7d or GH1

Does the GH1 also overheat? I want to jump out of my DVX, even though I still love it! And, the prices of these dslr's are great as compared to a video camera. And, they have a dual use.
 
Barry_Green said:
Agreed with PerroneFord. Especially with the Canons, which do a great job as a micro-budget digi-cine camera, but aren't well suited as a video camera.

mhood, I think you were operating under a misunderstanding, by thinking the SD mode would be less prone to overheating. It seems like it should be, I can see why you thought that, but in fact it's not; it's more prone to overheating than the 1080p mode! The frame rate is what's making it more prone to overheat, not the frame size. So 720/60 would overheat just as much as 480/60. The 1080/24 will actually be less likely to overheat because the sensor's only read out 40% as often.
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Could it also be overheating more because the processor is working harder to scale the image all the way down to 480 instead of "only" to 1080? Would that be an issue?
 
Seems like a reasonable guess; only way to really know would be to run an overheat test in 720/60p and then run it in 480/60p and see if one overheats sooner than the other...
 
Um, my opinion is…I believe all these DSLR cameras overheat. It’s just that some, like the Canons have an threshold indicator that displays this and shuts off the camera. But the results from all of them are the same (IMO) which basically translates to a negative affect on your footage (granier/noiser IQ) when the sensor gets too hot. I look at the Canons shutting off similar to its AGC where you have no control over when the camera decides it wants to call it quits. I bet if this feature was bypassed with a firmware update most folks wouldn’t have a problem with continuously shooting (other than getting more grain in their footage). I say that because many of the folks that had these problems are restarting their cams after only 20 seconds being off…. But what do I know.
 
Ian-T, i don't think that your argument that all DSLR overheat has any ground. Let me try explaining with my experience with laptops. I have owned several laptops over time and all overheat just as the DSLR, but when i bought a "PB" laptop, it used to start the fan every other minute making it imposible to use in a quite atmosphere, i returned it and took an "FS" instead, im on my third year with the "FS" still waiting for the irritating fan. Before all these i used to own a "D" which would crush everytime the temp went up.
Very allergic to that word "overheating" on a new digital product.
But as said modern multinationals have turned consumers to guinea pigs
 
Lake Films said:
Well, for me, it looks like the GH1 is the one...
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To be fair, the overheating issue on the 7D might be overstated. YMMV, but most users have found that the camera doesn't overheat unless it's been shooting constantly for hours in a hot environment. As long you deactivate the live view for a little while between takes, you should be to avoid overheating.
 
Barry_Green said:
The frame rate is what's making it more prone to overheat, not the frame size. So 720/60 would overheat just as much as 480/60. The 1080/24 will actually be less likely to overheat because the sensor's only read out 40% as often.
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Actually, that makes perfect sense...much more sense than my assumption that less work on the codec would equate to less heat. Believe me, if there were a 480/30, I'd be all over it for this Web-based stuff I'm doing right now.

Does a 5D shoot at 480/30?
 
ydgmdlu said:
most users have found that the camera doesn't overheat unless it's been shooting constantly for hours in a hot environment.
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Minutes in an office...25minutes...start another take immediately...10minutes...overheating warning. It was a constant bother all day long and 5 minute cooling down breaks (even removing the lens at one point) didn't seem to help. A huge inconvenience and a personal embarrassment for me.
 
qap15 said:
Ian-T, i don't think that your argument that all DSLR overheat has any ground.
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I’m not saying you’re incorrect but what I meant is that I think the way the 7D’s protection works is more like a sort of failsafe mechanism (or what I call a necessary evil) especially since it uses more than one processor and is tightly sealed in its body. All of these cameras generate heat…some more than others. But I also believe when a camera’s sensor gets too hot the end result to image quality is the same (whether the camera is designed to shut itself off or not).

Using you example with the laptop… I’ve had old Dell laptops whose fan eventually stopped working. The laptops generated a LOT of heat as a result…but I never had a problem with one shutting down or failing on me because of it. I’m just thinking that Canon’s engineers purposely designed the cam’s shut off mechanism to initially respond at a very minimum heating threshold (which is good and bad). That’s sort of why I find it odd that folks can restart their cams almost immediately and continue on.
 
mhood said:
Minutes in an office...25minutes...start another take immediately...10minutes...overheating warning. It was a constant bother all day long and 5 minute cooling down breaks (even removing the lens at one point) didn't seem to help. A huge inconvenience and a personal embarrassment for me.
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Like I said, YMMV. Maybe one big reason why other users have had different experiences is that they were just shooting 24p rather than 60p.
 
Absolutely! I was only shooting at 480/60 and was going strong for two days. I had at least 4 or 5 overheating interruptions each day and one shutdown. I'm thinking 5D might be a better fit for me now that I've invested in the Canon primes...does it heat up?
 
Yes, the 5D does have its own overheating issues. They're just rarely mentioned. I believe that the heat accumulates about as much, as quickly, as on the 7D. It is the same technology (from the same company), after all.
 
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I was expecting the single processor and the 30fps (slower) frame rate might cut down on the overheating in the 5D.
 
The overheating does happen rarely, probably because the camera only shoots 30p. It actually bit me in the rear in one case. The camera didn't shut down, but the footage was severely degraded by noise in one take (the last take that I did that day). I was using the 5D to shoot off and on over the course of only an hour or two, and the temperature outside was quite warm but not extremely hot. I did not expect it to happen; I was shocked when I reviewed the footage on my computer.
 
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