The EOS R5 overheating issue is solved and it’s a super simple (only slightly hacky) workaround
Sep 7, 2020
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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I never even suspected that the solution might be this simple. I don’t have an EOS R5, but I figured if it was this easy to get around Canon’s time limits on the EOS R5, somebody would have tested it already. But it turns out that the EOS R5 (and presumably EOS R6) overheating limits can be beaten by a simple clock change in the camera’s settings.
The folks at Hong Kong-based production company, Vision Rouge suggested the idea of changing the clock and a user by the name of yourboylloyd on the Magic Lantern Forums decided to see if it really was that straightforward. And, well, yes. It seems that it is.
Vision Rouge has something of a backstory on the overheating saga on their website, discussing some of the public claims made, actual experiences, and the experiments of others that were used to determine that the “overheating” warning was actually timer-based and not temperature-based they had an idea.
Remember the tape & screw in the battery compartment hacks? Well, those experiments suggested that the camera periodically writes out data somewhere, some kind of EPROM which stores what’s going on and when in order to enforce the time limits even through battery changes. But as those tests proved, it can be overcome. Unfortunately, it makes your footage unusable because you have to pull the battery before you’ve saved the open file – because ending the recording triggers the camera to write out that data.
In the discussion on the Magic Lantern forums, Vision Rouge suggested that the EPROM data might not be written out immediately after you change the camera’s date and time. If you pull the battery quickly enough after changing it, but before the camera’s had a chance to write out the time limit data to wherever else it stores it, maybe you can trick the camera into thinking that the time limit has expired?
Well, yourboylloyd decided to try it out for himself and detailed his experience in a post.
Results:
- I let the camera overheat after 29:59 + 8:07 mins of recording. Was not able to record anything
- I changed the date and time to one day later and confirmed then went back to canon menu
- Dummy battery disconnect immediately after changing date and time
- Overheating times seems to have reset. The date and time that was changed saved on reboot. All footage was recorded to the SD card successfully
- I proceeded to record in a cooler room. It recorded for 29:59 + 13:03 then overheated. So being in a cooler room did help
- I then disconnected the dummy battery WITHOUT changing the date and time +1 day. I turned the camera back on and the overheating warning was still there.
- I also tried changing the date +1 day and then waiting a few seconds in liveview, then battery pull. The overheating warning was still there.
- I changed the date +1 again and immediately removed the battery. Voila. Overheating timer gone! All other settings saved.
TLDR; basically, unlimited record time. All footage saved. If camera is overheating, change date +1 day and immediately pull dummy battery to reset overheating timer.
As mentioned in his post, yourboylloyd was using a dummy battery, powered externally. This meant that he could pull the power at any time without having to open up the battery compartment door (thus triggering an EPROM write). If you’re using the internal battery, you might have to just go with the tape technique to make the camera think the battery door is always closed.
It’s worth reading through the warnings on the Vision Rouge website, though. While this technique will apparently overcome the built-in time limits on the EOS R5 that doesn’t mean it is not without risk. Risks don’t mean your camera will die. It means nobody really knows. Nobody’s really been able to push the EOS R5 that hard yet. It’s currently unchartered territory. That’s the risk!
So, if you’ve been frustrated by the EOS R5’s overheating limits, then it looks like you may now have an answer. I do wonder if we’ll start to see real overheating problems from users now, though, as cameras shoot 8K for several hours straight and start to melt.
I also wonder if those cameras would still be covered by Canon’s warranty if they do genuinely overheat and die, given that you’re not actually doing anything that should ordinarily break the terms of the warranty.
Props to Vision Rouge for thinking up the idea, and to yourboylloyd for testing it!
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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24 responses to “The EOS R5 overheating issue is solved and it’s a super simple (only slightly hacky) workaround”
Appreciate the article thanks!
RIDICULOUS !!!! ?
Yes, Canon is ridiculous here.
Er no it’s not. This is a great way to cook and kill your camera.
Another fake account to troll as usual
Thank you. Morons from Canon.
Nice trick, but not a practical workaround. However, good to know in a really tight pinch.
On R6, its a bit more complicated, but on R5 it’s super easy.
When overheat appear.
go to the date menu, add a day, press ok.
Open the battery door, remove the battery, and put it back, the camera restart immediately.
Timer is reset.
Can it be easier? not sure.
And you can even put back right after the day to shoot with the right time.
That simple?
So if the camera isn’t actually overheating what’re the risks of doing this technique?
When you restart your camera after easing this fake flag, it’s a normal start.
If the camera was too hot. It will tells you.
This is only removing the counter, not the overheat sensor.
If your camera is actually too hot, you will not be able to record.
You have to be smart and see this as a backup mode when you definitely need to shoot and surely not to do a 5 hours conference coverage under the sun in 8K.
0 Risk as the camera do not overheat.
Resetting a timer do not reset the sensors.
Nice finding. Not sure how long Canon can keep talking about “overheating” when they implement a basic timer.
You shouldn’t have to “hack” a camera you payed $4000 for to get it to work right.
Videographers should just get a camera better designed for video maybe? The R5 is the wrong tool for that job. It’s like using plastic nails to build a house. Sure it works for a bit, but crumbles under any sort of daily use. You think that you can just get away with those recording limits in a real world scenario, but in practice, it just doesn’t work and will become a hindrance quicker than you might realize.
Doug Walter Unless the overheating is not real
Frank Valderen Its a preventative operation that Canon has engineered into the camera to stop it BEFORE it starts overheating. Its not “fake”. Everyone claiming it is fake all of a sudden think that they are engineers and understand why Canon chose to impose an limit, but at the end of the day, they are just videographers who bought the wrong tool for the job and are miffed about it.
Doug Walter U never get camera 8K RAW for less than 4000$ keep that in mind. If u wanna 8k Red cameras are not that cheap
Rafał Kusz Right thats what I’m saying
My hack remove the time limit, it do not remove heat sensor, neither the hat software management.
You can’t still run recording forever as the counter is still running and force you to stop every 20 mn to reset it.
It’s just a 100% proof that the limitation is set by time and not heat in most of the situation.
The principle is simple: Change the time to one extra hour to get the overheat time limit gone.
It works on R5 and R6.
If the real sensors are too hot, the hack will stop the camera. Don’t worry. Their is even another set of logo displayed on screen at this time.
And if the camera only rely on timing only to do heat management, I think it will be the first on its kind on the entire 3C market. That males no sense.
Half a million view, I’m not sure you need to spam the conversation here. One time is enough.
This is a joke
Yep, I thought that too. Way too easy to crack a $4,000 cripple hammer time limitation.
Super convenient indeed
Clickbait!
Overheating is not solved. The heat is still there and contained within a small weather sealed body. See Roger Cicala’s teardown and thermal imaging on lensrentals for some unbiased information. Conduction takes time to move heat and that can be reasonably calculated hence the timer. Changing the timer doesn’t stop overheating of the components. I can’t imagine Canon accepting warranty repairs to heat damaged chips.
The R5 performs to specification and new firmware for lower bit rates may enable 8k/30 to be externally recorded which would extend record times as the heat generating CFe card/slot isn’t used. Playing with the battery door is just inviting a damaged switch which means a new motherboard. Play at your own risk but I certainly won’t be doing it to my R5
Note that Canon released firmware 1.1.1 where one item is
“The phenomenon in which the movie recording time available is not
correctly displayed when the Date/Time/Zone is not set has been
corrected.”
Be interesting if this timer “solution” has been bypassed already in 1.1.1