Is new Firmware causing more overheating issues?

[Alabama]

I updated to the latest Firmware on the A7IV. Today I spent about 30 mins going through all the menus and changing settings, following a YT video. The camera shutdown at the end with the overheating warning. Now I didn't have the screen folded out but I don't recall that being a problem when I first got the camera and was setting it up.

Is this normal behaviour if working on the menus with the screen folded in or do you think the firmware has made the overheating worse?

Ambient temp was about 20C.

 

[Bassman2003]

Do you have the longer temp setting set to ON in the menu?

 

[Alabama]

Do you have the longer temp setting set to ON in the menu?

No, just the standard setting.

 

[DenverSteve]

Not that I've seen. I've never had a Sony body overheat whether I'm shooting documentary video or stills. I've never even considered my camera shutting down during menu surfing. I would look to see what you've changed from the YouTube suggestions (something I've never done) to see what change you made that's causing the camera to overheat. I would start by resetting to factory settings and see what happens.

 

[Alabama]

Not that I've seen. I've never had a Sony body overheat whether I'm shooting documentary video or stills. I've never even considered my camera shutting down during menu surfing. I would look to see what you've changed from the YouTube suggestions (something I've never done) to see what change you made that's causing the camera to overheat. I would start by resetting to factory settings and see what happens.

Good suggestion, I could see that being an issue if it happened with shooting video as a result of some settings changes but just working with menu settings should not cause overheating.

I have saved settings before doing the changes so could load then up again.

 

[MILC man]

Do you have the longer temp setting set to ON in the menu?

No, just the standard setting.

that's why it shut down.

however, you are saying that it shut down just from being in the menu a long time, which is something that i've never seen anyone post.

 

[Alabama]

Do you have the longer temp setting set to ON in the menu?

No, just the standard setting.

that's why it shut down.

however, you are saying that it shut down just from being in the menu a long time, which is something that i've never seen anyone post.

That's correct.

 

[River Photography]

Do you have the longer temp setting set to ON in the menu?

No, just the standard setting.

that's why it shut down.

however, you are saying that it shut down just from being in the menu a long time, which is something that i've never seen anyone post.

That's correct.

what batteries are you using ?

 

[River Photography]

i videoed my daughters gig last week and left the 74 recording for 3 hours it didnt even get luke warm ;-)

 

[Alabama]

Do you have the longer temp setting set to ON in the menu?

No, just the standard setting.

that's why it shut down.

however, you are saying that it shut down just from being in the menu a long time, which is something that i've never seen anyone post.

That's correct.

what batteries are you using ?

Standard battery supplied with the camera.

 

[Alabama]

i videoed my daughters gig last week and left the 74 recording for 3 hours it didnt even get luke warm ;-)

Sounds like you have a good one. I'm beginning to think there is a lot of variance with some performing better than others as far as overheating goes.

 

[Bassman2003]

Try turning on the extended overheating setting in the menu and see if the camera acts any differently.

 

[MILC man]

Try turning on the extended overheating setting in the menu and see if the camera acts any differently.

that would keep it from shutting down, but given that he had watched a y/t video on the camera setup it's strange that he didn't have it already turned on.

in general we know that mucking about in the menus on these cameras uses a lot of power, so i guess it's reasonable to assume that it also creates heat.

 

[calkapokole]

Happened for me as well when I was setting up my A7IV for the first time. Problem disappeared when I changed the "Auto Power OFF Temp." to "High". This guy says that menu implementation on A7IV is flawed: "So you can think of the menu just like an overlay over the live view. The camera is still working in the background."

 

[Alabama]

Try turning on the extended overheating setting in the menu and see if the camera acts any differently.

that would keep it from shutting down, but given that he had watched a y/t video on the camera setup it's strange that he didn't have it already turned on.

I had not turned it to the high setting as I was intending to do a video test on normal to see how it performed, however I never got to do that test as setting up the video in the menus resulted in the shutdown.

in general we know that mucking about in the menus on these cameras uses a lot of power, so i guess it's reasonable to assume that it also creates heat.

 

[Bassman2003]

I see this setting as kind of redundant. If having it on does no harm, then why not just hard wire the camera that way? Seems odd to me. Unless it does something negative like add noise to high ISO images...

 

[Alabama]

Happened for me as well when I was setting up my A7IV for the first time. Problem disappeared when I changed the "Auto Power OFF Temp." to "High". This guy says that menu implementation on A7IV is flawed: "So you can think of the menu just like an overlay over the live view. The camera is still working in the background."

I changed the setting to High and shot 1Hr 20 mins of video at 4K 50p 200M 4.2.2 10bit. The camera did not shut off however the LH front was what I would call hot rather than warm. I wondering just how it will hold up long term as far as reliability goes.

 

[Bassman2003]

It is a conundrum - high resolution=high heat. But the only way to dissipate the heat is through the body. So feeling hot to the touch is by design. That is the camera moving the heat away from the electronics inside. Glad you got it sorted.

 

[Cam89]

Hey this just happened to me, it overheated when menu surfing, and the camera it self feels pretty warm to the touch.
Any suggestions?

 

[ANGWK]

Hey this just happened to me, it overheated when menu surfing, and the camera it self feels pretty warm to the touch.
Any suggestions?

Turn the Auto Power OFF Temp to High and you are good to go, much lesser chance to get overheated.

Under all video mode, A7IV is constantly downsampling from higher resolution which generates more heat. It doesn't use pixel binning or line skipping which can degrade the image quality significantly.