Videographers Might Have to Worry About the Canon R6 Mark III Overheating

In PetaPixel‘s review of the new Canon R6 Mark III, the lack of a fan versus the C50 — which uses the same sensor and has many of the same video features — was mentioned as one of the reasons a videographer might want to go with the cinema-focused body. When it comes to the R6 Mark III, we do see overheating as a possible concern in some use cases.

Jordan Drake typically runs a battery of overheating tests for every camera PetaPixel reviews and did the same in this case. Consider his findings here an addendum to the full review published on November 6, since we added one more overheating test to the group since the publication of that review: open gate.

It is worth noting that we have not encountered an overheating problem with any modern camera with integrated active cooling, and that includes the C50.

All of PetaPixel‘s overheating tests are conducted indoors at an ambient 21 degrees Celsius. For the R6 Mark III, the heat recording threshold was set to “High” and the camera was allowed to cool for one hour between tests. All tests were conducted using the battery only, with no charging through the USB-C port.

The Results

• 4Kp30 Video at the “Fine” Setting: 103 minutes of recording before the battery died, with no overheating.
• 4Kp60 Video at the “Fine” Setting: 28 minutes of recording before the camera overheated and shut down.
• 4Kp24 RAW Video: 42 minutes of recording before the CFexpress card overheated. The camera did not overheat, nor did it provide a camera overheat warning.
• 7Kp30 Open Gate Video: 34 minutes of recording before the camera overheated and shut down.

These results show that in three out of the four most common video recording use cases, something will overheat and cut recording time. The 103 minutes of 4Kp30 is the benchmark of how long the camera can record, given that it only stopped recording due to the battery dying, which means that doubling the frame rate to 60p cut record times by 73%. Shooting in Open Gate cut record times by 67%.

Shooting in RAW is a more complicated discussion, since doing so didn’t actually cause the camera to overheat. Instead, we got the card overheat warning — which is a separate warning from a camera overheat — and the R6 Mark III stopped recording. While that’s not necessarily an R6 Mark III problem, we are not seeing this limitation with cameras with an integrated fan like the C50. As a result, we don’t really have a choice other than to list this as a limitation. Shooting in RAW cuts maximum record times by 59%.

There will be plenty of video shooters who will never ask the camera to record more than 4Kp30 “Fine” video footage, especially since the R6 Mark III includes a nice set of C-log options — for those people, the C50 got a whole lot less compelling when the R6 Mark III was announced. It is also uncommon, although not unheard of, to see long takes at 60p, and that is unfortunately where R6 Mark III record times are their weakest. Filmmakers will have to decide if they care enough about long RAW and Open Gate recording sessions to let these limitations move them towards a camera with active cooling.

What all this means is that videographers and filmmakers now have to make a choice if they want to use a Canon camera with this particular sensor: they can either elect for active cooling, which doesn’t limit record times due to heat, or they can choose to accept that limitation in exchange for an electronic viewfinder and in-body image stabilization.

This is, frankly, a crummy choice to have to make, made even more irritating by the fact that it didn’t have to be this way.

Canon elected not to include active cooling in the R6 Mark III just as it chose not to include an EVF or IBIS in the C50. We know there is a way to offer it all, since Panasonic Lumix chose to include all of these features in the S1 II.