Primarily, I shoot video so I selected the a7Sii. The low light and dynamic range performance of this camera is astounding. It allows me to shoot at night with little to no noise. This feature really came in handy in Hawaii last week as I was videoing the Kīlauea lava flows into the Pacific. The Sony delivered truly stunning images.

I would think something with a fast 3+ GHz Intel 4 core uP, lots of RAM, 8GB or more, a 6Gbit/Sec SATA3 solid state drive (SSD) and a NVIDA GeForce 2GB video card would do the trick. I'm not sure if you can get all that for <£1000 but those are the features you want to look for.

I bought an a7Sii last April and ran into this problem after about 45 minutes of continuous recording at 75F room temperature. Sony came out with a firmware update that they said would alleviate this prob!em when used in conjunction with their expensive pistol grip.

This grip moves the battery from the camera body to the grip. So that led me to believe the battery was adding heat to the camera. I added an external 3.7V USB battery (5V works better) to reduce the load on the internal battery with the idea it would reduce the amount of heat introduced by the Sony battery.

With the firmware updated, external battery and the monitor pulled away from the back of the camera to expose the back of the camera body to ambient air i was able to record for two hours before I stopped the test without any shutdown due to heat.

A feature of the Sony firmware is to automatically stop recording after 30 minutes so I monitored the recording time and restarted it immediately after it stopped. This could be a pain if you're doing event recording but it is manageable. I wish Sony would fix this because it is not really needed.

It's not a big deal to tape a USB battery to a tripod leg. And you'll be able to record for over two hours without having to change any batteries. If you're shooting handheld I doubt you'll be doing 30 minute takes so you should not need to worry about the overheating. I really like my a7Sii. I've used it to record musical and stage performances without any overheating issues.

I recently bought an a7s ii and a FE 4/PZ 28-135 G OSS lens. The camera came with Rev 1.10 firmware. I really like this setup and was dismayed to find Sony limited the continuous recording time to just under 30 minutes. I decided to test how long the camera would record before it over-temped so I set it up on a tripod with the monitor pulled out and started recording a still life in full frame XAVC S 4K 24p.

After the timer stopped the recording at the 30 minute mark I immediately restarted the recording and it ran for about another 15 minutes before it powered itself down. The back and base plates where hot to the touch and the camera would not power back up until it cooled down.

After upgrading the firmware to Rev 2.0 I repeated the test the following day. I made one change to the setup in that I supplemented the camera power from an external $15 5200mAh USB battery. The idea being that this would reduce the power draw of the internal battery and mitigate any heating originating from it. I stopped the test after two hours of mostly continuous recording, again having to restart the recording when it timed out. It worked really well.

When I finished the back and base plates of the camera were warm to the touch but nowhere near as hot as the first test with Rev 1.10 firmware. At no time did the temperature warning icon pop up in the second test. The external battery was down about 1/3rd and the internal battery was at 19%. Both tests were run at about 65dF ambient temperature.

I'm thinking about mounting a small CPU heat sink and fan on the bottom plate tripod mounting hole to help dissipate the heat. Hopefully this will give me a little margin on those hot days. We'll have to wait for a nice warm day to see how it performs.

I'm all set to record a two hour plus dance production in a couple of weeks. While the 30 minute recording limit will be an annoyance we should be able to manage it. I would recommend to Sony that they allow the user to set or turn off the continuous recording timer in a setup menu in their next firmware release. With this 2.0 firmware release it has become redundant.

Regards, Dave