SMD79

Unfortunately, I didn't pay attention to that. I did label all my batteries 1-8. But I'll pay more attention to the battery now as I keep running more tests. The next big event we're shooting isn't for a couple weeks so I'm gonna put these cameras through a few side by side tests to try to see if it's just a bad apple, or bad battery or...whatever. If I find anything of importance I'll report back for sure. Today I tried to just leave that same camera on standard and get it to overheat while not recording and it didn't. I then put i back in high temp mode with the other 2 A7IV cameras and rolled at 4k60 for a while with the screen NOT pulled out and they all ran into high temp warnings. I then pulled the screens away and they all went on recording for quite a bit longer before eventually all stopping from heat. The recordings did keep though. This bummed me out because I was hoping for consistency here. This was not the case at the wedding on New Years when only the one camera I had issues with out of the box had issues during the long church ceremony recording while the others did not. I also tried messing with display settings and didn't see any improvements worth noting. Gonna keep at it before I return it. Will update soon.

Saw this thread because I was trying to see how common this issue is. I purchased 3 Sony A7IV cameras. One of them overheated and shut down while setting it up out of the box! I was NOT recording and was in a cool house (64 degrees inside at the time) indoors. I took it out of the box and was setting it up when I saw the overheat warning symbol. I had no card in and had not recorded anything. Kept setting things up and it shut down entirely. It wasn't hot. A little warm, yes, but nothing major and I've shot with Sony Alpha cameras for 8 years now. I'm an experienced Sony Pro member with 7 total cameras and lots of experience so I know how far they can be pushed. I switched to high temp mode and moved on. The issue did NOT happen with my other two A7IV cameras during set up. The LCD was flush to the camera for all 3 camera setups and I'd say it was only 15 minutes in with a fully charged Sony battery when the shut down occurred. Again, without even rolling! We then shot our first wedding yesterday with the 3 new cameras plus my A7siii. All 4 cameras on a high temp setting so they'll last longer. About 15/20 minutes into the ceremony the original camera gets the overheating symbol! The others last the full 1hr ceremony with no warning. It's the same camera that had issues during setup (I labeled each one so I'd know). Pulling out the screen helped and the warning went away but the ceremony was in a cool church in the winter. We film outdoors in summer heat of Los Angeles all the time so there's no way this one will make it thru that. I'm convinced there are bad apples. For me it's 1 in 3 has heat issues. I'll be returning for another unit and will put it through its paces. I'll try to remember to post back but judging by me setting up my 3 cameras and my wife's two cameras (same a7iv cameras) and only this one having issues... I think there's just some bad copies out there.

New to this forum. I know it's funny to ask questions when I have 2 A7s cameras in my possession and a 3rd on it's way, but I don't always have the time or means to test these things accurately so here's my questions that I'm hoping Andrew can answer in detail: 1) We shoot everything at 60p for our events/weddings. I'm currently using the APS-C mode which from your review it sounds like it's the best choice at 60p. I was looking forward to getting full frame lenses in the near future because I've seen a few videos that show that APS-C "crop mode" is about one full stop MORE noisy than full frame mode. Have you experienced this? And would that mean it just comes down to... When shooting at 60p: APS-C mode has less moire and aliasing and rolling shutter and is "impressively detailed" ... while Full Frame Mode is less noisy as you start to crank up the ISO, but apparently it's softer? 2) One thing I'm not sure you touched on but bothers me a bit is the inability to adjust White Balance while recording. While rolling during the sunset hours the other day for a long event, colors changed like crazy and while good old AWB did a nice job...it went from looking normal, to looking overly blue for 2 minutes, then to looking like the camera adjusted properly. 2 minutes of ugly color is a bummer. Wish I could have adjusted the white balance in camera while recording. I'm bummed that the time limit for recording even for NTSC versions is under 30 mins. I have the GH4 as well and it's nice to know that I don't have to monitor that during a long recording. Granted, I'll be selling my GH4 shortly because, well, when the sun goes down...nothing seems to come close to the A7s. Thanks for your response and great review so far!