Sony a6300: Does it Overheat Shooting 4K 24p? Is the Rolling Shutter Bad? I Have Those Answers.
The Sony a6300 has so many nice upgrades from my favorite sidekick. Goes everywhere with me a6000. Incredibly fast auto focus and the Metabones adapter works very well with my Sigma 18-35. Still need to try other Canon lenses. 4K internal recorded footage looks really good. But…….
One BIG issues came up and another I can live with. I think….
On the first day of shooting 4K internal video the a6300 gave me a warning that the camera was getting hot. It’s a mini temperature icon that appears on the screen.
We kept shooting and within a few minutes it overheated. Gave a warning and shutdown.
Well that was surprising because my living room is 76 degrees and we used only LED lighting.
My buddy Shawn from Xtender wanted to shoot some promo footage of his awesome friction mount products and I said… “Hey I have the new a6300 let’s shoot it in 4K” Of course Shawn was in! We didn’t have long takes. All on a tripod or slider and monitoring with a SmallHD 502 and Convergent Design Odyssey 7Q+ through the looping output of the 502.
It took some time to get setup and the camera was on for a while blocking each shot.
When we finally started shooting the camera overheated after about 20 minutes into the shoot. I was very surprised. No really long takes. Maybe three minutes max on each take.
After it overheated I shut it off for a minute and turned it back on. We continued shooting for another 20 minutes and it started to get hot again. This pattern happened three times. We got it done, but what a pain!
This brings me to the second issue.
Rolling shutter is bad. Really bad.
The image is very nice in 4K. Lots of detail. HD is softer than the original a6000 so that’s disappointing. I like to shoot in HD too and I do a lot with the a6000. I did a quick panning test to see how bad the rolling shutter is. Woof!
Of course I wouldn’t pan like this but even in the slower ones I see a little screwing going on. Most people probably wouldn’t notice it really, however motion of objects moving not the camera could be an issue. Cars buzzing by. Basically anything moving fast in a scene. All will be susceptible to skew. This one you have to decide if it’s a problem for you. I can live with it for the most part but the overheating thing is a big problem.
A camera has to work. Not shut down when you are using it normally. I consider what we shot to be a very simple shoot. If I was shooting video of my 5 year old’s birthday party I would have overheated the camera much faster in the same conditions and missed the those precious mounts waiting for the camera to cool down. As a consumer product it’s just not acceptable.
I hope that the overheating issue can be fixed with a firmware update similar to the a7r II. It also overheated and Sony was able to fix the issue. I also haven’t had my a6000 overheat and I’ve used it a lot to shoot b-roll for blog posts and even my on camera segments. Those can be long takes too. 😀
What this doesn’t prove is if it will happen to you when you are shooting. The conditions or temperatures under 76 degrees could stop it from overheating.
More to come but I wanted to express my thoughts on these two issues that came up so early for me when shooting video. I haven’t even shot that many pictures yet but the autofocus is very impressive.
More to come……
UPDATED.
I decided to see if at 72 degrees if the camera would overheat and it did but it took longer. About 43 minutes. The camera body behind the LCD reached 101 degrees at one point so I think when it reaches the 100 degree mark the camera puts up the warning.
At around 34 minutes the high temperature warning came on. Then it took approximately another 10 minutes to shut down. That was longer than yesterdays product shoot. So I feel the camera might have to be used in temperatures under 72 degrees. Highly unlikely users can gauge this for reliable recording.
On page 39 of the Sony a6300 manual it does state the camera will overheat when shooting continues in 4K for “about 20 minutes” However I wasn’t shooting continues.
QUICK UPDATE
Just did a quick Continuous Auto Focus test this morning and it’s very good.
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- Sony A6300 review (rolling) – Striking image but nagging issues | March 22, 2016
i think sony solved the a7r ii overheating issue by changing the threshold temperature. not sure if they can do the same to the smaller a6300, which must already get hotter due to less heat dissipation.
the rolling shutter looks really ugly. that bright white fence almost hurts to look at :p
My thinking is the body is way to small and thin, with basically the same sensor output as the Samsung NX1. What astounds me is why these camera companies continue to put to market flawed equipment. There’s a thing called testing, you send the camera to a trusted individual that can test the video side of this camera and see what sticks. No, can’t do that, let’s get it out there and figure out how to fix it later. Whatever!
I think Sony changed the overheating threshold on the production model. So many testers used the video function and tested long records with no issues. This was at the Miami Sony event. I think they can and will fix the problem.
I own an a6000 and learned the hardway that trying to record over 20 mins of 1080 HD video, causes the Song to overheat and fail… I google’d this issue and find a lot of people with the same issue. Sony lied as far as I am concerned and I will never buy another Sony product.
I agree too. It is a real shame that Sony releases amazing cameras like the A6300, but only to have your happiness fade to sadness due to overheating issues. Rolling shutter I can live with, but overheating is just unacceptable. Why does the GH4 have no problem? Again, it’s really sad because i LOVED this camera – for $1k it is amazing what it can do for the price in 4K. Absolutely amazing, hope they recall the cameras and fix it permanently. I’d be happy to pay $2,000 for this camera with no overheating problems 🙂
I’ve had the a63000 now for a couple of months and It’s really growing on me. I don’t shoot in 4K anymore and find the image to be great. I have a review in the works but I can say that people need to try shooting in HD and not worry so much about 4K. Pixel peepers will tell you you the image isn’t as detailed as 4K and they are right but that doesn’t mean the HD image is garbage either. I think we are getting spoiled.
I haven’t had the camera overheat once while shooting in HD. Rolling shutter is so much less it’s a non issue. Continuous AF is crazy good for gimbal work and AF in stills is superb. So in the end the only thing I don’t like really is all based around shooting 4K and I can live with not using it. Great camera for under $1K.
So I was thinking…. how come non of the testers at the sony event didn’t notice the massive rolling shutter or felt the need to report it? Was everybody so boozed up? Or only allowed to take static shots? Time to make a “on payroll Sony” reviewers list 😉
The cameras the testers used at the Miami event was pre-production models. The final versions must have the max temperature set lower. As it states in the manual on page 39 (Now added to the blog post) “the camera will overheat after 20 minutes of continues recording”.
Thank you for pointing this out, but usually one reads the manual after buying the camera, not before.
And after the initial A7RII overheating problems my decision for buying the A6300 relied heavily on the experience the testers made during this official Sony event.
So if Sony really pimped their temperature readout within firmware for this event only to dial it back for the production model, like you describe, that would be really disturbing.
I’m not sure how big of an issue that would be for a lot of people. I remember when I got my A7SII people were up in arms about overheating. And now you don’t hear anything about it. Ironically I have never had the overheating problem on my A7SII. I think what we want is the ability to shoot for long periods, but in reality most of us don’t shoot that long. I think it’s not the 29 minute time limit, it’s the waiting for a cool down period. My Canon would stop at 29 mins, but you hit record again and keep on going.
I have since purchased a Video Devices PIX-E7 for monitoring and external recording but I still would expect to use my camera without a cool down period and I think that’s where Sony falls short.
I’m not to sure. If I had the camera at a party shooting video of say a childs birthday and was shooting in bursts of 2 to 5 minute clips for over 20 minutes I think the a6300 would overheat. Thinking more like a consumer as opposed to a production tool.
Does the overheating occur while shooting 1080p? If you could test it that would be much appreciated!
I tried to record 1080p 60 FPS at 60 Mb. It overheated and shut down after 22 min! This was on super 35 mode.
Erik, thanks for these extensive tests!
Ive got a question for you. I just got my sony a6300 and ive been having problems when shooting 4k. If i do a clip a bit longer than 1min and turn off the camera a red light flashes close to the battery compartment. If I try to turn it on it wount, and the only way to turn it back on is removing the battery and putting it back in. Seems like the camera stays reading the SD card when I record in 4k. Does this happened to you?? or I might have a bad camera? thanks!
Try a different battery. If it is still doing this then I think the camera has to be repaired.
Had that same problem. I took mine back and exchanged it. Mine stopped charging after only the second use. The a6500 is the “fix.” Sony screwed us.