Gadgetory

well I'm Shawn Hollister with the verge and this is the Canon t4i the latest camera in canons prosumer line you may notice it looks a lot like the t3i from last year and it actually shares the same 18 megapixel aps-c sensor as the t2i of the year before that if you took pictures with all three cameras at the exact same place time with the exam settings you'd get very similar images the difference is the t4i figures out more of those settings for you and gives you more and simpler controls externally it looks the same but the buttons stick out further making them easier to find by touch the power switch now has a third position to switch you directly into movie mode without having to turn the mode dial all the way around and most importantly the 3-inch 1.04 million dot articulating screen that pivots 270 degrees up and 90 degrees down it's now a touchscreen and lets you control every part of the camera that might not sound like much of an advantage if you're a fan of physical controls but it can actually be quite a help for one thing if you put the touchscreen in one hand and the physical controls in the other you can navigate to settings faster than with either alone for another in Live View mode you can tap directly on a spot to autofocus there or even touch a particular subject in the viewfinder to take a picture as soon as they come into focus canons done a pretty good job with the touch screen gestures you can not only tap but swipe through controls quickly and zoom in on photos with pinch-to-zoom but the best part about using the touch screen is that it doesn't make a sound when you're in movie mode with the t4i canons added stereo microphones audio leveling and most importantly continuous autofocus during video recording if you're a serious filmmaker you're probably going to want to stick to manual focus but for home movies and the like it's not that at all we found that it did detect objects in front of us fairly easily and switched between focus points although for things that were further away it had trouble locking onto anything at all it's also not particularly quick to phone even with the new STM lenses the company rolled out they do smoke as smoothly and silently but quickly not so much images come out crisp bright and clear exactly as you'd expect from a DSLR of this class but not much more for instance images in low-light aren't necessarily any less noisy than its predecessors though they are slightly brighter and more detailed autofocus is definitely improved with a full nine cross-type autofocus points compared to the one of its predecessors we had a much easier time focusing on distant subjects than either of the other two there's an auto picture style boat now which can let you get more color out of scenes without you having to select one yourself in two dedicated positions on the dial for multi shot noise reduction and HDR mode both combine several images together for for the multi shot or three for the HDR and they produce surprisingly good results as you can see here the HDR can definitely improve the overall exposure of the image although you do lose some detail in the process the very best new feature of the t4i isn't on the spec sheet or any press release though it's the far more professional sound that the reflex action of the camera makes when the mirror flips up it's just so much more satisfying to hear that rather than t2 and t3 ni screech whenever you take a shot that reflex action is probably also responsible for the improved speed here the t4i captures five images per second as opposed to the three point seven of the earlier cameras and if you've got a sufficiently fast SD card the buffer is quick enough at shoving out those images that you can keep snapping indefinitely if you've already got a t2i or t3 I don't plan to use the touchscreen and don't do a lot of video recording there's perhaps not any reason to upgrade right now but if you do or if you're a first-time DSLR buyer looking for an all-purpose camera that's easy to use and has interchangeable lenses the t4i is an easy sell you