The overheating issue of the Sony a6300 is probably the biggest drawback of this otherwise fantastic tiny mirrorless camera that makes many filmmakers so frustrated and disappointed by its performance after shooting 4K video with the camera for some time.
While being on the fence to sold his A6300, San Diego-based broadcast DP Erik Naso decided to try a few workarounds before making the leap. Surprisingly enough, he managed to find a considerable solution that all Sony a6300 videographers might find useful. No, it’s not a dummy battery with an external power solution tethered to it, nor it’s some type of firmware hack. Obviously, it’s a lot simpler than that as well as a lot more effective.
First, Erik Naso tried a dummy battery powered with an external battery pack. Unfortunately, that solution didn’t stop the overheating as the electronics inside the dummy battery continued to heat up the camera from the inside. Another theory he had was that the camera was working really hard down sampling the 6K image to 4K and struggling to write it to the SD Card causing it to get hot. So, he decided to swap the card utilised for recording media with a considerably faster one.
No matter how skeptical this approach might be for you, it actually worked. This test gave Erik Naso over an hour of continuous recording before the camera’s temperature warning came on. He wasn’t able to get more than 15 minutes of continuous recording with his other class 10 U3 SD cards before as the camera iwould overheat and shut down. According to Naso, these results could explain why there are so many differences in terms of performance and overheating issues reported by a6300 users and why some are not having any or much less problems.
As for the SD card utilised for this particular test, it’s the Lexar Professional 2000x 64GB SDXC UHS-II/U3. If you want to learn more about the way Erik Naso conducted the test with his Sony a6300 head over to his blog here. You’ll also find more details regarding the temperature measurements and the exact runtimes. If you already had a chance to test this approach on your own, feel free to share your conclusions in the comments below.
[source: Erik Naso]
B&H Order Links:
Lexar 64GB Professional 2000x UHS-II SDXC Memory Card with SD UHS-II Reader (U3, Class 10)
Sony Alpha a6300 Mirrorless Digital Camera (Body Only)
Amazon US OrderLinks:
Lexar 64GB Professional 2000x UHS-II SDXC Memory Card with SD UHS-II Reader (U3, Class 10)
Sony Alpha a6300 Mirrorless Digital Camera (Body Only)
Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate partner and participant in B&H and Adorama Affiliate programmes, we earn a small comission from each purchase made through the affiliate links listed above at no additional cost to you.
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