DPReview: Canon EOS R5 and R6 overheating claims tested: cameras work as promised – but that’s not enough

[dtaylor]

Desperately searching for anything ... we know. How about posting that evidence that someone successfully locked out the camera from stills? We are all waiting.

An incident has been posted. Maybe it was simply an out of spec unit. But I bet if we had a half dozen reports you would ignore it as "just forum members." And if a YT reviewer posted the same, "just a talking head shill looking for clicks."

You want to believe what you want to believe. Period.

Other people are simply wondering, and perfectly open to the possibility that the R5 is as robust as any DSLR on stills. But you can't blame them from wondering. The only reason video modes become limited with stills shooting is because the camera can't shed heat fast enough while shooting stills. If it could then stills would not eat into video time. Now maybe it reaches an equilibrium point and maybe stills will never push it into the red. But a basic understanding of thermodynamics is enough to make one question that.

 

[dtaylor]

When you hear 45 MP, you should instantly know that it probably won't be cutting edge for video; that said, Canon did lead with the video specs and 8k. They bungled the messaging on the release.

The R6 has the same problems. You could almost forgive the R5 and say "but 45mp bro" if the R6 didn't have the same problems.

 

[mppix]

My point was whatever the headline performance figure might be there are always limitations. Personally I don’t think the performance limits in the R5 are unreasonable for the price form factor and specs.

I agree but I remain really confused by Canon's strategy with mirrorless generally and the R5/6 introduction specifically.
Just for reference a certainly very pointed article that I hope explains.

Canon UK on EOS R5: "shoots comfortably on high-end production sets - ideal partner to C300 Mark III" - Why overheating is unintentional - EOSHD.com - Filmmaking Gear and Camera Reviews

Back in April, Canon announced the video specs of the EOS R5 with much hubris. The camera was indeed intended to shoot reliably in 8K and 4K alongside Cinema EOS cameras… According to Canon themselves. So I don’t think Canon intended the EOS R5 overheating to be a purposeful cripple hammer. I...

www.eoshd.com

I'm really not trying to say that the R5/6 should be a cinema camera - thankfully it is not - but I really don't get who the video is desined for.

 

[Quarkcharmed]

As I noted in another thread, there is a major negative perception associated with this camera.

There's major ramble on youtube and social media. I wish there was a major negative perception so that people withdraw their preorders and I get first in the line. It hasn't happened yet, there's still too many preorders

 

[Deleted member 384473]

The final episode of one season of House was entirely shot on the 5D2 , and many of these "photography" cameras have been used on big budget films

This is true, albeit, not as a dedicated A cam in most scenarios. My favorite use was the NASCAR scene in Iron Man 2 Some productions use a mix of cameras. I could see R5 as a crash cam. It would be great in an explosion scene, for sure.

 

[mppix]

I feel it would be 30-2hr cooldown only for a fully heated camera.

Unfortunately, heat transfer has a RC circuit discharge behavior with constant time constant [in first order approximation].
That means that the hot-spot temperature decreases by 33% within the first Tau (time constant, likely somewhere around 10-20min) and to fully cools down at about 5 times Tau, i.e. 5x the time). Hence:
- the camera takes [approximately] the same time to fully cool down [=get full shooting capabilities back] irrespective form initial temperature.
- one should get a fraction of the recording time, e.g. 5min 8K, back relatively quickly, but getting full recording time, e.g. 20min 8K, will take ~5 times as much
- modest use, e.g. still shooting, will likely heat the camera somewhat hence one can expect some intermediate recording time after such use; getting full recording time will again take ~ the full rest period.

Disclaimer: these are extrapolations form an oversimplified model [that is known to model the heat transfer physics well and is widely used in engineering]

 

[Bert63]

there is a major negative perception associated with this camera

With who? All of the millions of people who don’t actually own one or have never touched one or seen one in real life?

Their perception is being media driven, largely by paid hacks on YouTube, and in my reality means exactly zero.

When a larger number of these cameras become available people will begin to understand, FOR THEMSLEVES, what the limitations mean and if they are even limitations at all. Stills shooters - which I believe are the people most attracted to this camera - really don’t care about video. Their “perceptions” of this camera are drowned out in white noise.

Sony Northrop is posting in the Reddit r/canon sub about how much he ‘wants to love’ the R5/R6 camera but he ‘has to make people aware‘ of their limitations.

Not one word about stills shooting....

 

[Quarkcharmed]

This is true, albeit, not as a dedicated A cam in most scenarios. My favorite use was the NASCAR scene in Iron Man 2 Some productions use a mix of cameras. I could see R5 as a crash cam. It would be great in an explosion scene, for sure.

Overall, you'd like to see it totally destroyed.

 

[Deleted member 384473]

With who? All of the millions of people who don’t actually own one or have never touched one or seen one in real life?

Their perception is being media driven, largely by paid hacks on YouTube, and in my reality mean exactly zero.

When a larger number of these cameras become available people will begin to understand, FOR THEMSLEVES, what the limitations mean and if they are even limitations at all. Stills shooters - which I believe are the people most attracted to this camera - really don’t care about video. Their “perceptions” of this camera are drowned out in white noise.

Sony Northrop is posting in the Reddit r/canon sub about how much he ‘wants to love’ the R5/R6 camera but he ‘has to make people aware‘ of their limitations.

Not one word about stills shooting....

Hey Bert! Gordon Laing dropped a video on stills... I wonder if hes one of the paid hacks? You have examples of some?

 

[sanj]

An incident has been posted. Maybe it was simply an out of spec unit. But I bet if we had a half dozen reports you would ignore it as "just forum members." And if a YT reviewer posted the same, "just a talking head shill looking for clicks."

You want to believe what you want to believe. Period.

Other people are simply wondering, and perfectly open to the possibility that the R5 is as robust as any DSLR on stills. But you can't blame them from wondering. The only reason video modes become limited with stills shooting is because the camera can't shed heat fast enough while shooting stills. If it could then stills would not eat into video time. Now maybe it reaches an equilibrium point and maybe stills will never push it into the red. But a basic understanding of thermodynamics is enough to make one question that.

I think you are spreading rumours on a rumour site. Bad.

 

[Bert63]

Hey Bert! Gordon Laing dropped a video on stills... I wonder if hes one of the paid hacks? You have examples of some?

Not familiar with him but I’ll give him a look. Thanks for the tip. Honestly - unless it’s a how-to or music or a tutorial I don’t spend a lot of time on YouTube. For me it’s cringe-worthy. I don’t do Instagram or Facebook either.

I’m not going to waste a lot of time with examples because everyone has their own opinion. A good solid example for me is Sony Northrup. He’d eat a tennis ball for clicks.

 

[davidhfe]

Not familiar with him but I’ll give him a look. Thanks for the tip. Honestly - unless it’s a how-to or music or a tutorial I don’t spend a lot of time on YouTube. For me it’s cringe-worthy. I don’t do Instagram or Facebook either.

I’m not going to waste a lot of time with examples because everyone has their own opinion. A good solid example for me is Sony Northrup. He’d eat a tennis ball for clicks.

Gordon's a good guy and the review in question is as far from click bait as possible. I think he was the only non-explorer anglophone to get a camera ahead of launch? Or at least the only one that got a video out on launch day.

That said, I'm not sure there's any new information in that video. Spoiler: He loves it for photos.

Edit: What absolutely kills me about Tony and Chelsea is they do actually put really good info out there, and in a lot of cases they get it out there first. But they totally pull a bunch of crazy antics like having Chelsea act like a child and then have Tony talk about BANDING for half a segment and then he mentions quietly at the end "this isn't a canon thing it's an e-shutter thing and it even happens on the A9". That's not "making somebody aware" it's manufacturing a thumbnail that'll get clicks.

 

[pj1974]

Not familiar with him but I’ll give him a look. Thanks for the tip. Honestly - unless it’s a how-to or music or a tutorial I don’t spend a lot of time on YouTube. For me it’s cringe-worthy. I don’t do Instagram or Facebook either.

I’m not going to waste a lot of time with examples because everyone has their own opinion. A good solid example for me is Sony Northrup. He’d eat a tennis ball for clicks.

Gordon Laing from (UK) camera labs is one of the better camera reviewers. He's thorough (he gets through a lot of information in a short amount of time in his videos). I suspect many people would need to pause / rewind to take in all the specs and user experiences that he shares.

Gordon is also impartial, and not a fanboy. He understands the disparity between photography and videography.
There are others like him too. I appreciate visiting Cameralabs webpage and also their videos. (In general I prefer to read full reviews via web pages rather than videos, but I've partially warmed to video format over recent years).

Other good reviewers (not an exhaustive list) include:
Bryan from The Digital Picture (US)
Klaus from Optical Limits (Australia) - lens testing - (formerly Photozone based in Germany)
Dustin Abbott (US)

PJ

 

[DBounce]

If you’re going to try to make the R5 do things it wasn’t designed to do or that would require it to defy the laws of nature then you’ll fail and not be a happy camper. If you pay attention to the limitations up front and learn to work around or through them, you’ll be fine.

Did you actually read the press release for the Canon R5? Canon pitched it as a pro level video camera, that could be used on set as a B-cam to the C500mk2. Don’t take my word for it... read Canons press release:

More Canon EOS R5 specs revealed – “the camera will shoot comfortably on high-end production sets” - Canon Press Centre - Canon Europe

www.canon-europe.com

“suitability with high-end production workflows”

So is it unreasonable to expect the R5 to function in accordance with what Canon stated?

 

[PGSanta]

The R6 has the same problems. You could almost forgive the R5 and say "but 45mp bro" if the R6 didn't have the same problems.

I'm not referring to the heating problems with the statement at all; I mean I know you feel really strongly about getting out the word on how you feel about the camera for whatever reason, but my comment was referring to certain technical realities that you pretty clearly don't understand.

The fact that the camera is 45 MP automatically tells anyone that knows anything about video that it doesn't have video as its primary concern. You can do your own research if you want to know why that is.

 

[PGSanta]

An incident has been posted. Maybe it was simply an out of spec unit. But I bet if we had a half dozen reports you would ignore it as "just forum members." And if a YT reviewer posted the same, "just a talking head shill looking for clicks."

You want to believe what you want to believe. Period.

Other people are simply wondering, and perfectly open to the possibility that the R5 is as robust as any DSLR on stills. But you can't blame them from wondering. The only reason video modes become limited with stills shooting is because the camera can't shed heat fast enough while shooting stills. If it could then stills would not eat into video time. Now maybe it reaches an equilibrium point and maybe stills will never push it into the red. But a basic understanding of thermodynamics is enough to make one question that.

Nah, I would take it more seriously, but we don't. if you could come up with some evidence other than a message board post I'd take it more seriously. We just have one guy making a post, and then several trolls clinging to anything to scream that the camera overheats taking stills.

Again... you think it overheats taking stills. Show me one video of it. Show me a tweet by a reputable source... just a tweet. Just one; otherwise, you're just a clown screaming in the wind about nothing.

There are plenty of videos in some pretty tough conditions that say "No problems with stills". Why can't you come up with just one of someone saying stills overheated it? Just one.

 

[StevenA]

Got my R5 this morning. Spent the day with it shooting a mix of stills and videos. Mostly stills. Still learning, but from what I can see the overheating thingy majigger isn't going to be an issue for what I need it for.

Getting up in the morning to go test shoot a waterfall handheld and if it overheats I'll let you know

 

[NorskHest]

I dunno why you're taking this personally.

its because he has no life and takes pics of cats, so this is the highlight of his day, and i am the one that had the camera over heat from stills, it is not mine, it is my friends who works at a camera store and he is returning the camera we were not testing it but just using a 4000 dollar paper weight that might i add has incedible tracking and terrible battery life. reading all this bitching is disgusting. the r5 is a let down of epic proportions and if people decide to waste their life owning a unreliable camera and trying to tell us all how their r5 is great i say let them sound like republicans and democrats. i used a camera to see if i was ready to switch to canon mirror-less and canon made that decision real easy, they have great dslrs and pretty good cinema bodies but their mirrorless is not sony or panasonic. there is no point trying to talk to these tribal tyrants who really know nothing of actual professional photography or cinematography, i have shot most all camera companies for photo and film, i produced a documentary on netflix, i do grip and light work for movies and music videos and a few ads, i shoot wedding videos at times and the list goes on and this work i do gives me a different perspective and knowledge of different cameras for different jobs and this r5 in its current state might be good to be used only in subzero temperatures. next to none of these people do anything outside of their 9-5 and bitching so let them bitch and take pride in knowing you are objective.
peace

 

[Kanon]

16 pages of comments, at this point. Sure is a diving camera.
oh well, there’s always a eos R1 to look forward to, any news on that canonrumers s?

 

[degos]

If the R5 couldn’t revolutionize your creativity with features not available in any other hybrid it isn’t Canon that is the problem.

Nice sidestep. The question wasn't about capabilities but claims.

Canon claimed uncompromising performance. However there are many practical compromises.

I don't shoot video so it doesn't matter to me practically. But I don't like deceit.

Canon isn't your best friend, it's ok to criticise them.