The Canon 1300D or Rebel T6 is a great camera for taking photos and videos, and these are the best settings for taking videos. To make any changes to the 1300D for video, you must be in video mode. Turn dial mode to the bottommost option showing a video camera and you will hear the mirror appear inside the camera. That allows you to see through the view screen on the back, which is the only way you can shoot video on this camera. It also gives you access to menu tabs that are dedicated to video and the first thing to do here is to choose your video system. This was developed when TV systems were very different and if you wanted to show your videos on a TV screen, you had to align what was shot on camera with the televisions you were going to show the video on. There are two systems, one is PAL and the other is NTSC. NTSC tends to be the system that is operated in the United States and PAL tends to be the system that is operated in Europe and other parts of the world. There is not a huge amount of difference. However, it very slightly changes the way the camera works. So when you start looking at frame rates, you’ll see that under NTSC you get a choice of 60 frames per second or 30 frames per second frame rate. When you are in PAL you have the option of 50 frames per second and 25 frames per second. They are the real differences you will notice. Most people these days don’t shoot with DSLRs to show their videos on TVs. They tend to use it for social media or display it on a laptop. In which case, it doesn’t really make any difference. But to change that you have to go into the menus and go to tab 2 and at the bottom you have the option to change the video system.
The second thing to think about is file size and frame rate. These things are quite important because they will decide the quality of the videos you shoot. This camera is pretty good: it will capture 1080p, which is Full HD, and it will also capture 720p, which is standard HD, both of which are perfectly acceptable for social media platforms. To make those changes, we go back to the Video 2 tab and look for Movie Recording Size. If we click on that option, we have four options. Depending on whether you have chosen NTSC or PAL, your maximum frame rates will be 60fps or 50fps.
The third thing to think about when shooting movies with this camera is exposure. When you shoot with the Canon 1300D, you have many options. They’re all on the mode dial and go from fully manual to semi-automatic and then to fully automatic options. In most of these modes, the camera is trying to get the best exposure for the still images it is taking within the given parameters. that you have presented With movies it’s different. You have two options: you can shoot in automatic or you can shoot in manual. With Auto on the movie setting the camera will try to get the best possible exposure for you and in many cases it works very well, so I’d suggest initially at least shooting on Auto just to get an idea of how the camera works and then you don’t have to worry about the exposure because the camera will do the best it can for you. However, if you want to go Manual, there are different ways to change the various parameters for Manual that are different than the way you would for still images. In the menu, the film exposure is under the Video 1 tab and you get the two options, Auto or Manual. If you choose to go Manual then you have a lot more control over the settings than you can. You will see that you have options to set the Shutter Speed to set the Aperture and to set the ISO. For shutter speed, turn the main dial. By pressing the AV button here and turning the main dial, you can change the aperture. ISO is changed by pressing the flash button and turning the main dial.
The fourth thing you need to think about is sound. The Canon 1300D does not have an external microphone jack. It only has an internal microphone, so sound can be a bit limited with this camera. But if you go into Menus and on the Shooting 2 tab, the second one down is Sound Recording and you can set it to one of three options. You can have Automatic, Manual or Disabled. I’d argue against disabling it entirely because sometimes it’s useful to have sound, even if you don’t intend to use it in the final cut. Auto isn’t bad, but it will try to pick up as much sound as possible and you may not want that, you may not want ambient sound. Manual isn’t too bad as long as you’re reasonably close to the sound source. There’s a decibel bar at the bottom and as with most cameras the goal is to try to max out at about 12. In terms of your recording itself it’s actually pretty good so don’t I would object to using the internal camera. microphone, you just have to be a little careful.
The next couple of options we’re going to look at are on the Video 3 tab and may seem like they’re less important than other options, but they affect the way your video looks so they’re worth checking out. If we go to Video Tab 3, at the bottom is the Picture Style option. These are the same options you get with still images and you can choose Vivid or Sepia or many other options and some of them are set to bring out the best qualities for portraits and landscapes. With video, it tends to be best to try and shoot as flat a video as possible, so neutral is the best option to start with, so you should always set this to neutral for video until you make the decision to change the picture style . and shoot something different. The one just above on Video Tab 3 is Custom White Balance. It’s very important for shooting video because if you start moving around and shooting things in a different light, then the only stable element, the only constant, is going to be white balance.