Hey, my name is Matt Johnson.
And if you film with a Sony camera, the odds are that at some point
you're going to experience overheating where your camera tells you that it's too
hot and needs to shut down and cool, which can take anywhere from a few seconds
to several minutes during which you can't film with your camera
to help you out though, and keep this from ever happening to you.
In this video, I'm going to be sharing with you
three things that you could do to prevent overheating, regardless of which
Sony camera that you own, as well as give you a few bonus tips
that are virtually guaranteed to prevent overheating jumping right into it.
Then the first thing that you need to do to prevent your Sony camera overheating is
turn the camera's auto power off temperature too high
nine times out of ten.
Whenever I talk to people who tell me they've experienced overheating
with their camera, it's because they've not gone
into their settings and enabled this feature.
And this is one of the main reasons that I'm making this video.
So if you have a newer Sony camera with their newer
menu system like the A7 s3x3 A1,
A7 four, etc., you can access this setting by going to the Yellow
Toolbox set up icon, then down to the power setting option.
And here you're going to want to change
the auto power off temperature from standard to high.
Your camera
will most likely give you a warning whenever you enable this, telling you
that the camera could become hot to the touch.
But do not stress about this.
It is not going to be hot enough to burn you, but it will enable
the camera to get significantly warmer before it overheats and shuts down.
And the odds are that in most situations
your camera is going to be able to cool itself off before it overheats.
Alternatively, now if you have an earlier Sony camera like an A7 three,
a 6600, a6400, etc., any of these Sony cameras
with an older menu system, these cameras have a high heat setting as well.
Simply open your camera up and go to the Toolbox menu
and there you will find the same heading that says auto power off temperature.
You can also change from standard to high in the vast
majority of situations by you changing this auto power off temperature.
That is all that
you're going to need to do
and you will virtually never have to deal with overheating again.
But that said, there are some edge cases where you still may
experience overheating.
Let's say you're filming an outdoor wedding ceremony like I commonly do
in Texas, where for some reason a couple decided to get married
in the middle of July or August whenever it's easily over 100 degrees.
In that situation, you may still deal with overheating,
but here are more techniques for how to avoid it.
First, two of the simplest things
you can do are going to be to pull out your camera's screen from its body,
as well as open up the memory card doors and any other doors on the camera.
This is going to provide
a little bit more ventilation, which can help the camera dissipate heat.
And most importantly, I want you to keep in mind
that this screen on your camera is one of the largest heat generators.
So if you can pull that away from the camera body,
that is going to keep the camera from heating up so much.
So if you have a newer Sony camera with a flip out screen
like the A7 three or A7 four, pull your screen out to the side.
And if you have an older style Sony screen that flips up and down like at a winery,
seven three, just pull your screen out from the camera a few inches
and that will help the camera dissipate.
Heat Now let's say that you're doing this, but you're also filming outside
for a very long time on a very hot day, and your camera's
giving you a little thermometer on the screen showing you
that it's getting close to overheating and you're starting to get nervous.
Do not stress.
We are not done with tips yet.
It's time to get really advanced with your overheating prevention steps,
starting with some extra accessories that you can buy for your camera.
The first accessory is an accessory that you can buy for virtually
any Sony camera, and that is a battery grip.
The way a battery grip works is that it extends the height of your camera out
vertically, and in the process it gives you the ability to use
two batteries with your camera to extend the battery life.
Now, why would you want to do this?
And what does this have to do with overheating?
Well, the main benefit of this technique is that if you were to
look at your Sony camera when it's starting to overheat,
one of the hottest parts of your camera is going to be the battery,
because that is a dense metal rectangle that's stuck up inside your camera
and once that metal rectangle gets hot, it's going to be very hard to cool down.
So by removing this battery from your camera,
instead of having your batteries housed in the battery grip
below your camera, this can significantly reduce the temperature
inside the main camera body itself, which will help prevent overheating.
This is a technique that I've personally used
for many years with my Sony A7 S2 to not only prevent overheating
but also help with the rather atrocious battery life on this camera.
Now, if you don't want
to go with the battery grip route, you have an alternative option
in the form of an accessory, commonly called a dummy battery.
This is a hollow plastic battery that has a cable running from it
to your real battery that you can now put outside of your camera.
You can then power your camera using a larger battery like a V mount, etc.,
or just plug it into a wall and just like a battery grip
by removing the battery from your camera and replacing it with this hollow
dummy battery,
you're making it significantly easier for the camera to keep cool.
Of course, though, this is going to require you
to rig up a different power source
and make your filmmaking rig significantly larger.
So I personally do not use this technique whenever filming things like wedding
ceremonies where I want to keep my equipment as compact as possible.
But I know many filmmakers that have used dummy batteries.
Alternatively, now I have one final custom technique for you.
And while I've only seen a few people do this,
it is definitely one of my favorites and I think it's going to be super helpful
to you.
Before I share this final technique with you, though, we need to talk
about the science of heat here for a second.
Whenever your camera overheats,
the internals of the camera get too hot, and then the camera has to shut down
to prevent them from essentially melting on the inside.
So where does this heat come from?
It has three sources.
The first source is the cameras, electronics itself that generate heat
because they are saving and encoding high quality videos to the memory card.
The second source of heat is going to be the ambient temperature of the camera,
meaning whether you're filming
with your camera inside an air conditioned room like I am right now,
or if you're outside filming on a very hot wedding day,
the ambient temperature of the environment is also going to contribute
to how much your camera heats up with these two heat sources.
I feel fairly confident in telling you that as long as you have
the auto power off, temperature settings are too high on your camera
and you have your screen pulled out, you should be safe from overheating.
But we need to talk about the third source of heat,
because this is what trips up a lot of filmmakers
and this is where you're going to be dealing with the most overheating.
This final heat source is going to be there
any time you're filming during the day.
And it is the sun.
The sun emits infrared, radiated heat and whenever you consider that your camera
is essentially a black box and black is the color that most absorbs
heat if your camera is outside in direct sunlight on a hot day,
it is going to heat up dramatically more than it would if it was in the shade.
And the odds that your camera's going to overheat go up significantly.
So how do you prevent this infrared heat from getting to your camera then?
How do you protect your camera from the sun?
You make your own shade.
Yes. With this final overheat prevention technique,
you are going to be essentially building a custom sunshade for your camera
that you can attach to your camera's hot shoe very quickly and easily
and used to prevent overheating on hot days.
It's super simple to all you need to invest in is a camera
screw in hot shoe mount as well as some cardboard or foam board.
I'll link to what you need to buy as well as all the other equipment
that I talk about in this video, in the description down below.
Once you have what you need to build your custom sunshade,
simply measure the size of your camera, plus a few extra inches of length
to give your sunshade
some added coverage in the event that the sun isn't directly overhead,
but it's down more at an angle and cut your cardboard to fit.
Or if you're lucky, like me, you have a spare pizza box
lying around that is already the perfect size.
Keep in mind
that you don't your board to be too large
because then it may show up in your camera's field of view.
Then here's the easy part.
Simply unscrew the top screw from the hot shoe mount.
Stab your board down onto the mount and screw on the top to hold it in place.
Voila.
You've now built a custom sunshade for your camera that you can easily slide
into the hot shoe and use to prevent your camera from overheating.
I love this setup because it's so lightweight.
And the good news is that if your board ever breaks,
repairing it is as simple as grabbing a spare piece of cardboard,
which if you're like me and you order a lot of things online,
the odds are that you probably have cardboard everywhere.
And that's how you keep your Sony camera from overheating
by setting the auto power off temperature high, pulling your screen away
from the camera body, using a battery grip or dummy battery
and possibly building your own custom sunshade.
You should never have to deal with overheating again with that.
Thank you so much for watching.
Before you go, if you happen to film weddings and use YouTube like I do,
which I know I used
a lot of wedding examples in this video, I would love to help you out.
Even more so I've created a free guide that gives you
some of my biggest and most important tips that took me years to learn.
As a wedding filmmaker that uses YouTube, this guide is completely free
and it's going to make a huge difference in the amount of views, likes and bookings
that you get from YouTube.
And I would love if you would check it out.
You can download the guide at the link done in the video description.
I lost link down below to my color presets called Who is Matt Lutz
that I've specifically tuned to work fantastically with so many cameras.
So if you use Sony cameras and considering this is an entire video about
how to keep your Sony camera from overheating,
I think you're going to love these presets with that.
Thanks so much for watching and have a great day.