The first thing you need to do when you are going to shoot video with the Canon EOS 2000D / Rebel T7 DSLR camera is to move down the icons on the DIAL MODE to the video mode, which is the camera icon. That is because this is the only way that you can get into the video modes, and the only way that you can shoot video. When you do that you will hear the mirror inside the camera popping up. This enables the live view screen at the back of the camera. This is the only way that you can shoot video, you can't look through the viewfinder and shoot video because you don't actually see an image through the viewfinder. You only see it through the live view screen at the back. When you move it down to the video mode, it also gives you the video MENU TABS when you press the menu button. It reveals that you have four VIDEO TABS which are specifically for shooting video.
The first thing you do when you are in those tabs is to decide upon your VIDEO SYSTEM. The video systems refer to the kind of systems which televisions used in different countries. So, for example, in Europe predominantly the system was called PAL and in the United States predominantly it was NTSC. It is important to get them right for your national and geographic area because it changes the frame rate. Go into VIDEO TAB 2 and at the bottom is video system. Open that up by pressing SET then you will see that you only have two options NTSC or PAL.
After setting the video system the next thing you need to look at is VIDEO FRAME RATE AND SIZE. This camera is pretty good – it will shoot 1080 at 30 or 25 frames per second and it will shoot 720 at 60 or 50 frames per second. Now 1080 is full HD and 720 is standard HD and both are perfectly good for social media and even for showing on reasonably large screens. Go into VIDEO TAB 2 and look at the very top one – at MOVIE RECORDING SIZE – then you will have the choice of 1920×1080 at 25 frames per second, 1920×1080 at 24 frames per second – which is established as the film speed for cinematic videography and then 1280×720 at 50 and then 640×480 at 25. Now the 640×480 I wouldn't bother with at all. It is so poor it is not worth looking at. But I would look at the 1080×25 and the 720×50. 25 frames a second is about the speed at which the human eye can detect movement and so that is the standard.
25 frames per second is reasonable quality video in terms of how the video will look. 50 frames a second looks a little bit smoother. Also shooting 50 frames per second means that you can use slow motion much more effectively. If you are on PAL your choices will be 25 frames and 50 frames per second. If you chose NTSC then the options you would have would be 30 frames a second and 60 frames a second. When you set the video systems they are the frame rates that change and they are really the only changes that there are, but it is a good idea I would say to shoot 1080×25 because you get the better frame quality if that is what you are looking for, or if you are looking for a certain smoothness or you want to do slow motion videography then shoot it 50 frames per second.
The third thing you need to look at is MOVIE EXPOSURE. When you are shooting stills you have an enormous choice for the exposure settings and the types of stills that you are going to shoot. So you go from MANUAL which doesn't set the exposure at all you are responsible for exposure – through the semi-automatic and then the completely automatic settings, here where the camera decides what the exposure should be and then sets the parameters accordingly. When you are shooting video you have only two choices. You have either automatic or you have manual. Where you make that choice is in VIDEO TAB 1 at the top which is MOVIE EXPOSURE. Now if you choose Auto this camera will take actually very good video it will decide the settings that are essentially the same as stills – ISO, shutter speed and aperture – and the camera will produce very well exposed video. But if you want to be a little more creative, then you can choose manual.
The next thing you need to think about when you are shooting videos with this camera is sound. Deciding on how you record sound is very important. Now if we go into the menus again and go to VIDEO TAB 2 then just below movie recording size you have SOUND RECORDING and if you click on there you have three options. The first option is disable. Now I don't recommend that you disable sound entirely even if you have decided that you are not going to have any of the sound from the video in your final edit. This is because audio is useful when you are identifying clips. The other two choices are either AUTO or MANUAL. The auto recording on this camera is actually pretty good. The downside of it is that because it is automatic and it doesn't know what sounds you are particularly trying to record it will pick up a lot of ambient sound. Now if you are shooting something which has ambient sound in it then that is not a problem. But if you just want to pick up some specific sound like somebody talking then Auto may not be the right setting for you in which case you want to come down to MANUAL. Manual setting allows you to set the sound recording level so that the sound that you are trying to record is the sound that this camera picks up. So you need to decide whether to set manual or whether to set Auto.
The next thing you may want to look at is the autofocus method. The Canon T7 has two auto focus methods if you are looking through the viewfinder then the system here is very quick and very sharp. If you are looking through LiveView screen then it is a little bit slower but you do get some choices and we can look at them here. So if you look on menu then if you look at VIDEO TAB 1 and down to AF METHOD then you can see the choices that you have here you have three choices you have flexizone, live mode and quick mode. Flexizone is the same as single AF method through the viewfinder which means that if you press the shutter button halfway down then the camera will focus, and the good thing about this is that you can be shooting live video and you can do that and it will still focus which is pretty good. The next one down from that is called live mode and the advantage of that is that it has facial recognition within it which means that if you are videoing people then it will automatically try to focus on one of the faces that is in the frame and that is pretty good and pretty useful but again in order to do so you need to press the shutter button. The third one is quick mode. Now this doesn't really work as well though it is designed to it is called quick mode because what it does is it comes out of video mode, goes into the viewfinder mode, focuses and then bounces back into video mode again. So evidently you can't shoot video and use quick mode at the same time so it is not really as useful for videoing as one might think although it may be slightly quicker it does stop the video in process and it does mean that you have to restart the video again, but I would use flexizone for pretty much everything because even if you have faces in the frame it's up to you to decide what you want to focus on you may want want to focus on the face you may want to focus on something else and if when you are in live mode there are no faces then it does revert to flexizone anyway. But those are the AF options that you have in Live View and they are the AF options you have for shooting video.
The next thing you might want to look at is picture style. If you have shot stills with this camera already you may well be aware of the option for picture styles and these can increase the contrast, boost saturation and make your images or punchy a more vivid or they can desaturate your images and in one case make your picture entirely monochrome. Well the same options apply for video and you might be inclined as you perhaps do with your picture styles for still is to leave it on auto but I would recommend that you actually change is so that it is in neutral. So if we go into the menus and into VIDEO TAB 3 at the bottom of that you will see the option for PICTURE STYLE and you will also see that it has all the same options as you have stills so at the top it has Auto and then standard and portrait, etc. and as I say I would choose NEUTRAL. The reason for that is that when you are shooting video you want it as flat as possible with no over saturation no over contrast, nothing that will actually make editing that video more difficult. You can add saturation when you are editing you can add contrast when you are editing but you can't really take out those things very easily – certainly not as easily as when you are using stills because you are dealing with large amounts of information and 25 or 50 frames per second. So the objective really is to produce really flat video and then add your style when you are producing your video in the Edit.
Finally the thing I always look at when I am shooting my videos is white balance. If youa re shooting in a single location you might be happy just to leave it on auto and the auto white balance on this camera is very good and there is no reason really to want to change it but if you are shooting in different locations where the lighting might be slightly different and the color contrast and the color tones might be slightly different, then it is recommended really to set the white balance at every location and the reason for that is you want a continuity through your video so that you don't move from one location to another and the lighting looks completely different. The option to change your custom white balance is in menus and if you go to the SHOOTING TAB 3 then above picture style you can click on that and get the option to change white balance it is not very difficult. It is fairly straightforward if you buy the manual then I will show you exactly how to do it but I would recommend as I say if you're changing location frequently when you're shooting video to change that white balance and set that white balance on every occasion when you change location if you want to know more they might not take a look at our manual which has been specially written for this camera in fact we're giving away a sample of our manual absolutely free it contains 2 full course videos including the full video on shooting movies with the rebel t7 all you have to do is click on the link here or in the description below and we'll send it to you straight away absolutely free. These are the best video settings for the Canon EOS 2000D/ Rebel T7.
