R5 firmware 1.6 -- Overheating Fixed?

Conspiracy is a strong word, speculation backed up with decades of patterns of behavior is more accurate. This is because the camera manufactures never have or will disclose their internal decisions, motivations and business practices. I would imagine in their view that's how the game is played in their industry. They don't owe you an explanation or apology for their business practices. If they want to "cripple" a camera and you don't like it you can pound sand.

Just because you worked in high tech development doesn't mean you have special insight into the camera industry because these are largely sales and marketing decisions what camera models are given features or limitation to slot them into the best place financially for them.
 
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The whole concept of the Japanese keiretsu system and the "interlocking business relationships and shareholdings" is they can do it because it's allowed there and they are the only country in the world who makes such products [extremely elite stills/videos hybrids], so it's like why wouldn't they?

Why wouldn't they/companies work together to control this part of the industry...an absolute no-brainer.

I would make the cameras even worse, lol. $$$$$$$$$$
 
The fact that there was a shutoff timer is all the evidence I need. If you were being a conservative product designer, you would set the shutoff TEMPERATURE to a conservatively low figure. But given that the camera has an internal thermometer, there's really no reason at all to use a shutoff timer. That's not conservative, that's sadistic
 
Yup, same here.

And if anyone was genuinely concerned about heat burns (reasonable & understood), you'd force the camera to stay off as a safety precaution, not have it tricked by a grain of rice or a battery pop out while it's still on/etc.
 
Peter C. said:
This is because the camera manufactures never have or will disclose their internal decisions, motivations and business practices. I would imagine in their view that's how the game is played in their industry. They don't owe you an explanation or apology for their business practices. If they want to "cripple" a camera and you don't like it you can pound sand..
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As it should be. They owe you nothing. Either buy their product or don't. Whining about, as if they targeted you personally, it is childish.
 
If a car manufacturer offers two nearly identical cars, but one is 400HP and the other is 300HP at a lower price, have they crippled one of them?

If I submit 4K footage to Shutterstock and they sell a HD copy to a buyer who is willing to pay less for a HD version, have they crippled my 4K clip?

If a camera company releases a 4K camera and a nearly identical camera that can only do HD, even if the difference is only software, have they crippled the second camera?

In all cases, no.
It doesn't make the seller evil to offer customers a choice of similar products that have lowered/different specifications, even if it doesn't reduce the price of manufacturing one dime. There are many other factors to consider when bringing a product to market and establishing the MSRP.. And a manufacturer has no obligation to stuff in every technical advancement YOU think they should have put into a camera. If you don't like the offer than is being made by the seller, take your business elsewhere. And if you think you're smarter than the camera manufacturers, start your own company. Jarred Land did. It is just business.
 
Doug Jensen said:
It doesn't make the seller evil to offer customers a choice of similar products that have lowered/different specifications, even if it doesn't reduce the price of manufacturing one dime.
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Perhaps not, but honesty is always appreciated (even if it's out of fashion). It's the deception that stings. And jumping through the hoops of trying to figure out just how usable the camera is. It would be a different story if the camera didn't offer 8K RAW or oversampled 4K, etc, at all.

I think that the emotional reaction on the part of many camera-buyers is totally understandable. And even if their reaction were completely unjustified, that's just business, too. People are emotional, especially when they're spending money.

I agree with you that I don't feel personally slighted by Canon's machinations. But I do find it annoying and disreputable. And it did waste my time to try to determine the limits of the camera's usability before I made the decision to buy a Sony mirrorless camera instead. The R5 came out 2 months before the A7SIII, which led to a natural comparison of the two. And I already owned Canon lenses...
 
I'm not following the specifics of this thread and I don't shoot with Canon cameras, but if you feel Canon has misrepresented the specifications or features of their products, then that is fraud. Totally different than what people seem to be calling "crippling".
 
On a side note, personally I never liked the word "crippling" as a description. It's underdeveloping or limiting and it's perfectly fine. They do as they wish.

And they release all of their information with asterisks so it's all good there too.

At this point, there's really not much to complain about; you could get a pretty amazing camera for a few thousand bucks that would match almost everything else on YouTube, and just have to work around some things here and there.
 
Yes it's just that they said "Our camera can only record for short bursts of time before it overheats and has to rest." Independent investigators determined that it would shut down on purpose because of a timer, not because of its temperature.

And now, 2 years later, it seems that the new firmware update allows it to function as they had originally claimed: it will only shut down when it actually overheats.

The only way in which Canon didn't commit fraud was that when they released the R5, they specified how long the camera could record before shutting down. Which, of course, they knew quite well because they had programmed it to.

So, they were more or less honest about its limitations, just not about the underlying reason. This led people to try to figure out how to keep the camera cool, which was a red herring. (I wonder how the tilta rear fan would affect the camera shoot times with the new firmware.)
 
Yeah, independent investigators...including me (on day 2) and thousands of others.

At the time, you could literally see the counter of minutes on your camera change as you recorded the seconds. So if you had 8 minutes left and you rolled for 60 seconds, it would say 7 minutes left. That's cool. But then even if you waited 10-15 minutes and you rolled again for 60 seconds, it would say 6 minutes left.

I swallowed very hard when I realized what it was. I've never seen that before in a camera and definitely did not see it coming. (My first overheating camera was an a6300 but it handled it differently.)
 
My problem is they promoted the camera's video functionality without disclosing the "overheating" issue which turned out to be self imposed.

I lose a lot of respect and trust for a manufacture who misrepresents their camera capabilities and plays these type of games.
 
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ahalpert said:
Yes it's just that they said "Our camera can only record for short bursts of time before it overheats and has to rest." Independent investigators determined that it would shut down on purpose because of a timer, not because of its temperature.

And now, 2 years later, it seems that the new firmware update allows it to function as they had originally claimed: it will only shut down when it actually overheats.

The only way in which Canon didn't commit fraud was that when they released the R5, they specified how long the camera could record before shutting down. Which, of course, they knew quite well because they had programmed it to....
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They did not mention the time limits in their early PR releases.

It looks to me that Canon's deal with Sony went something like this, "We will release an 8K model at a much lower price than you will but we will cripple it, so we both have something reasonably equal of value to sell globally". Sony's reply was probably, "How about two minutes and we will sell A1 for $10K".

And, yes, this agreement expired and it was revealed to be a "Canon cripple hammer" all along. A dastardly business practice too with a lot of outright lies along the way. It wasn't designed to "sell more video cameras" though. Then they would have never even released R5.

And A7RV is obviously nearing an announcement.
 
I think the term cripple comes the view that the hardware is capable of much more than it is allowed to do. These companies owe us nothing and in turn, we can vote with our wallet if we do not like something. I was put off by Canon's behavior as a long time user wanting to upgrade and stay in the system. The presence of the 30 minute record limit and the micro HDMI sold the Sony's just as much or more than the overheating. The fact that they did not put IBIS in the R5c stops that from being a useful stills camera. So thorns all around without even mentioning heat.

Whatever term one wants to use, the company just does not want to deliver all of what the user base wants in a single camera like the Sony A1. For the record, I will most likely never purchase a C-series camera. So I never saw the logic of "protecting" that line. In the end, I just see it as kind of perverse in a way. I would never conduct my business in this manner, which is why so many of us small business owners get offended by these practices. We need tools that help us in this crazy business, not set gotcha traps.
 
Bassman2003 said:
These companies owe us nothing and in turn, we can vote with our wallet if we do not like something.
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Actually, they owe you the truth. (What, you can't handle the truth?) And they lied. Technically, FTC should go after all of them but it's a relatively small niche market and the government doesn't want to make waves.

Japan likely has full political protection anyway. The US wants its and South Korean full military support against China, should the need arise.
 
DLD said:
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Japan likely has full political protection anyway. The US wants its and South Korean full military support against China, should the need arise.
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A senior engineer at Canon told me that every time China conducts a drill in the Taiwan Strait, Canon cripples another camera feature
 
ahalpert said:
A senior engineer at Canon told me that every time China conducts a drill in the Taiwan Strait, Canon cripples another camera feature
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Funny but foreign trade is under the US president aegis. With regard to the various Chinese malfeasances, folks harrumphed on Trump but Biden is holding firmly there as well.

Canon is, obviously, subject to a huge class action product liability/conspiracy to defraud law suit on, at least, R5 and probably R6 also. If they admit to being part of the cartel, then other Japanese photo-video cartel members are subject to criminal charges too.
 
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