The Canon EOS R5 has been plagued with overheating criticism since its initial release. Canon eventually released a firmware update that resolved some of the issues users were experiencing – although that still wasn’t enough for some people. Next month, it’ll have been a year since the Canon EOS R5 was launched, and it’s received a few more updates since then. But how does it handle today? Well, after using one for the past eight months, Bryan Redding of Deaf Director presents his findings in the above video. And, well, it’s great for photographers. Not so much for filmmakers. It does, of course, depend on exactly what your video needs are, but if you were hoping to shoot 8K, 4K120p or even 4K HQ, you’re out of luck.
Bryan doesn’t really address 8K in the video, although the issues surrounding 8K overheating are fairly common knowledge. But he did test 4K120p, 4K60p and 4K HQ – all of which presented overheating issues. For 4K60p, though, there is at least a workaround to prevent it from overheating. Of course, it does require you to go spend $600 on an Atomos Ninja V to offload the recording to an external device – preventing the CFexpress slot from heating up.
And while he doesn’t test it, if you want 8K and 4K120p without overheating, you’re probably looking at $1,500 to pre-order the Atomos Ninja V+. While $600 for the regular Ninja V isn’t too bad – after all, it’s a fairly common tool and offers a lot of versatility – that extra $900 to go for the V+ is a significant extra chunk to have to spend. It is nice to see that the EOS R5 has seen some improvements with regard to the overheating, and if you’re solely a photographer then it’s an issue you’ll never have to face. But it looks like it’s still not really the tool to go for as a video workhorse. Well, not unless you want to shoot 1080p or get an external recorder – which kind of defeats the purpose of buying a camera that shoots 4K120p and 8K footage internally. Are you using an EOS R5 for video? If you’re not hitting overheating issues, what kind of things are you shooting?
