You’ll be glad to know that the Canon EOS R5 doesn’t overheat when shooting timelapse video.
The other night, we put the Canon EOS R5 on a balcony in near 90 degree NYC weather. Then we shot a timelapse with it to test if the camera would overheat. There have been lots of reports on YouTube and on websites about the Canon EOS R5 overheating when shooting video. When shooting my own, the camera started to get warm closer to the 30-minute mark. But it only stopped recording because of the natural recording time limit. I was shooting at 4K 24p–which is arguably the standard across the industry. 60p video is for slow-motion stuff, and 30p is for sports, soap operas, and live events. Much of the testing I’ve seen have been torture tests shooting 60p video for over 10 minutes. And I really wonder why folks are doing this? Why would you slow down 10 minutes of video? What’s the point? And more importantly, because the Canon EOS R5 is shooting a timelapse for five hours, will it overheat?
To do this test, we set the Canon EOS R5 down on a ProMaster Tripod. With the RF 24-105mm f4 L IS USM, we set the camera to manually focus on a street intersection. Then we connected it to a wall to charge while shooting. After this, we set the camera to 4K 24p timelapse video and chose a single one-second-long exposure at f11 and ISO 3200 every five seconds. It did this for five hours. My alarm woke me up to head downstairs to check the camera. And it didn’t overheat at all. In fact, the camera seemed to work as expected.
I purposely didn’t record in 8k because my iMac monitor and Final Cut isn’t really designed for it. What’s more, 4K video is the industry standard for YouTube. Why do anything differently? Timelapse video mode stitches the photos together into a video for you while shooting a timelapse in photo mode will give you all the files to do whatever you want with. I made the Canon EOS R5 make a video for me.
This is excellent news for photographers. Many of us considering purchasing the Canon EOS R5 care about still images. And it’s a fantastic camera for still photos. Canon screwed the pooch by doing so much marketing around the video features. But even so, for practical video use, I don’t know many people even shooting for 30 minutes continuously at 4K 24p, let alone 4k 60p. What’s the point? Are you looking to just fill your hard drive up? Do you have a server farm at home? I digress, but the Canon EOS R5 is thus far an excellent stills camera for a stills photographer. If you’re shooting the occasional video or timelapse, it’s also good. If you’re a journalist using it to record video, there still aren’t a lot of problems with it. Every video we’ve filmed hasn’t had us recording for a super long time.
Further, we’ve experienced overheating across the board with Canon, Sony, and Fujifilm when shooting videos. But the cameras have never shut down on us. Practically speaking, you’re just not going to keep shooting video. You’ll give the camera a break and go do something else on set. Or you’ll work with your backup camera because you’re a professional and have a backup! However, there’s that big price tag that I think is high and even I’d have a tough time justifying the purchase to myself. But, I’d use a Canon EOS R5 and an EOS R as my backup.
Our full review of the Canon EOs R5 is coming. So stay tuned!