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Posts Tagged ‘R5’s’

Part II: Lensrentals investigates the Canon EOS R5’s heat emission

10 Sep
Image credits: Photos published with kind permission from Lensrentals.

Following up on the Canon EOS R5 teardown, Lensrentals has published a follow-up piece investigating the heat emission of the Canon R5.

Before digging into the investigation, it’s worth covering some basics. Electronics in cameras produce heat while operating and to ensure full, uninterrupted operation, heat must be controlled. You can remove heat from critical areas in a camera ‘by conduction (flowing through nearby materials), convection (circulating through gas or fluids), and radiation (which mostly occurs at high temperatures).’ Based on his experience tearing down the Canon EOS R5 with Aaron Closz, Roger Cicala knows that the R5 is tightly sealed, which is great for keeping water out of a camera but not ideal for releasing heat from inside the camera. This means that convection, circulating heat through air, ‘doesn’t play much of a role.’

Cicala avoids discussions about chip operating temperatures, the thermal flow of different substances in a camera, firmware cycles and the like, as they are not his area of expertise. Instead, he focuses on the basic issue of how heat generated by the operation of a fully assembled Canon R5 camera exits the camera. At some point, especially when doing an intensive task such as recording 8K video footage, the camera will overheat and the heat either needs a suitable exit path or the camera needs to shut down. You can learn more about different usage cases and how long the R5 can operate being shutting down by checking out our Canon R5/R6 overheating test.

Lensrentals’s initial testing methodology involves using a Canon R5 camera running version 1.0 firmware recording 8K video to a CFx card. The camera was then run until it reached a temperature cut off while the team used industrial thermometers to monitor the heat of the camera and see where heat was exiting the R5.

With a lens attached, with all covers closed and with the LCD folded against the camera body, the R5 ran for 18 minutes on a table before getting a temperature warning. Lensrentals found that the hottest part of the camera was the back behind the LCD with a temperature of 43°C / 109°F. The thumb rest was slightly cooler at 40°C / 104°F and the bottom plate around the tripod socket 38°C / 100°F. The test was run again with the LCD moved to the open position and the camera was a few degrees cooler but was unable to record for a longer duration.

Next, Lensrentals ditched the thermometers in favor of a FLIR IR camera. Cicala has long suspected that the lightweight material used for camera chassis and shells aren’t good conductors of heat. With a removed R5 shell as the test subject, it turns out Cicala’s assumptions were right. He says, ‘The shell material doesn’t spread heat especially well…Obviously, it does pass heat out of the camera to some degree, but it sure doesn’t act as a heat sink or anything.’ Cicala continues, ‘Even exposed to air, it was over 10 minutes before [the shell] cooled down to room temperature. This kind of poses the question that if heat isn’t getting out of the shell very well, then how does the heat get out?’

With the FLIR IR camera, the team redid the original recording test, and lo and behold, the warm spot found by the thermometer is immediately evident in the FLIR IR image. Cicala overlaid an image from the R5 teardown and no surprise, the hot spot is located above the camera’s processor and SDRAM cards.

Cicala is careful to point out, ‘This is NOT an image with the back off. It’s an image of inside of the camera overlaid on the heat image to correlate location.’ Image credit: Lensrentals, 2020

The front of the camera showed a bit of warmth and the top of the camera remained quite cool. Cicala wondered if the heat from inside the camera might rise through the air inside and reach the top plate, but as the teardown showed, there’s very little empty space inside the R5. The viewfinder also acts to block some heat transfer.

When taking apart the Canon R5, Lensrentals noted that there’s a heat sink connected to the metal tripod plate. The FLIR IR image shows that the bottom of the camera does get quite warm. In the image below, captured at thermal cut-off, you can see the metal screws that go into the tripod plate heating up. The tripod socket itself, for some reason, remained quite cool.

As the camera heats up to the point where it needs to shut off, heat is showing in the FLIR IR images in numerous places. The metal lugs for the camera strap get very hot, the front of the camera is now quite hot, especially around the lens mount area, and the area near the card slot door also heats up considerably. The hottest spot of the camera during testing proved to be the CFx slot itself, at nearly 48° C.

After upgrading the R5 to firmware version 1.1, recording times before cut-off increased, but so did the operating temperatures of the camera. Of interest here is that the I/O ports connected to the main PCB itself got ‘quite hot,’ but the ports attached to the sub-board didn’t seem to heat up much at all. The image sensor itself also quite hot, nearly 50° C. An anonymous friend of Lensrentals read the internal temperature from a raw image captured during the temperature testing. That image showed an internal temperature of 61° C, which is hotter than the CFx card slot, meaning that somewhere inside the camera is hotter than the hottest temperature Lensrentals measured during testing.

After testing, Lensrentals has a few interesting conclusions. Heat does not leave the R5 very well, and it seems to exit primarily via metal parts of the camera body. Further, the camera is hotter inside than at its hottest exit points. Cicala writes, ‘If [the R5] doesn’t get heat out very well, it certainly can’t be expected to cool down quickly after it turns off from overheating. Cooling the outside of the camera should help a bit, but it’s not going to be very efficient.’

There are some steps you can take to possibly help the camera stay cooler, such as leaving the LCD opened away from the back of the camera, opening the HDMI port cover (remember, this port is attached directly to the main board), and saving to SD cards when possible, which is of course not possible when recording 8K video. However, Cicala doubts that these steps will make a significant difference. Perhaps more effective steps would be to remove the lens, open the shutter and open the memory card doors will help. These aren’t steps you necessarily should have to take in order to use a camera the way you want to.

More enterprising individuals may opt to try minor modifications. Cicala says, ‘Some people intend to do more aggressive things to extend recording time. It would certainly be possible, with some minor modifications, to connect the metal heat sink plates to the outside world. You might do so by just exposing the bottom tripod plate and attaching a sink to that. Of course, you lose weather sealing, but it would be simple to try.’

Maybe removing the weather sealing and opening parts of the camera would help, but to really fix the overheating issue, someone will have to figure out a way to improve heat transfer from inside the camera, as there appears to be a thermal bottleneck deep within the R5. Cicala provides a humorous image as to what a ‘redneck 8K video camera’ might look like after modifications.

For many more images and to read Cicala’s full speculation about whether the Canon R5 can be ‘fixed’ and whether it even needs fixing in Canon’s eyes, read the full article on the Lensrentals blog.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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8K and then some: what the Canon EOS R5’s video specs mean

23 Apr

Introduction

Canon kickstarted the success of the stills/video hybrid ILC with the introduction of the EOS 5D Mark II in 2008. Since then it appears to have focused most of its video efforts on its Cinema EOS line of professional video cameras.

However, as part of its drip-feed of EOS R5 specs, Canon has spelled out a lot more about its video capabilities. And, from what’s been said, it looks like the biggest leap forward in video for Canon’s main EOS line since that launch 12 years ago.

We already knew that the EOS R5 was going to be able to shoot at 12 fps with its mechanical shutter and 20 in e-shutter mode and that it was going to shoot 8K, but the more detailed video specs are worth digesting…

8K video capture

The most eye-catching spec is one that Canon’s previously announced. The EOS R5 will become the first consumer ILC to offer 8K video capture. That’s a huge deal, in part because of what it tells us about the camera’s processing power.

8K is usually taken to mean a resolution of 7680 x 4320 pixels, which is exactly four times the size of UHD 4K (also meaning it’s the theoretical perfect capture resolution if you wish to correctly represent all the spatial frequencies that can be conveyed in a 4K image).

However, Canon has previously tended to prefer the wider 1.90:1 DCI format to the 16:9 of UHD for its high end cameras. Canon also says that it’s both the 8K and DCI 4K modes that use the full width of the sensor, which could imply the use of a 8192 x 4230 region. This would require a 44.7MP sensor, rather than the ~40MP chip needed for 16:9 8K.

Even though 8K displays aren’t exactly widespread, yet, there are plenty of reasons it can still be useful. Whether it’s to provide greater compositional flexibility in the edit, to provide better quality 4K footage, or to future-proof your next project, 8K capability will have its uses.

8K Raw

And, as if 8K video weren’t impressive enough (and just a reminder, that’s at least four times the data demand that causes some cameras to struggle), Canon says the EOS R5 will capture Raw video data.

Internal Raw video capture is scarce enough in the 4K realm, being almost the sole preserve of the EOS-1D X Mark III, with just a handful of cameras having to hand-off much of the heavy lifting to Atomos’ external recorders. But Canon says the EOS R5 will handle 8K 30p in Raw: that’s like shooting thirty 32MP images per second.

Given the 1D X III shoots 5.5K Raw in 12-bit, we’d assume a similar setup here. Canon hasn’t specified the data rates yet. The R5’s 8K is a little more than twice the number of pixels as the 1D X III’s video, so we’d expect its 8K/30p to be anywhere from a bit above the 2600 Mbps that the 1D X III uses to store 5.5K/60p to somewhere in the high 3000 Mbps range, if the compression ratio is closer to that of the 1D X III’s 5.5K/30p data rate.

Unlike the 1D X III, it’ll be able to output its maximum rate while maintaining Dual Pixel AF.

10-bit C-Log

For those of us without cooled server farms and infinite storage, the EOS R5 will be able to shoot C-Log footage. Like the 1D X Mark III, this is output as 10-bit 4:2:2 H.265 footage.

This is likely to be the Canon Log response that incorporates around 12 stops of dynamic range, giving a good degree of flexibility in when post-processing. LUTs for the Canon Log response are already widely available, for both SDR and HDR output, making it easy to incorporate the R5 into an existing workflow.

10-bit HDR PQ

As an alternative option, the camera will output footage encoded using the PQ (perceptual quantizer) curve used in several of the most sophisticated HDR TV standards.

This provides a means of shooting footage directly for use on HDR displays. It’s interesting to see Canon plump for the PQ response, rather than the simpler and SDR-compatible HLG system adopted by Panasonic, Fujifilm and Sony.

4K/120

As if the promise of 8K video weren’t impressive enough, Canon says the EOS R5 will be able to shoot 4K footage from the full width of its sensor at up to 120p. While maintaining full Dual Pixel AF.

In an era when most of the handful of cameras that can shoot 4K/60 have to crop or sub-sample their sensors to do so, the idea of shooting 120p (119.94) is a big step forward.

It’s likely that both this and the 60p footage will be sub-sampled in some manner (if it could read and process that entire sensor region 120 times a second, it could presumably offer 8K/120, too!).

But played back as 24p, it can be used as 1/5th speed slow-mo, or 1/4th speed for 30p playback, which is a useful creative option in 4K workflows.

IBIS
Like the Nikon Z7, the EOS R5 will have in-body image stabilization.

Another key capability is the inclusion of in-body image stabilization. Canon has pretty well-established digital stabilization in many of its cameras but the EOS R5 will be the first instance of a Canon ILC with a moving sensor providing stabilization, too.

No details were given about whether the in-body system shares the stabilization duties when an IS lens is mounted (passing off pitch and yaw correction to the lens), or whether they both work together, simultaneously.

This feature, combined with dual pixel AF and internal capture of even the highest-quality footage make the EOS R5 an effectively self-contained video package, able to turn its hand to a wide range of shooting styles and situations, including run-and-gun operation.

Potential limitations

There are a couple of details that are still unknown. Many current cameras’ maximum recording times are limited by the heat build-up, especially at their highest resolution modes. The EOS R5 promises to juggle tremendous amounts of data, which is likely to generate a lot of heat, so it’s not clear how long it will be able to run continuously, in its more technically impressive modes.

Also, although it’s a two-slot camera, Canon has opted for one of these to be UHS-II. At present, the fastest SD card standards only guarantee 90 MB/s write speeds (no matter what the peak speeds quoted on the card say). At ‘only’ 720 Mbps, it’s unlikely most of the R5’s highest video rates can be dependably written to the SD card slot, potentially making it a single card slot camera from a high-end video perspective.

Unless data can be channelled to an external SSD across USB-C, the capacity of your CFexpress card might another bottleneck that limits the camera’s shooting duration.

Battery life is the other potential limitation for a camera doing so much hard work. The mockups and computer renderings Canon has shown so far suggest there won’t be room for a battery much bigger than in existing models, so that’s another potential limit (though again, one that clever use of the USB socket might alleviate.

Summary

Canon has let its main EOS line fall significantly behind its rivals (the EOS 5D IV’s cropped video was off the pace when it was launched, so looked even more tired by the time it appeared in the EOS R, two years later), whereas the EOS R5 is not so much a case of catching up as establishing a significant lead.

Canon’s latest spec disclosure was solely focused on video but we’d expect it to be as much a camera for stills shooters as it is a video tool. When more details become available, we look forward to learning what all this processing power will mean for AF and stills shooting, too.

We’ve looked into the implication of the R5’s video specs a bit more detail, in this article, but even if you’re not interested in video, this is a camera worth watching.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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8K and then some: what the Canon EOS R5’s video specs mean

21 Apr

Introduction

Canon kickstarted the idea of the stills/video hybrid ILC with the introduction of the EOS 5D Mark II in 2008. Since then it appears to have focused most of its video efforts on its Cinema EOS line of professional video cameras.

However, as part of its drip-feed of EOS R5 specs, Canon has spelled out a lot more about its video capabilities. And, from what’s been said, it looks like the biggest leap forward in video for Canon’s main EOS line since that launch 12 years ago.

We already knew that the EOS R5 was going to be able to shoot at 12 fps with its mechanical shutter and 20 in e-shutter mode and that it was going to shoot 8K, but the more detailed video specs are worth digesting…

8K video capture

The most eye-catching spec is one that Canon’s previously announced. The EOS R5 will become the first consumer ILC to offer 8K video capture. That’s a huge deal, in part because of what it tells us about the camera’s processing power.

8K is usually taken to mean a resolution of 7680 x 4320 pixels, which is exactly four times the size of UHD 4K (also meaning it’s the theoretical perfect capture resolution if you wish to correctly represent all the spatial frequencies that can be conveyed in a 4K image).

However, Canon has previous tended to prefer the wider 1.90:1 DCI format to the 16:9 of UHD for its high end cameras. Canon also says that it’s both the 8K and DCI 4K modes that use the full width of the sensor, which could imply the use of a 8192 x 4230 region. This would require a 44.7MP sensor, rather than the ~40MP chip needed for 16:9 8K.

Even though 8K displays aren’t exactly widespread, yet, there are plenty of reasons it can still be useful. Whether it’s to provide greater compositional flexibility in the edit, to provide better quality 4K footage, or to future-proof your project, 8K capability will have its uses.

8K Raw

And, as if 8K video weren’t impressive enough (as we say, it’s at least four times the data demand that still causes many cameras to get hot under the collar dealing with), Canon says the EOS R5 will capture Raw video data.

Internal Raw video capture is scarce enough in the 4K realm, being almost the sole preserve of the EOS-1D X Mark III, with just a handful of cameras having to hand-off much of the heavy lifting to Atomos’ external recorders. But Canon says the EOS R5 will handle 8K 30p in Raw: that’s thirty 32MP images per second.

Given the 1D X III shoots 5.5K Raw in 12-bit, we’d assume a similar setup here. Canon hasn’t specified the data rates yet. The R5’s 8K is a bit more than twice the number of pixels as the 1D X III’s video, so we’d expect its 8K/30p to be anywhere from a bit above the 2600 Mbps that the 1D X III uses to store 5.5K/60p to somewhere in the high 3000 Mbps range, if the compression ratio is closer to that of the 1D X III’s 5.5K/30p data rate.

Unlike the 1D X III, it’ll be able to output its maximum rate while maintaining Dual Pixel AF.

10-bit C-Log

For those of us without cooled server farms and infinite storage, the EOS R5 will be able to shoot C-Log footage. Like the 1D X Mark III, this is output as 10-bit 4:2:2 H.265 footage.

This is likely to be the Canon Log response that incorporates around 12 stops of dynamic range, giving a good degree of flexibility in when post-processing. LUTs for the Canon Log response are already widely available, for both SDR and HDR output, making it easy to incorporate the R5 into an existing workflow.

10-bit HDR PQ

Alternatively, the camera will output footage encoded using the PQ (perceptual quantizer) curve used in several of the most sophisticated HDR TV standards.

This provides a means of shooting footage directly for use on HDR displays. It’s interesting to see Canon plump for the PQ response, rather than the simpler and SDR-compatible HLG system adopted by Panasonic, Fujifilm and Sony.

4K/120

As if the promise of 8K video weren’t impressive enough, Canon says the EOS R5 will be able to shoot 4K footage from the full width of its sensor at up to 120p. While maintaining full Dual Pixel AF.

In an era when most of the handful of cameras that can shoot 4K/60 have to crop or sub-sample their sensors to do so, the idea of shooting 120p (119.94) is a big step forward.

It’s likely that both this and the 60p footage will be sub-sampled in some manner (if it could read and process that entire sensor region 120 times a second, it could presumably offer 8K/120, too!).

But played back as 24p, it can be used as 1/5th speed slow-mo, or 1/4th speed for 30p playback, which is a useful creative option in 4K workflows.

IBIS
Like the Nikon Z7, the EOS R5 will have in-body image stabilization.

Another key capability is the inclusion of in-body image stabilization. Canon has pretty well-established digital stabilization in many of its cameras but the EOS R5 will be the first instance of a Canon ILC with a moving sensor providing stabilization, too.

No details were given about whether the in-body system shares the stabilization duties when an IS lens is mounted (passing off pitch and yaw correction to the lens), or whether they both work in together, collaboratively.

This feature, combined with dual pixel AF and internal capture of even the highest-quality footage make the EOS R5 an effectively self-contained video package, able to turn its hand to a wide range of shooting styles and situations, including run-and-gun operation.

Potential limitations

There are a couple of details that are unknown, though. Many current cameras’ maximum recording times are limited by the heat build-up, especially when shot at their highest resolution modes. The EOS R5 promises to juggle tremendous amounts of data, which is likely to generate a lot of heat, so it’s not clear how long it will be able to run for, in its more technically impressive modes.

Also, although it’s a two-slot camera, Canon has opted for one of these to be UHS-II. At present, the fastest SD card standards only guarantee 90 MB/s write speeds (no matter what the peak speeds quoted on the card say). At ‘only’ 720 Mbps, it’s unlikely most of the R5’s highest video rates can be dependably written to the SD card slot, potentially making it a single card slot camera from a high-end video perspective.

Unless data can be channelled to an external SSD across USB-C, the capacity of your CFexpress card might another bottleneck that limits the camera’s shooting duration.

Battery life is the other potential limitation for a camera doing so much hard work. The mockups and computer renderings Canon has shown so far suggest there won’t be room for a battery much bigger than in existing models, so that’s another potential limit (though again, one that clever use of the USB socket might alleviate.

Summary

Canon’s latest spec disclosure was solely focused on video but we’d expect it to be as much a camera for stills shooters as it is a video tool. We look forward to seeing what all this processing power will mean for AF and stills shooting, too.

Canon has let its main EOS line fall significantly behind its rivals (the EOS 5D IV’s cropped video was off the pace when it was launched, so looked even more tired by the time it appeared in the EOS R, two years later), whereas the EOS R5 is not so much a case of catching up as establishing a significant lead.

Dale Baskin has looked into the implication of these video specs a bit more detail, but even if you’re not interested in video, the EOS R5 is a camera worth watching.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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