The Canon EOS R5, despite receiving firmware update to help reduce the chances of it happening, has a thing for overheating when shooting video. Every single piece of (admittedly, circumstantial) evidence points to it being a timer that’s hard-coded into the camera and not really based on the temperature inside the camera at all. Or is it?
Matt at DIYPerks decided to have a go at liquid cooling his shiny new $3,900 Canon EOS R5. And after doing tests using the original firmware, he saw the results we all expected. The camera shut down right at the time limit, despite being cooled pretty much to the ambient room temperature. When he installed the v1.1 firmware update, though, everything changed.
When Canon released the v1.1 firmware (they’re at v1.2.0 now), the time limits went up. Many of us simply assumed that Canon had increased the timer, and for some, it made a big difference. For others, not so much. Although it looks like it might actually be monitoring temperatures now and it isn’t just implementing an arbitrary time limit.
Matt proves this with his water cooling system, that allowed the Canon EOS R5 to record indefinitely, constantly keeping the camera close to ambient temperatures. Of course, this kind of cooling is pretty extreme for a camera. Nobody wants to run around with radiators, fans and a giant battery to power it all hanging off their shoulder.
So, Matt explored further.
His next modification after removing the water cooling system was to simply remove the standard metal plate that sits on top of the CPU and RAM with a copper one of his own design which helps to more easily transfer heat to the back of the camera itself. With the LCD flipped open, Matt managed to get an 8K record time of 39 minutes. That’s 14 minutes longer than the 25 minutes you get with the 1.1.1 firmware update (the original firmware offered around 19 minutes).
But, after a five-minute break, he was able to shoot for another half an hour. And this seemingly went on indefinitely with a 5-minute break and then shooting for another half an hour. But where it got really interesting was when he left it recording in a cooler (15°C) room. In that cooler environment, it just kept shooting forever without any interruption.
Even at this stage, this is already a massive improvement over Canon’s own design. So I hope they’re watching this video and taking notes. But Matt wasn’t done yet!
For many of us, it’s not 15°C or anywhere near that cold when we shoot. So Matt’s next experiment was to increase the heat-dissipating benefits of his custom internal copper heatsink by adding an external heatsink and fan. Again, this allowed Matt to keep shooting pretty much indefinitely. And while it’s a bit bulky when using it, it can easily be removed to pack the camera away in the bag again.
But he didn’t stop experimenting here. He also designed and 3D printed a base for the camera which incorporates a fan and bolts on like a grip. This blows cool air from underneath and out over the back of the camera to help take the heat away more quickly. This, too, allowed for unlimited recording in a 23°C room.
Whichever way you look at it, whether you attempt to do any of these modifications to your own camera or not (and all of them would be warranty-voiding), this is pretty solid proof that the EOS R5 is now actually monitoring the internal temperature now.
It wouldn’t surprise me if companies started offering such modifications as a service at some point soon now that it’s been proven to work.
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