Sony A 6300 Overheating is a real problem

View attachment 114614

A6300 with cage installed. Flipped up the flash and opened the battery door. Combined with battery change (plugged in doesn't seem to help much) I got no overheat warnings after ~80minutes of recording. If I get half that on a hot day I'll be happy. I could have gone with another A7S/R II but I think this will work fine for my needs. that's a few thousand dollars saved!

Outside the cage will get hot and not do much for cooling. This camera is now an indoor toy only.....
 
I just bought my a6300, a video I had watched on youtube suggested the battery contributed considerably to the heating if the camera, which is a fair point.

The cage I purchased runs the camera of external batteries in the cage handle, the camera battery being replaced by a dummy unit that supplies power via lead from the handle, it all works so far I will do some testing in a hot outdoor environment.
 
Outside the cage will get hot and not do much for cooling. This camera is now an indoor toy only.....
Funny enough I have only had mine overheat indoors...during interviews in a warehouse with no air flow under tungsten light, and inside a small bar shooting a bands live preformence. Both in florida so not good examples haha, but yeah between that and the motion artifacts I find this camera to be a slow motion and B cam for short interviews only really. Sucks but oh well, it will do until I can justify the A7R II
 
Funny enough I have only had mine overheat indoors...during interviews in a warehouse with no air flow under tungsten light, and inside a small bar shooting a bands live preformence. Both in florida so not good examples haha, but yeah between that and the motion artifacts I find this camera to be a slow motion and B cam for short interviews only really. Sucks but oh well, it will do until I can justify the A7R II
In 4K mine will overheat even in 73 degree indoors shooting. Not continues recording either. in HD it seems fine indoors.
I also noticed the motion artifacts the other day in some low light HD shots that had movement. Did you see it in 4K as well?
 
In 4K mine will overheat even in 73 degree indoors shooting. Not continues recording either. in HD it seems fine indoors.
I also noticed the motion artifacts the other day in some low light HD shots that had movement. Did you see it in 4K as well?
Yes and so have others in this video that I shot all handheld with the 18-105mm lens which does have image stabilization.
https://vimeo.com/168712707
 
Hmmm not looking good so far, I did some tests this morning, running on its internal battery on a tripod I was able to get 44 min (resetting record at 29 min) before the temp alarm came on.

Shooting indoors at 20C or 68F, I wanted to tax the codec and chipset so the camera is framed on a TV recording a channels output. Camera set to 4K 25p recording

I mounted it in its cage with an external battery and it was at 28 min that the alarm reappeared, puzzling as the internal battery was heating the camera body more than the external battery i.e. the camera itself seemed much cooler yet I still got the alarm up.

More testing needed.

EDIT: more testing, even with the screen fully pulled back and the battery door left open I can only get 40 min 4K recording before the temp symbol appears.
 
Last edited:
Hmmm not looking good so far, I did some tests this morning, running on its internal battery on a tripod I was able to get 44 min (resetting record at 29 min) before the temp alarm came on.

Shooting indoors at 20C or 68F, I wanted to tax the codec and chipset so the camera is framed on a TV recording a channels output. Camera set to 4K 25p recording

I mounted it in its cage with an external battery and it was at 28 min that the alarm reappeared, puzzling as the internal battery was heating the camera body more than the external battery i.e. the camera itself seemed much cooler yet I still got the alarm up.

More testing needed.

EDIT: more testing, even with the screen fully pulled back and the battery door left open I can only get 40 min 4K recording before the temp symbol appears.

Is the external battery a dummy with the electronics inside the dummy battery? I tested one like this and it heated up just like a regular battery. The dummy batteries with the electronics inline or between the dummy and the external battery should work better since it wont heat up.
 
I just bought the SmallRig cage. It is arriving tomorrow. And it is a black cage ....

I am wondering if I should just sell the A6300 and stick to my Panasonics? If I can't count on the A6300, I have to take all of the Panasonic kit anyway. And having 2 different kits just complicates things.

I guess I will see how things go with some testing.....
 
Hi Eric, yes my dummy battery has the electronics built inside.

Anyhow just did the same test listed above this time with a Sony in the camera and an external USB supply, I got to 29 min, ambient temp the same 21C / 68F

You need the Sony battery or dummy otherwise the camera will not power up.

Is the a6300 any better shooting HD?
 
Last edited:
Hi Eric, yes my dummy battery has the electronics built inside.

Anyhow just did the same test listed above this time with a Sony in the camera and an external USB supply, I got to 29 min, ambient temp the same 21C / 68F

You need the Sony battery or dummy otherwise the camera will not power up.

Is the a6300 any better shooting HD?

In HD it wont overheat when in the shade on a hot day. It doesn't do so well in the sun even when shooting stills if it's hot like 85-90 degrees. My issue is I cant take it on hikes or travel with it. I wanted something I can take with me 24-7, but I cant predict the weather and if it's sunny and hot I'm out of luck. I'm leaving today to go to Yosemite. It's 90 degrees now and will be for the rest of the month. I'm taking the a7r ii now. Bought it because I needed a camera. I'm pretty bummed about it really. The size and weight of the a6300 is so nice. Don't get me wrong. The a7r ii is fantastic and will perform great for this trip and many more but I didn't want to buy it right now. Oh well. So is life.

I'm selling my a6300. I gave my son my a6000 and I loved that camera. HD is great and pretty darn good with stills. It's a bargain too right now.
 
The Panasonic GX85 is a pretty great, small camera with the 12-32 mm kit lens. It has 5 Axis stabilization, plus Dual Axis stabilization with Panasonic lenses with OS. No record limit.

The only real limitation is no microphone or headphone jack. I bought mine for $687 as an open box. I also bought a Kipon Canon to M 4/3 auto focus adapter. The GX85 focuses about the same as the A6300 with Canon lenses- quite well.

I also have the Panasonic 12-35, 35-100 2.8 pair. Those run a little under and a little over $600 used (respectively.) The GX85 is a great, fun little video camera. The AF in stills mode is fantastic. It stills lags a bit in video mode, but it is better than any other Panasonic I have used.
 
After much googling the following thoughts emerged,

Other 'stills cameras' have had overheating issues in the past, one source of the heat apart from the battery is the memory card and it makes sense, I ran my a6300 with a dummy battery and it still heated up. The dummy battery has some electronics built in to talk to the camera but it should generate negligible amounts of heat. Writing 4K at 100Mbits/sec is pushing things somewhat.
So as the memory cards lives beside the battery its a fair assumption thats whats generating a lot of the heat.

Apparently different cards generate different amounts of heat so perhaps cooler running card may help.

I have also purchased a small USB cooling fan and a Peltier effect device so I will try these when they arrive.

For me the camera seems superb, for grabbing 30 sec location shots or quick 'pieces to camera' that should only take max 10 min it seems to be ideal.
Its the issue of a interview scenario being used as a B cam thats the issue, hopefully my recently ordered gadgets may help.

EDIT: shooting in HD 50p the thing shows no signs of heating at all.
 
Last edited:
If you really would like to make the camera work for interviews (or you just don't want to worry about overheating anymore), purchase or rent an external recorder and a dummy to d-tap adapter (you'll need a battery too).

I've ran the camera like this for 6+ hours without any problems. 4K/24p.

It wasn't outside in the blazing sun, but still. And even after all of that time, only 1 bar out of 4 on the 77Wh battery was out. Tons of power from it.
 
Even if it worked for you, it may not work for others. There seems to be a lot of variation among a6300 bodies regarding heat issues.
 
3months ago mine started to overheat in 8mins both in photo and movie mode... I endup talking to sony tech reps they had me send it to Precision Camera for repair, it came back 3 days ago, right out the box it seemed to work great the first day, I was able to do photo mode for 3hours, video mode i was about to run 4 x 29mins back to back with no heating icon in Texas weather it was warm to the touch.. now the last 2 days all it does is overheat in 10mins both in photo and video mode and it seems the autofocus is working real slow or not at all even after changing the focus settings,

1. in the paper notes they sent they had to order and replace the "Mounted_C.board_Sy-1066_Compl" https://sony.encompass.com/item/10748306/Sony/A-2119-197-A/Mounted_C.board_Sy-1066_Compl
they also did
2. autofocus test, check recalibration and realignment
3. firmware download: corrections and adjustments; address values measured and adjusted
4. cleaning internal and external and optical system


BS =(
 
Even if it worked for you, it may not work for others. There seems to be a lot of variation among a6300 bodies regarding heat issues.

I strongly recommend to at least try it out (rent). No internal recording makes a very big difference in any camera body.
 
My experience thus far - is that it does make a difference ...using my PixE5 indoors. Will be trying out / testing more outdoors - but I've already had the overheating appear with external recorder in HD after 15 / 20 minutes on early tests...
 
I did a test earlier today 21C 68F shooting in HD using the internal recorder and the camera ran for over an hour, no overheating issues, it actually felt cool.
 
My experience thus far - and having the camera only about two weeks - without extensive use - is that indoors - specifically shooting HD or taking pics (which is what I've used it for on paid gigs) - no problems to speak of.
Outdoors is certainly a different animal altogether. Even in the shade, at around 87 F - recording HD internally - I get the overheat symbol warning around the 20 min mark.
One should certainly not get this camera for continuous recording IMO. It remains to be seen if it will have a staying place in my kit - for gimbal work and possible 2nd camera stuff.
 
Back
Top