A closer look at the Canon EOS R5 lower quality 4K mode to avoid thermal cut-off

[Trek of Joy]

As to the topic itself - still can't get the "Brown Eye AF" out of my head - its good to know there are workarounds. I'm still in the wait and see camp. These are all pre-production cameras and Canon has now seen the shitstorm over the overheating. I'm sure they're working to find solutions. That rumor about lower bitrate recording could certainly help. Also they can look at raising the thermal limits like Sony did. I think it will be fine for most that buy the camera and a dealbreaker for a small minority. At this point since its well known, if you buy it to shoot a 8-hour wedding and complain that it overheats, its really on you and not Canon.

I'm curious about performance with the battery grip since you're moving a major heat source out of the body. I'd like to see tests with an external recorder too, up to 4k60p would cover me for most situations. Despite the added bulk I don't mind adding a cage and a Ninja V, been shooting with them and the EOS R for the last month so I'm getting used to a slightly larger kit. Plus I shoot mostly short takes, like 10-15 seconds per clip, my first job was in TV news at the end of the Betacam tape era in the mid 2000's, at about 20min per Beta cassette, I had to treat it like a precious commodity, or face juggling a few tapes to get a quick story edited which was more time consuming for me.

So for me (me, not you) - interviews at 4k24p, slower stuff at Ninja/60p, super slow stuff at 120p and short postcard/beauty establishing shots or timelapses in raw. If I can get through a day of shooting under the Florida sun like that without issues then I'm good. If not the a7s3 remains a possibility, though for me 45mp > 12 mp. I'm still skeptical the rumored specs of the a7r4 body with an air vent is enough to solve Sony's own heat management issues given the low bitrates they've used and still had issues. They're suddenly going to do 10-bit 4k120p without overheating when they struggled for years with 8-bit 4k at just 100mbps?

Chris

[padam]

1 hour ago, Trek of Joy said:

So for me (me, not you) - interviews at 4k24p, slower stuff at Ninja/60p, super slow stuff at 120p and short postcard/beauty establishing shots or timelapses in raw. If I can get through a day of shooting under the Florida sun like that without issues then I'm good. If not the a7s3 remains a possibility, though for me 45mp > 12 mp. I'm still skeptical the rumored specs of the a7r4 body with an air vent is enough to solve Sony's own heat management issues given the low bitrates they've used and still had issues. They're suddenly going to do 10-bit 4k120p without overheating when they struggled for years with 8-bit 4k at just 100mbps?

Chris

I think the A7SIII will rely on taking the 4K120p raw feed out of the camera to an Atomos recorder, it won't be able to record it internally. At least that would be my guess, we'll see.

The PXW-FX9's features should provide an overview about how it's going to do some things.
And the PXW-FX6 (or full-frame FS5) can't be very far either, I think it will rely on an external recorder for a lot of things as well just like how the FS5 did.

[Yurolov]

Does it overheat in 24/25p over-sampled mode? In other words, are there thermal limits on all over-sampled modes up to 30p? 

[Video Hummus]

1 hour ago, Yurolov said:

Does it overheat in 24/25p over-sampled mode? In other words, are there thermal limits on all over-sampled modes up to 30p? 

yes

[Yurolov]

1 minute ago, Video Hummus said:

yes

where does it say this? and what are the times for the overheating? Same as for 30p?

[Video Hummus]

@Yurolov Andrew has already posted about it on the main page.

 

All oversampled modes except the APS-C crop have a recording limit.

 

The only full sensor FF mode that doesn’t over heat is pixel binned. Which in my opinion makes the R5 a better buy over the R6.

[Silenkiller]

1 hour ago, Video Hummus said:

@Yurolov Andrew has already posted about it on the main page.

 

All oversampled modes except the APS-C crop have a recording limit.

 

The only full sensor FF mode that doesn’t over heat is pixel binned. Which in my opinion makes the R5 a better buy over the R6.

I want to see someone record that pixel binned 4k at 95 degrees to see what happens

[currensheldon]

If you want what Canon gives you the best of (in my opinion: color, general IQ in terms of a pleasing image (not necessarily sharpness), autofocus, variable ND adapter, lens selection, b-cam to their cinema cameras), then I think the R5's workarounds aren't awful. As I view it, as a b-cam to C300 III to always have on a gimbal, I can use 8k raw, 120fps, or downsampled 4k when I need the supreme IQ or on commercial shoots where I'll mostly just be firing off 15-30 second shots.

But if I really must use it for long takes, then I'm perfectly OK with 5.1k oversampled, APS-C crop 4k. I'm sure it will be beautiful, not pixel-binned, and won't have to worry about heat. Maybe because I have plenty of APS-C lenses (Sigma's f1.8 lenses, Canon's 17-55mm f2.8), I don't mind using those lenses on doc-style, long-take shoots.

Sure, it would be better if it didn't overheat, but keeping the body small to always have on a Ronin-S on standby is a decent tradeoff. 

[Nezza]

TBF, at least Canon gave detail on what to expect at what FR shortly after release. Sony will just say 'may overheat'.

[Silenkiller]

1 hour ago, currensheldon said:

If you want what Canon gives you the best of (in my opinion: color, general IQ in terms of a pleasing image (not necessarily sharpness), autofocus, variable ND adapter, lens selection, b-cam to their cinema cameras), then I think the R5's workarounds aren't awful. As I view it, as a b-cam to C300 III to always have on a gimbal, I can use 8k raw, 120fps, or downsampled 4k when I need the supreme IQ or on commercial shoots where I'll mostly just be firing off 15-30 second shots.

But if I really must use it for long takes, then I'm perfectly OK with 5.1k oversampled, APS-C crop 4k. I'm sure it will be beautiful, not pixel-binned, and won't have to worry about heat. Maybe because I have plenty of APS-C lenses (Sigma's f1.8 lenses, Canon's 17-55mm f2.8), I don't mind using those lenses on doc-style, long-take shoots.

Sure, it would be better if it didn't overheat, but keeping the body small to always have on a Ronin-S on standby is a decent tradeoff. 

I want to feel the same way, just worried what may happen say during a hot day ~90 degree weather, will the 4k 24p over heat on a long take or not =/

also if im using the 1.4ish crop for all of my long form shooting.. wtf is the point of buying it over a used 1dxm2? Same crop, more durable, tested and proven body, though I guess 8bit vs 10bit. 

[gt3rs]

16 minutes ago, Silenkiller said:

I want to feel the same way, just worried what may happen say during a hot day ~90 degree weather, will the 4k 24p over heat on a long take or not =/

also if im using the 1.4ish crop for all of my long form shooting.. wtf is the point of buying it over a used 1dxm2? Same crop, more durable, tested and proven body, though I guess 8bit vs 10bit. 

The video AF  should be much improved over the 1Dx ii (at least is the case for the 1Dx III) you also gain peaking, zebra and more important LOG.

Also if you need to save storage  you can go as low as 120 mbits for 4k where on 1Dx ii you are at 500 mbits and on more expensive cards (actually up to 30fps you can us CF card but need to be fast ones)

Not sure but FF binned could be quite usable too as 4k 120fps is imo good. But did not find yet an example other than 120fps

Also th vND adapter is an handy tool.

I had the 1Dx ii and it was really good and used you can find then 2500-2800 usd.... but for video I think the R5 is superior but we need more tests and user experience.

[Yurolov]

10 hours ago, Video Hummus said:

@Yurolov Andrew has already posted about it on the main page.

 

All oversampled modes except the APS-C crop have a recording limit.

 

The only full sensor FF mode that doesn’t over heat is pixel binned. Which in my opinion makes the R5 a better buy over the R6.

I must be crazy but I don't see any mention of 24 or 25 in the chart?

How do we know that the only FF sensor mode that doesn't overheat is the pixel binned mode? I can't read that anywhere either. 

They sure make it difficult to find the info. 

[Video Hummus]

2 minutes ago, Yurolov said:

I must be crazy but I don't see any mention of 24 or 25 in the chart?

How do we know that the only FF sensor mode that doesn't overheat is the pixel binned mode? I can't read that anywhere either. 

They sure make it difficult to find the info. 

We are assuming, based on the chart, that the 4K30p includes 24/25 fps. Logic would assume so, the canon cripple hammer works in mysterious ways however.

[Yurolov]

5 minutes ago, Video Hummus said:

We are assuming, based on the chart, that the 4K30p includes 24/25 fps. Logic would assume so, the canon cripple hammer works in mysterious ways however.

I doubt Andrew would be so vociferous just based on an assumption, seeing as short films, music videos etc are all done at 24/25p. There must be some more info out there that I haven't seen.