Newsshooter: Sony A7RII overheats and shutdown after recording 4K for a while

Those Varavons are a joke. I got one a couple of months ago and it broke on me after a day. Replacement broke too. Customer service very poor. Waste of money. Sorry Im off topic
 
improser said:
Again... anyone tested the camera with the IBIS off? Vitaly says that stabilization is one of the reasons for heat in cameras.
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Makes zero difference, I tested.

The camera will record for hours via HDMI (I got over 3 hours yesterday, in 4K to a Shogun), but internally 30 min or less as discussed... IBIS on or off.

If you trigger recording on the camera even with a recorder, same weird limit. It must be engaging a processing chip or something.
 
Chris Joy said:
I did a run test yesterday with 4k, FF, 60mbps, IBIS on, and back-to-back 29+ min takes - no issues but the camera is hot. The battery died at 29:40 of the second take. Not bad - 59+ minutes of recording with the LCD on the whole time. The overheat warning came on during the third take after the battery swap, it shut down just before the 10 min, so just about 70 minutes with 4k at the lower bitrate. I let it rest for 3 minutes and recorded another 29+ min take. Then I went to 1080/60p and hit the max record time with no temp warning and the battery was at 3%. I had no more charged batteries. It won't work for everyone, but its fine for my needs. The bottom of the camera does get noticably warmer than the rest of the body. Crop mode seems to generate more heat. The battery gets hot too. I'm ordering an external battery to try USB power or with a dummy battery in the camera, and a grip to see if it makes a difference.

For me the overheating is a non-issue so far, my stuff is very much like I did when I shot ENG - lots of short takes. I shut the camera off frequently and put it in airplane mode to preserve the battery, that helps. The A7RII is much quicker to startup than any other Sony camera I've used - its almost instant and as good as my 5d3. Its shocking how much faster it powers up compared to the A7s/A7II. For paid work it serves my needs. If you need to record 4k for hours on end this isn't the camera for you. This isn't a mini FS7, but its still a powerhouse hybrid camera.

In the end it looks like a big sensor and all the processing means lots of heat. So far I haven't gotten a temp warning in 1080p at max bitrate. Some will say just get the A7s for 1080p, but IBIS and the 42mp stills are pretty awesome by themselves. Even the crop mode on this cam gets you a better photo than any m43 camera and most Canon's. And the A7s still can't do 4k without a recorder. If I need longer record times I can get a recorder - the Pix looks pretty good and barely used Shogun's are popping up. But so far the A7RII is a winner for me.

EDIT: I did back to back takes in 1080/60p and both times it ran to the max. The camera was warm, but nothing like it was with 4k crop. So far it looks like 1080p is only limited by your battery supply.
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Thanks for this testing. I've actually tested this camera more attached to a recorder (I've recorded for as long as 3+ hours continuously in 4K) than off. It's nice to see you can indeed get long takes out of it with a few min rest, though many reports indicate that the camera gets hot whether it is recording internally or not. This is true... but it only overheats when that processing chip is engaged for a long period. It's not the sensor... otherwise I wouldn't have gotten over 3 hours out of it before my Shogun battery died. (I powered it externally, which by the way, still ate battery just at a slow rate.)

I concur basically with all you said. Just got to caveat it, and if one wants a small quality mirrorless camera with a FF look that will not fail in the middle of a shoot they are better shooting an A7S in 1080 - because that thing never failed once on me. The A7RII might.
 
Mei Lewis said:
Maybe there _is_ a difference that's not apparent from your test scene on your monitor. Maybe when the camera initiates recording it changes to some higher quality image processing to get a better recorded picture, but this causes the camera to overheat. (unlikely..).



On the other hand, assuming the image quality is the same, maybe the camera is doing something different when it's triggering recording internally that it shouldn't be. eg Writing to the internal memory card as some sort of buffer? Does recording to the Shogun work with no internal memory card inserted? I've never noticed a CF/SD card reader get hot at all, even reading/writing at max speed, but this is possible?
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I think the latter is possible.... some kind of buffer. (It will overheat even with no card in it if triggered via camera). I don't see any higher/lower quality video between the two modes (triggering on cam vs shogun). I thought maybe I would, as with the A7S you DO (you have to trigger on camera to get proper skin rendition), but that was not the case here.

I can't really explain it. The shogun-triggered 4K looked superb, skin tones and all. I even ran it for over 3 hours until the Shogun battery died (the A7RII was hooked to power, though oddly still drained its battery slowly.)
 
Mei Lewis said:
If you record internally does that result in the (tax imposed?) 29 minute recording time limit?


If so, then there's one thing different between triggering recording on the camera compared to the shogun, triggering recording via the camera must start the camera keeping a track of recording time, so it can impose the 29 minute upper recording time limit. It seems ridiculous that this could be the cause of overheating, but it's not impossible. Maybe there's an infinite loop in the code somewhere burning up CPU cycles and generating heat.
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Good question about the time limit. I would have agreed with you except that in camera triggering eventually popped up an "overheat" screen. Whereas with shogun trigger... well, yesterday I went over 3 hours (with the camera plugged in, shogun on battery) in one continuous take.

There's got to be a bug somewhere in the camera, which makes me think this is actually a software bug, at least whilst recording externally.
 
Erik Naso said:
The body design is probably getting in the way. Small sealed body just can release the heat.
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The camera always felt too small in my hands anyway. I'd love a body about the size of a 6d.

Has anyone tested using a grip on it and seeing if that helps by moving the batteries out of the body? It used to on the older canons.

Edit: I see Chris is going to do just that.
 
grifter09 said:
Those Varavons are a joke. I got one a couple of months ago and it broke on me after a day. Replacement broke too. Customer service very poor. Waste of money. Sorry Im off topic
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What would you recommend as an alternative?

Obligatory "Sorry I'm of topic"!
 
If it's trigger related, then it should be firmware solvable.

The (relatively speaking) small body and the electronics layout are obviously here to stay for as long as A7RII is in production. Figuring Sony will want to keep this size body for a while longer, they could be looking toward upgrading its processors, which can be done without a complete redesign. The current mobile chips run at 20-22 nanometers and older (c.2014) Qualcomms at 28. Samsung has a 14 NM chip, which runs far cooler and is shipping to "unnamed clients". I assume the unnamed client is a smartphone manufacturer, since that's where the real money is but with Sony and Samsung getting a lot chummier lately, a small batch of more energy efficient chips just might do the trick. In the long run, IBM has revealed a 7 NM technology but it's unlikely to be ready for market before 2018 or so.
 
Fahnon said:
The camera always felt too small in my hands anyway. I'd love a body about the size of a 6d.

Has anyone tested using a grip on it and seeing if that helps by moving the batteries out of the body? It used to on the older canons.

Edit: I see Chris is going to do just that.
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That's what I want to see since the grip takes both batteries and nothing is in the camera but a connection. Might help a bit since the battery does get hot. It still gets really hot on the bottom plate, whatever is down there is cranking out a lot of heat.
 
Chris Joy said:
That's what I want to see since the grip takes both batteries and nothing is in the camera but a connection. Might help a bit since the battery does get hot. It still gets really hot on the bottom plate, whatever is down there is cranking out a lot of heat.
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My understanding is the camera can now also be powered through the microUSB port, maybe worth seeing if that helps avoid overheating by taking the battery's heat away from the body?
 
nyvz said:
My understanding is the camera can now also be powered through the microUSB port, maybe worth seeing if that helps avoid overheating by taking the battery's heat away from the body?
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I have a USB battery on order as well. Not ideal, but I'll check it out. Again though, I don't shoot concert videos or corporate stuff where I'd roll endless 30 minute clips. Most of my shot gathering is really short - I roll for 15 seconds or so, move to another shot, repeat - even most interviews only last 5-10 minutes and I constantly turn off the camera to preserve power. So far its not an issue for me, but I've only had the camera a week.
 
Frank VM said:
What would you recommend as an alternative?

Obligatory "Sorry I'm of topic"!
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Get yourself a dummy battery (not the one that came with the varavon it wont fit and its too flimsy anyway) and this :

http://www.amazon.com/ILED-Battery-...+Li-battery+with+DC+Diameter+2.5+Jumper+Cable


Im testing this weekend but tested the other day with a 5d3 and the NP-F970 and it runs forever. All safe voltage too

EDIT : http://www.ebay.ie/itm/DC-Coupler-f...231?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item415f004827
 
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