I have been looking into overheating on the Canon 5D MkII. Here's my scenario: We shoot with 3 Sony camcorders to cover football games. We also have a 4th camera, the 5D. We use one of the Sonys as a elevated 50 yard camera and the other two Sonys with shoulder rigs as sideline/endzone cameras. The intent for the Canon is to use it as a scoreboard camera so that the font operator can always see the scoreboard to keep the clock and score up to date. We use the 5D outside of football for regular production, but during football we had need of a 4th camera for the scoreboard and the 5D was what we had.
The 5D keeps shutting off and someone has to go poke it all the time to get it back on. It sits on a tripod and we have an HDMI to SDI converter box which then runs SDI straight into our production switcher. Thus when Live View is engaged it pipes the feed as though it were sending it to a monitor so the camera LCD is not actually on since it's been diverted. We have the auto power down set to OFF in the camera's menu settings, so theoretically it should never power down so long as it has power. The unit is not actually recording anything, it is just acting as a pass through to our switcher. We see the battery display and other info on our switcher monitor for the that cameras SDI view output. Every 45 minutes or so (give or take) it shuts off and someone has to go reset it. While this happens our font operator cannot update the clock until it gets back up and running again. (we're not usually allowed to setup our control area with an actual line of sight to the scoreboard)
I've heard of Canon's overheating. After alot of research all the threads I find seem to indicate this is more of a myth than an actual phenomenon. People report using Live View for 4-8 hours no problem. It references that the myth is born by Canon itself which states that if the camera overheats there will be a little white "S" that pops up up indicating overheating and that it may eventually turn red, and then the camera would shut down eventually if this persisted. We never got a white "S", or a red one. Nothing popped up to indicate overheating. Further most forums I've read have the consensus that the overheating problem is something that can happen in extreme humidity or 100+ temps, but doesn't occur when you're just using it a lot, even for hours on end.
Since I seem to be discovering some contradictory information can anyone offer some insight?
The 5D keeps shutting off and someone has to go poke it all the time to get it back on. It sits on a tripod and we have an HDMI to SDI converter box which then runs SDI straight into our production switcher. Thus when Live View is engaged it pipes the feed as though it were sending it to a monitor so the camera LCD is not actually on since it's been diverted. We have the auto power down set to OFF in the camera's menu settings, so theoretically it should never power down so long as it has power. The unit is not actually recording anything, it is just acting as a pass through to our switcher. We see the battery display and other info on our switcher monitor for the that cameras SDI view output. Every 45 minutes or so (give or take) it shuts off and someone has to go reset it. While this happens our font operator cannot update the clock until it gets back up and running again. (we're not usually allowed to setup our control area with an actual line of sight to the scoreboard)
I've heard of Canon's overheating. After alot of research all the threads I find seem to indicate this is more of a myth than an actual phenomenon. People report using Live View for 4-8 hours no problem. It references that the myth is born by Canon itself which states that if the camera overheats there will be a little white "S" that pops up up indicating overheating and that it may eventually turn red, and then the camera would shut down eventually if this persisted. We never got a white "S", or a red one. Nothing popped up to indicate overheating. Further most forums I've read have the consensus that the overheating problem is something that can happen in extreme humidity or 100+ temps, but doesn't occur when you're just using it a lot, even for hours on end.
Since I seem to be discovering some contradictory information can anyone offer some insight?