Hot hot was it?

T

Tom Roper

Veteran
It was so hot...
Outdoor wedding ceremony Morrison Colorado, just outside Denver.4 cameras, all on tripods, all were covered by white towels. Sun was beating down, no breeze.
The BMD Pocket 6K made it through the ceremony with 1 minute to spare before it overheated and stopped recording. The Panasonic GH5 stopped recording during the processional just as the bride approached the altar, about 10 feet short. Camera gave an overheat warning, would not allow a restart until a cooldown. Rebooting had no effect. Had to cool down, period. It finally was able to restart with about 5 minutes left in the ceremony. The Panasonic GH5s LCD went dark about 10 minutes before the end but kept recording until finally stopping about 5 minutes after the ceremony. The Sony ZV-1 made it through the ceremony without stopping, the LCD screen however did not, it went black, but apparently kept recording footage, but you couldn't know this because the screen was dark. The LCD screen came back to life after a cooldown, but it never stopped recording. So the tally, was 3 out of 4 stopped recording, 2 finished with a dark LCD, 2 finished with little time to spare, all but 1 did make it to the finish.
 
It’s honestly amazing that even our fully professional broadcast and Cine gear doesn’t fail more often in these extreme heat conditions(I have seen it, though). Many times cameras get so hot, that you can barely touch them and power supplies so hot that you can’t. Heat index was 104 yesterday late morning on our multi-cam shoot outside. Where the sun was hitting directly on my tripod legs(Flowtechs, carbon fiber), you literally could not touch them for more than a fraction of a second. And even though cameras were covered with a tent, the back of my on-cam monitor(which was essentially useless, because it was so bright) was almost too hot to touch, too, when we wrapped.
 
Wow. Hope you kept the dark screen camera's locked down and weren't moving them trying to get the screens back on (which is probably what I've been doing)... to salvage enough angles...
 
It was so hot, Mickey Rooney went on a date with Jane Russell just so he could stay in the shade.
 
Ah Johnny Carson and late night humor, you are so missed. It was a time when people could laugh without being canceled.
 
markfpv said:
Wow. Hope you kept the dark screen camera's locked down and weren't moving them trying to get the screens back on (which is probably what I've been doing)... to salvage enough angles...
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I did keep it locked down and salvaged the angle. Also, John Brawley kindly advised me to keep the cameras shaded but don't cover them, which blocks the air flow.
 
Tom Roper said:
Ah Johnny Carson and late night humor, you are so missed. It was a time when people could laugh without being canceled.
Click to expand...

Or getting slapped.

Sounds like a super stressful shoot but you soldiered through!

I feel like we should have umbrella hats for our cameras

Screenshot_20220805-230141_Gallery.jpg
 
Ha ha, I had a similar picture in mind. The cameras were super hot even switched off, the black surfaces. I'm going to use some Small Rig articulating arms to fashion a shade. I don't think umbrellas would go over too well at a ceremony.
 
I have a flare buster french flag lens shade that I have, on occasion, used to shade the camera instead of the lens to keep the camera cool. But it's a little inconvenient to mount in general, so I rarely use it at all

Granview_FB98XL_Flare_Buster_Kit_Extra_150798.jpg
 
The arm wags up and down a bit since it's flexible and long. Mostly this is an issue on gimbal when I'm in motion. It can throw off the balance of the gimbal a bit. On tripod it would be less of an issue but sometimes it happens just because of the wind. In situations where you're shading very close to the lens and the arm wags, the flag can come in and out of frame or intermittently fail to block the flare. I've thought about maybe using something with a rigid arm, though that could have its own issues. I won't be using a matte box for these scenarios, and using a rigid lens hood might be nice but it conflicts with my vari-ND.

The other issue is that the cold shoe mount tie down can come loose, but that happens infrequently and if that were my only issue I'd use this all the time.

I like what it can do for me. But I don't want to wear it all the time, which then means that there's a bit of rigging time involved when I do want to use it (even just bending the arm out to where you need it).

But if you're shooting backlit subjects and the sun is very low, this can do a better job blocking flare than a lens hood.
 
That is very helpful!! Some of those problems had occurred to me but not all. The sun doesn't necessarily cooperate either by staying put.
 
That's one of the rare nice things about some more expensive cameras with fan control like the C200. Never actually changed the fan myself for a specific purpose besides once to check it out, but I wonder if it would have broken a sweat if it was part of your pack and had you changed the speed from the default 'low' to 'high' (you hear it crank up when you do that).
 
The air temperature in the shade was said to be 105F but I believed the bigger problem than air temperature was radiant heat, the absorption of light converted to heat meant the external surface temperature was about 140-165F. That is why I felt it more incumbent to throw the white towels over the cameras even though I knew I would be blocking the vents on the Pocket 6K which does have a fan. But with that comes the internal temperature buildup. At some point, temperature meets limit and thermal shutdown ensues. It would have been interesting to track interrnal rise versus external but in the end, I'm just a cameraman on a hot day. If they were shaded instead of covered, I don't think any of them would have had a problem, maybe even if I had just covered them until it was time to use them, then uncovered them. But they were very hot to the touch even switched off.
 
No sir, I used the Ursa for b-roll, couples portraits, wedding party shots, shoulder mount footage, run and gun. Got some beautiful shots. It has even more powerful fans, but I wouldn't have wanted it cooking under the sun either, perched on a tripod over hot concrete. When it's being carted around by me, it gets some relief time to cool down, when I'm in the shade or getting watered so is it.
 
Also I wouldn't want anyone to steal it when unattended. Somebody could easlily make off with one of my GH5s and that would be bad but still not my baby.
 
I think I posted this here before, not sure, a little bit of behind the scenes. That's my Pocket 6K pictured on the red tripod to the left. I am not the photographer in the images.

 
That's an interesting observation, very much a compliment to me, and a possible criticism to others. I have no experience shooting cinematic style and I'm sure that shows.
 
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