar still image mode.
The 18-135 also has an IS function customized to hand held video images. I have not had a chance to test that yet.
The one big negative to me is in the way Canon enabled video auto exposure. In ALL auto exposure modes, the camera will automatically adjust expose using shutter speed, aperature, AND ISO!
In fact, it seems to prefer to vary the ISO rather than the 2 other variables. Worse yet, there is no way to set a maximum ISO in video mode! (There is a max auto ISO but it only applies to stills.)
This is a big frustration that makes auto exposure alomost unusable for video for me. The way the camera is set up, Canon could easily give you an aperature [preffered, shutter preferred, or program auto exposure, with at least one not using ISO so aggressively.
Lucking, this is something taht can be fixed by firmware. I am hoping that either Magic Lantern or Canon correct this in a future release.
Alll in all, this is a great camera at teh price point. For teh most part, the image quklaity seems to be the same as the T3i, although the Digic 5 gives the camera some extra processing power that can reduce noise in some modes. It also has multiple picture HDR and High ISO noise reduction functions that are new for Canon.
I started a blog on the camera in June, but I have been out of range of Wi Fi/4G for many weeks this summer on vacation, so I have not kept it up.
Good luck!
Best,
Michael
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