What's the COOLEST back-up camera?

Your results are in line with my own. I think I got like 21mins on my first. But it just goes down hill from there. I have six batteries and have swapped them out. I think it comes down to the fact that small of a body can not dissipate enough heat from that aps-c sensor. Now in all fairness I don't think that the engineer design team for the a5100 ever intended for people like us to use this nifty cam for long form recording. Like those who have down creative work with this cam, you plan your shots, do your takes and shut the camera down until the next one. At this point you are just worried about cumulative heat build up.

Now as for adding an external recorder, I also don't have one to test, but with all respect, doesn't that defeat the purpose of having a small cam that delivers outstanding 1080p in the palm of you hand? I bought the a5100 as a back up for my a6000, and also for the xavc-s codec that the a6000 lacked at the time.
 
Irondiver said:
Your results are in line with my own. I think I got like 21mins on my first. But it just goes down hill from there. I have six batteries and have swapped them out. I think it comes down to the fact that small of a body can not dissipate enough heat from that aps-c sensor. Now in all fairness I don't think that the engineer design team for the a5100 ever intended for people like us to use this nifty cam for long form recording. Like those who have down creative work with this cam, you plan your shots, do your takes and shut the camera down until the next one. At this point you are just worried about cumulative heat build up.

Now as for adding an external recorder, I also don't have one to test, but with all respect, doesn't that defeat the purpose of having a small cam that delivers outstanding 1080p in the palm of you hand? I bought the a5100 as a back up for my a6000, and also for the xavc-s codec that the a6000 lacked at the time.
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No, it doesn't defeat the purpose if you are planning on recording longer than 30 minutes. Remember, the camera can't record longer than that in a single take without a recorder anyway. And less than that, I really think the external battery supply would be enough to keep it from overheating over the duration of an event. Taking the battery external seems to at least double the constant-recording duration (from 20 min to 40+ before overheat), and if you are just recording 10-15min clips at a time, the cumulative heat build up should also take longer (maybe double if the math ends up being the same), and hopefully have a chance to cool off faster in between since the battery cavity is hollow now.
For casual docu-work, I have the A7S which never overheats anyway. This is for multi-cam long-duration type stuff, which up until now I'd had to use a Panasonic for. But working with available light on a micro 4/3 sensor is killing me. If I lock one of these off on a tripod, attached to a Ninja 2 as both the recorder AND display (turning off the display which would help even more!), and the colors match my A7S getting the other angle? That'd work out great for me!
 
The word is that the A6000 successor has been delayed since the summer due to overheating in video mode.

It would be great if they came out with two versions, one a video version in a larger body, or with a larger (heavier) heat sink, etc.

I had to migrate to Panasonic to get internal 4k for events, shooting 2 or 3 cameras, without overheating. The external recorders for 4k are so much more expensive.

I had been shooting mostly stills with Sony for 6+ years (plus Nikon & Canon.) I kept my A6000 body plus a minimal lens kit. I am hoping to be able to go back to Sony, if they can finally solve the overheating. It seems like they really need to now to be competitive with Panasonic, especially with the G7 down to $500.

I'd also love to get Phase Detect Auto Focus that works with Canon lenses, in a body that I can afford/ justify.

Keep us updated on your overheating tests! :)
 
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So, some updates on my testing:
Colors are actually pretty easy to match between this and my A7S. I was worried because someone mentioned elsewhere that the color science was very different, but I'm happy to report that isn't true! I was able to get them close enough in camera that I was able to line them up with only the most minor of tweaking in post (same amount of tweaking I'd have to do because they were 2 totally different lenses anyway). So that's good news for me!

I still haven't gotten a hold of a Ninja to test for myself, but I briefly spoke to someone elsewhere who has. He told me that not only does the unit never overheat when recording out the HDMI, but the internal battery seems to have plenty of juice left after a session. I guess all that heat and battery usage comes from the encoding! So technically, I wouldn't even need my big external power supply that I use with the A7S. The external recorder is all you need.

Now, here's where it gets hairy, though. The guy sent me a sample of something he recorded with the Ninja and his a5100, and it looked pretty good to me. Thought it was a tad softer than the A7S, but it could have just been bad youtube compression. But then I took a closer look and realized the subject's eyes and hair was actually quite sharp. That's when I remembered hearing about the "waxy skin bug".

It was the look of her skin that was throwing me off! He wasn't aware of the bug and didn't seem to be aware of it. I wonder if I would have noticed it myself if I hadn't heard of it.

In case you are unfamiliar with the bug I'm talking about, here's a video that pretty much sums it up:

The solution proposed in that video is to turn off face detection and skin smoothing. Then it will respect your wishes to keep it off when you press record. Problem is, if you aren't recording on the body, the hdmi out has it defaulted to ON again! He says just press record and it will go away, but then I'll be stuck with the same overheating problem eventually. And what happens when the 30 min are up and the recording internally stops? Does the skin smoothing suddenly come back on? I'd guess yes.

Again, I don't have one so I can't do any more testing myself. This is just what I've gathered from reading up online and asking a lot of questions.
 
I posted an update in another thread, but figured I'd update you guys following this one too.

I picked up an A5100, and happy to say that it can run hdmi out for hours without overheating and on a single battery! I tested it for over 1.5 hours with 65% battery left and no sign of a heat warning. The bad news? The skin smoothing bug is REAL! I'm so annoyed!
I tried it on my A7S, and it turns out that although the original firmware also did the waxy skin thing, a subsequent update fixed it. I've heard the RX100 got an update that fixed it too. That leaves me, with the A5100 waiting for Sony to release an update that may or may not ever happen in order to fix this bug. Pressing record on the camera does fix it, but then we only get 30 minutes in ideal situations, realistically we will probably overheat by 20m.

I know the A6000 got that XAVCS update recently. Any chance someone here could plug it into an HDMI monitor and just see if the waxy skin thing still happens? Maybe like the A7s, there was a quiet fix in the last update that wasn't documented? If so, maybe I should put this A5100 back up for sale and move on to its larger brother?
 
I for one am thankful for the input, but I am selling my a5100 and purchasing a sony rx100 III as a carry-around and await for the successor to a6000. I for most of what I do compactness is a must. But I want the abilty to set up a rig with all the bells and whistles for some future projects. The only thing that the a6000 currently lacks is basic audio in/out, hopefully that could added on the successor. I don't know if that is too much to ask for the a6000 price point
 
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