The Canon EOS R5 must be recalled now as this is so far from acceptable. It appears that only 1-2 hours into a stills shoot you can toss aside the Canon overheating test data in the real-world.
In an update to the test at DPReview, Richard Butler found this out the hard way as he describes below.
The real story is not the continuous recording cut off at 30 minutes from cold in normal room temperatures, but that the limit is closer to 2 (or even zero) minutes during a day’s real-world shooting.
I’ve been saying for a while – reviewers should put the stop watch down and do some more real-world test. An uninterrupted mixed stills and video shoot for 2-3 hours without a long break. A few short clips of 4K HQ and some stills.
The first one of these tests by Gerald Undone yielded 0 minutes 1 hour into it without a single frame of 4K HQ rolled.
Which points to a much more serious problem with the camera.
And now Richard Butler has re-tested the EOS R5 in 27 degrees summer weather, attempting real-world usage over a period of a couple of hours. For the first two hours he only shot stills (164 images), and by this stage the camera was basically unusable for 4K HQ recording.
“In just under two hours I shot 164 images, all in CRAW, some as parts of short bursts. I then switched to video mode to capture some 4K HQ footage and was confronted by 04:00 minute limit, despite plenty of card capacity.
The overheat warning displayed immediately and, after shooting three sub-10-second clips the camera said it would only shoot for another 02:00 minutes.”
- Richard Butler
It’s well established that the camera does around 20-30 mins of 4K HQ from a completely cold start at the beginning of a shoot if you’re lucky before it gets too hot. Significantly less in 8K and 4K/120p mode.
It appears the bigger problem is later in the day with a 2 minute, 1 minute and 0 minute limit.
This is why Canon should recall it and I am expecting an announcement any moment.
It does frustrate me that Canon apparently saw fit to release this camera in the state its in. Some tests have shown that the camera can record 4K HQ for over 4 hours to an external recorder if you remove the CFexpress card. If the CFexpress card is sitting idly in the camera the limit drops to 40 minutes to an external recorder which is bizarre. CFexpress cards to contribute heat but presumably only when they’re being intensively used. In my opinion, there’s hints here of potentially intentional time limits implemented by software. So if Canon did intend to limit recording times on the EOS R5 to segment it from separate video cameras, does the camera have a bug in this which ends a real world shoot with a much more severe cut off than they intended? Either way Canon owes us all an explanation.
