Canon Patent Application: Grip based active cooling

[skrubol]

Ah, I needed to look at the design more carefully. I thought it was a fan and heat sink which would require channels for air movement rather than employing TEC and the description is a bit confusing suggesting that there is a fan which blows air through channels in the camera body. So, is it a TEC, a TEC with a fan, a heat sink with a fan, or something else? Personally, I'm not a "fan" of an open system with channels which could accumulate, dirt, debris, moisture, etc.

A Peltier/TEC without some form of heat sink is just a heater. It is just a plate that moves heat from one side to the other (inefficiently.) If you don't cool the hot side, it just keeps getting hotter until the heat can creep back to the cold side.

 

[Richard CR]

No, this is a Peltier cooler.
Pretty much the same as the R5 C, C70, S1H, FX3, Komodo, and many other weather-sealed cameras.
The fan is only for the heat sync.

the problem with a peltier cooler is the amount of power it requires.
I don't think these designs use a peltier - they simply use a passive heat sink, heat pipes, etc.

 

[GoldWing]

For harsh environments with heavy moisture.... Whst are the ramifications?

 

[Rudolf_Appel]

It it would be April 1, I\'d consider this a good prank, but it isn\'t and neither is it a good idea. Customer: \"My camera keeps overheating.\" Canon: \" We rarely have these issues and if we have with your present camera, we\'ll issue a new one shortly that does not overheat.\" Canon management: \"We don\'t trust our hardware engineers lets plot a plan B, a camera grip with mechanical ventilation, our customers won\'t mind windblown on their hand or in their face, vibrations caused by the bearings of the ventilator neither the noise that comes with it.\". Me: This is the dummest patient I have ever seen filed. Buy a cinematographic camera if you want to file pro resolution, at 120 Hz uncompressed.

 

[skrubol]

It it would be April 1, I\'d consider this a good prank, but it isn\'t and neither is it a good idea. Customer: \"My camera keeps overheating.\" Canon: \" We rarely have these issues and if we have with your present camera, we\'ll issue a new one shortly that does not overheat.\" Canon management: \"We don\'t trust our hardware engineers lets plot a plan B, a camera grip with mechanical ventilation, our customers won\'t mind windblown on their hand or in their face, vibrations caused by the bearings of the ventilator neither the noise that comes with it.\". Me: This is the dummest patient I have ever seen filed. Buy a cinematographic camera if you want to file pro resolution, at 120 Hz uncompressed.

Many cinema cameras have a fan including the R5c. How would this be worse than that?

 

[john1970]

An interesting idea and will be interesting to see if it materializes into an actual product.

 

[GoldWing]

Penguins. Penguins with little ice cubes that follow you around and hug your camera... Makes sense....

 

[Richard CR]

It it would be April 1, I\'d consider this a good prank, but it isn\'t and neither is it a good idea. Customer: \"My camera keeps overheating.\" Canon: \" We rarely have these issues and if we have with your present camera, we\'ll issue a new one shortly that does not overheat.\" Canon management: \"We don\'t trust our hardware engineers lets plot a plan B, a camera grip with mechanical ventilation, our customers won\'t mind windblown on their hand or in their face, vibrations caused by the bearings of the ventilator neither the noise that comes with it.\". Me: This is the dummest patient I have ever seen filed. Buy a cinematographic camera if you want to file pro resolution, at 120 Hz uncompressed.

This is a strange take.

For a normal stills photography session, the camera would operate without grip / or with a normal battery grip - the only people that would need a ventilated grip would be videographers under specific use cases, and a lot of them use rails, external monitors, etc. and don't have the camera shoved up to their faces and not only that, it doesn't blow towards the user anyways, the air blows out of the ducts on the sides.

It's a patent that allows small and affordable cinema features in a stills camera, without sacrificing the stills camera's desire for smaller size and weight.

Also depending on the ambient temperature, the hotter the temperature, the more noise will be present on even stills images. if you are shooting stills photography and need low light performance and the ambient temperature is quite warm, being able to augment the cooling the an active cooler can easily make your stills images far cleaner with a lot less noise.

having a solution like this opens alot of third party doors specifically for astrophotography as well. I would easily take this out when doing astrophotography and even look at jimmy'ing in a peltier cooler to make sure the sensor gets even colder.

 

[EOS 4 Life]

This is a strange take.

For a normal stills photography session, the camera would operate without grip / or with a normal battery grip - the only people that would need a ventilated grip would be videographers under specific use cases, and a lot of them use rails, external monitors, etc. and don't have the camera shoved up to their faces and not only that, it doesn't blow towards the user anyways, the air blows out of the ducts on the sides.

It's a patent that allows small and affordable cinema features in a stills camera, without sacrificing the stills camera's desire for smaller size and weight.

Also depending on the ambient temperature, the hotter the temperature, the more noise will be present on even stills images. if you are shooting stills photography and need low light performance and the ambient temperature is quite warm, being able to augment the cooling the an active cooler can easily make your stills images far cleaner with a lot less noise.

having a solution like this opens alot of third party doors specifically for astrophotography as well. I would easily take this out when doing astrophotography and even look at jimmy'ing in a peltier cooler to make sure the sensor gets even colder.

Not only that.
As long as there is no cage on it, it could transition back and forth pretty seamlessly.

 

[[email protected]]

Not only that.
As long as there is no cage on it, it could transition back and forth pretty seamlessly.

The grip's removability would be just the thing for me. I very seldomly need cooling, but when I do, I do. Like shooting in direct sunlight on a hot day. I assume that this'll be more necessary with future increases in video resolution, but I've found that anything beyond 4k for me is overkill. I don't think there are too many stills + little bit of video guys like me who are going to be worried about heat dissipation for 12k video.

But knowing that a body can be quickly made into a real video rig is useful peace of mind.