Camera overheating is pretty much incomprehensible at this point

[kye]

Gerald just dropped a video talking about how he has discovered that camera overheating tests are almost completely unreliable.

TLDR; he tested the same camera in the same environment with the same settings, and got results ranging between 55 minutes and 8.5 hours.

Here's the video, which talks about it in much much greater detail:

I think this pretty much means that camera overheating is an un-testable risk for any camera without a fan.  

This is because:

• The tester probably didn't tell you what ambient temp they tested at
• The tester definitely didn't tell you what airflow and ventilation was present
• The tester probably didn't test all the modes you will use
• The manufacturer might update firmware after the testing and completely invalidate the data
• The test won't have been in the situation you're recording in
  and, lastly, in case you're still with me...
• The test is probably a random number generator anyway

I think that overheating is now officially the camera boogyman.

Sceptical of overheating in general? I've personally missed moments when my iPhone overheated........and that's a camera that no-one has identified as having a thermal management problem.

[MrSMW]

All I know about overheating is this:

Sony ZV1 on tripod, indoors, ambient around 25-30c = approx 20 minutes max and it's cooked.

Lumix S1H on tripod, direct sun, 40+ in the shade = either the battery or the card will run out first.

The obvious conclusion (in general) is if you need reliability in this department, a heat sink at least is a must and ideally, a fan.

Or live above 66° 33'N.

 

[Marcio Kabke Pinheiro]

Or, maybe (TI guy thinking problem) there is some serious issues with the firmware on the cameras and there are some processes causing memory leaks or going wild.

[IronFilm]

  On 3/7/2024 at 12:11 PM, Marcio Kabke Pinheiro said:

Or, maybe (TI guy thinking problem) there is some serious issues with the firmware on the cameras and there are some processes causing memory leaks or going wild.

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You work for Texas Instruments? 😉

 

[kye]

Actually, I take back my comments that overheating testing is incomprehensible, because I found this.... (linked to timestamp)

...and in case you don't want to hit play, the BM Micro Studio Camera was used to film inside the race car of a 24 hour race in Daytona, and:

• it was being powered from the car
• it was recording 4K to a 4TB SSD in BRAW 8:1
• it recorded for 24 hours straight with no overheating and no dropped frames
• the average temp in the car was 120F / 48C
• the suspension in a race car is stiff and shaking the camera too

Just goes to show - all these huge cameras that overheat in air-conditioning are just flat-out design failures.

[eatstoomuchjam]

I'm going to go on a limb and guess the micro 4k g2 has no IBIS.  There are a lot of 4K cameras without IBIS that don't overheat.  A number of people have used Z Cams in all-day shoots in similar or worse conditions and said that while other components (storage, monitor) were failing, the camera just kept ticking along (even at 6K).  Once IBIS is introduced, sensor cooling gets a lot harder - it's pretty tough to attach a heat sink to a thing that is suspended by magnets.  😃

[MrSMW]

Probably also not recording to an internal card?

[sanveer]

  On 3/22/2024 at 1:32 PM, eatstoomuchjam said:

I'm going to go on a limb and guess the micro 4k g2 has no IBIS.  There are a lot of 4K cameras without IBIS that don't overheat.  A number of people have used Z Cams in all-day shoots in similar or worse conditions and said that while other components (storage, monitor) were failing, the camera just kept ticking along (even at 6K).  Once IBIS is introduced, sensor cooling gets a lot harder - it's pretty tough to attach a heat sink to a thing that is suspended by magnets.  😃

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Sonys were overheating well before IBIS became a thing 🤣🤣🤣

Also the kind of Card used, sensor and body size, heatsinks used, processors used, body type etc should decide how much a camera overheats. Some Canons have improved heat management after firmware updates. 

[eatstoomuchjam]

  On 3/22/2024 at 3:59 PM, sanveer said:

Sonys were overheating well before IBIS became a thing

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Ha!  You have a point, but that was when 4K was cutting edge.  Do any current Sony bodies without IBIS overheat in 4K mode?  
 

  On 3/22/2024 at 3:59 PM, sanveer said:

Some Canons have improved heat management after firmware updates. 

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At least in the case of the R5, the heat management is a little bit improved, but also Canon just stopped doing stupid things like having a hard-coded cooldown timer instead of basing it on actual temperatures.  That should probably set some sort of record for dumbest decision made in the development made in a modern camera.

[kye]

All good points, but perhaps most significantly, it has a cooling fan.....  in something approaching the size of an action camera.

Sony, etc, have no excuses.

[Marcio Kabke Pinheiro]

  On 3/9/2024 at 12:45 AM, IronFilm said:

You work for Texas Instruments? 😉

 

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"Texas Instruments" sound like a big band from Fort Worth. 😀

[EduPortas]

  On 3/7/2024 at 7:17 AM, kye said:

 

I think that overheating is now officially the camera boogyman.

Sceptical of overheating in general? I've personally missed moments when my iPhone overheated........and that's a camera that no-one has identified as having a thermal management problem.

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Pretty sure the size of the camera is the big culprit here. Sony's tend to be smaller devices and lots of them overheat. This is well established ten years plus after the first A7 came out.

My Z50 gets hotter than a young female American tourist in Cancun during Spring Break while recording just 10-15 minutes of 4K in an indoor setting. Again, it's a smaller device.

So if you want more reliability you're going to have to chose a bigger camera. DSLRs rarely ever overheat. They are bigger units, in general. Most of them have recording limits, yes, but overheating was not a problem just a few years ago. Bigger MILCs like Pannys don't experience this problem.

 

 

[kye]

  On 4/10/2024 at 11:18 PM, EduPortas said:

Pretty sure the size of the camera is the big culprit here. Sony's tend to be smaller devices and lots of them overheat. This is well established ten years plus after the first A7 came out.

My Z50 gets hotter than a young female American tourist in Cancun during Spring Break while recording just 10-15 minutes of 4K in an indoor setting. Again, it's a smaller device.

So if you want more reliability you're going to have to chose a bigger camera. DSLRs rarely ever overheat. They are bigger units, in general. Most of them have recording limits, yes, but overheating was not a problem just a few years ago. Bigger MILCs like Pannys don't experience this problem.

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The BMMCC that did that recorded for 24 hours straight in 120F / 48C was smaller than almost any other MILC.

There are no excuses.

[EduPortas]

  On 4/10/2024 at 11:59 PM, kye said:

The BMMCC that did that recorded for 24 hours straight in 120F / 48C was smaller than almost any other MILC.

There are no excuses.

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Hmmm. Not really comparable since the BMMCC has no LCD or EVF.

It's a cube that functions as a heatsink and makes huge ergonomic sacrifices vs any decent MILC or DSLR.

[kye]

  On 4/11/2024 at 4:40 AM, EduPortas said:

Hmmm. Not really comparable since the BMMCC has no LCD or EVF.

It's a cube that functions as a heatsink and makes huge ergonomic sacrifices vs any decent MILC or DSLR.

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The entire answer is that it has a fan, despite being tiny.  It doesn't need to act as a heatsink because it has a fan, and if the BMMCC can have a fan, then any small camera can have a fan.

Do you think that adding a screen and EVF and a handle to the BMMCC would take it from shooting for 24 hours straight in 120F / 48C to overheating in air-conditioning in under an hour?  Of course not, because..  it has a fan!

It was also considerably cheaper than many/all of the cameras being discussed here.

But it's not even just about having a fan..  even without one, there are cameras with much better thermal controls around.  
I routinely shoot in very hot conditions (35-40+C / 95-105+F) and have overheated my iPhone, but have never overheated my XC10, my GH5, my OG BMPCC, my BMMCC, or my GX85.  All this "it's tiny so it overheats in air-conditioning" just sounds like Stockholm Syndrome to me.

[eatstoomuchjam]

Another factor for overheating can be the processor in the camera.  The Z Cam E2 series are known for running very well even in fairly extreme conditions (though other components such as memory cards, SSD's, monitors, etc overheat).  This is partly because of proper cooling/lack of IBIS, but also because a lot of image functions in the camera are done with ASIC vs the FPGA that some of the overheating cameras use.  It has the drawback that Z Cam can't implement some changes (at least not without releasing a whole new controller board), but has big advantages for cooling and power use (can run for hours on an NP-F550).

I guess they added a cooling fan to the new F6 Pro - so maybe they changed processors for it or they decided to cool the memory card, etc.

[EduPortas]

  On 4/11/2024 at 7:48 AM, kye said:

The entire answer is that it has a fan, despite being tiny.  It doesn't need to act as a heatsink because it has a fan, and if the BMMCC can have a fan, then any small camera can have a fan.

Do you think that adding a screen and EVF and a handle to the BMMCC would take it from shooting for 24 hours straight in 120F / 48C to overheating in air-conditioning in under an hour?  Of course not, because..  it has a fan!

It was also considerably cheaper than many/all of the cameras being discussed here.

But it's not even just about having a fan..  even without one, there are cameras with much better thermal controls around.  
I routinely shoot in very hot conditions (35-40+C / 95-105+F) and have overheated my iPhone, but have never overheated my XC10, my GH5, my OG BMPCC, my BMMCC, or my GX85.  All this "it's tiny so it overheats in air-conditioning" just sounds like Stockholm Syndrome to me.

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You're totally right, friend. That makes all the diff in the world for such a small device.

[kye]

  On 4/11/2024 at 3:14 PM, eatstoomuchjam said:

Another factor for overheating can be the processor in the camera.  The Z Cam E2 series are known for running very well even in fairly extreme conditions (though other components such as memory cards, SSD's, monitors, etc overheat).  This is partly because of proper cooling/lack of IBIS, but also because a lot of image functions in the camera are done with ASIC vs the FPGA that some of the overheating cameras use.  It has the drawback that Z Cam can't implement some changes (at least not without releasing a whole new controller board), but has big advantages for cooling and power use (can run for hours on an NP-F550).

I guess they added a cooling fan to the new F6 Pro - so maybe they changed processors for it or they decided to cool the memory card, etc.

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Interesting comments about the ASIC vs FPGA, and the trade-offs of not being able to add new features via updates.  I guess everything comes with benefits and drawbacks.

  On 4/11/2024 at 7:08 PM, EduPortas said:

You're totally right, friend. That makes all the diff in the world for such a small device.

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The sad thing is that the more that people lower their expectations about stuff like this, the more the manufacturers will take advantage of it.  In economics the phrase is "what the market will bear".

Dictionary definition: https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/charge+what+the+market+will+bare 

  Quote

You should charge as much money for a product or service as customers are willing to pay.

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Quote from HBR: https://hbr.org/2012/09/how-to-find-out-what-customers-will-pay

  Quote

The right answer to that question is a company should charge “what the market will bear” — in other words, the highest price that customers will pay.

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The HBR article goes on to talk about various strategies for setting pricing, but one element is common - it's about the customers perceptions and their willingness.  

The more we normalise products overheating, having crippled functionality, endlessly increasing resolution but not fixing the existing pain points in their product lines, the more they will do it.

[eatstoomuchjam]

  On 4/12/2024 at 12:01 AM, kye said:

Interesting comments about the ASIC vs FPGA, and the trade-offs of not being able to add new features via updates.  I guess everything comes with benefits and drawbacks.

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At least not new features for the stuff that's baked into the ASIC.  At least in the case of Z Cam, the E2 got so many features through firmware updates that it's basically a different camera now than when it was released.  🙂