R1 Overheating!

Not sure how formatting a card can affect heat generated by a camera.
As these cards are actually little SSDs, a full card or a card with no free blocks may need to shuffle/rewrite some blocks around on each write. This is called write amplification.
Theoretically a freshly formatted card with all blocks marked as free would need to do less of this.

But most likely it's the Canon equivalent of "have you tried turning it off and on again".
 
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I was shooting for two hours recently indoors and have not seen the overheating bar at all....

6000 pictures 40 fps with pre shooting enabled - used less than half the battery btw...

(and yes, I overshot, my first time taking pictures of volleyball)
 
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Not sure how formatting a card can affect heat generated by a camera.
Apart from what @vikingar said, storage cards also tend to have firmware that is, let's call it 'optimized' for camera and phone workloads. Those firmwares are sensitive to where the file allocation table is stored (yes, most card firmwares assume a FAT based filesystem) and the offset of the partitions.
On top of that, previous Canon cameras strongly preferred a specific Canon flavour of FAT filesystems. It was still in spec, but different to how Windows and Linux tools would format it by default.

In the era of the original 7D, you should squeeze out a bit more performance by partitioning your CF card in a specific way and then reformatting it in camera. The partitioning would force a specific layout and filesystem, the reformat in camera ensured a Canon-flavoured filesystem. And extra 10Mbyte/s was very noticeable in those days!

But the most likely reason Canon support said is, is as others remarked, their way of getting you to 'turn it on and off again'. It is likely to improve things and resets it to a known good state, but I don't think it will massively decrease the heat generated. But the combined effects might drop it below a threshold that makes it much more useable to you.
 
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I am curious if/when people start to see image degradation or camera shutdowns.

Like any electronic system, I am sure cameras warmed up before, but there was no detection system or at least nothing like what we have on the R1. Now we have a way to quantify and be alerted that the camera is warming up. But will there be an actual difference in performance?

I have shot ~500-1,500 images over a 10-20 min span a few times now. I have noticed 1 bar twice.
 
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I am curious if/when people start to see image degradation or camera shutdowns.

Like any electronic system, I am sure cameras warmed up before, but there was no detection system or at least nothing like what we have on the R1. Now we have a way to quantify and be alerted that the camera is warming up. But will there be an actual difference in performance?

I have shot ~500-1,500 images over a 10-20 min span a few times now. I have noticed 1 bar twice.
In light of the weird PDR results with base iso 200 and optyczne's testing not really showing the same thing, I wonder if heat could be the difference.
 
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In light of the weird PDR results with base iso 200 and optyczne's testing not really showing the same thing, I wonder if heat could be the difference.
It may have more to do with the testing methodology than heat. It would be beneficial to have a 3rd test conducted with a reputable source to look for consistency in the results before coming to a conclusion.
 
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Someone would have to be pretty sloppy to take so many test shots so quickly that heat really become and issue. DXOMark data is coming. While they have their own issues, I’ll be curious about trends, specifically the “base ISO” 200.

But I have also shot with my own R1 enough, I am not that worried. Remarkable camera.
 
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Apart from what @vikingar said, storage cards also tend to have firmware that is, let's call it 'optimized' for camera and phone workloads. Those firmwares are sensitive to where the file allocation table is stored (yes, most card firmwares assume a FAT based filesystem) and the offset of the partitions.
On top of that, previous Canon cameras strongly preferred a specific Canon flavour of FAT filesystems. It was still in spec, but different to how Windows and Linux tools would format it by default.

In the era of the original 7D, you should squeeze out a bit more performance by partitioning your CF card in a specific way and then reformatting it in camera. The partitioning would force a specific layout and filesystem, the reformat in camera ensured a Canon-flavoured filesystem. And extra 10Mbyte/s was very noticeable in those days!

But the most likely reason Canon support said is, is as others remarked, their way of getting you to 'turn it on and off again'. It is likely to improve things and resets it to a known good state, but I don't think it will massively decrease the heat generated. But the combined effects might drop it below a threshold that makes it much more useable to you.
I don't have experience with the cameras you mentioned, but do have experience working with FAT.

I think what you are talking about could be explained by alignment and block size. Alignment to better match the physical properties of the card, and larger block sizes to reduce fragmentation. Any other FAT32 extensions to improve performance in addition to this were introduced already in the DOS era, so those would already be used unless you had a old old card.

Nowadays any card above 32GB is usually exFAT, a much newer filesystem. Block size and alignment is still fixed after formatting, so formatting in-camera may still provide some benefits - assuming Canon does it right. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT#Flash_optimizations

But compared to the past, cards and SSDs nowadays have their own flash controller chips too, and they control where the physical writes actually happen, so performance will depend on that implementation too.
 
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I don't have experience with the cameras you mentioned, but do have experience working with FAT.

I think what you are talking about could be explained by alignment and block size. Alignment to better match the physical properties of the card, and larger block sizes to reduce fragmentation.[...]
Exactly! And Canon cameras prefer the filesystem to be a certain way, I can't find the parameter needed for mkfs.vfat in my notes anymore, but it wasn't the default in most tools. And a few years ago, IO to the first megabyte of a card was a lot faster than IO to any other region, which made FAT derivatives a lot faster than other filesystems. Even if the controller/firmware would map that first megabyte somewhere else in the physical flash.

My experience with SD cards is mostly from using then with development boards running Linux and bit from running Magic Lantern on my EOS M, getting the most of out the card was needed for using RAW video.

Anyway, formatting in camera is a good idea, it almost always makes things work just a tiny bit better.
 
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I have run into the same heat issue and also was noticing very rapid battery drain (about 25% per hour) that was also occurring. I have two R1's and the other camera goes forever on a battery and never gets warm or any heat warnings while the offending camera chews threw batteries and gives heat warmings all the time. Both cameras have identical settings and are being used about the same amount. I'm not shooting any video and have this issue with shooting small bursts of images at middle of the range frame rates.

The contrast between my "good" R1 and the bad one is pretty striking. One never gets hot and sips battery power and the other is a hand warmer in the shape of a camera that eats batteries.

I have sent the bad R1 back to Canon and CPS is currently waiting for guidance from Japan on how to fix it... at least they are acknowledging that there is an issue. Is anyone else noticing rapid battery drain as well?
 
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I have run into the same heat issue and also was noticing very rapid battery drain (about 25% per hour) that was also occurring. I have two R1's and the other camera goes forever on a battery and never gets warm or any heat warnings while the offending camera chews threw batteries and gives heat warmings all the time. Both cameras have identical settings and are being used about the same amount. I'm not shooting any video and have this issue with shooting small bursts of images at middle of the range frame rates.

The contrast between my "good" R1 and the bad one is pretty striking. One never gets hot and sips battery power and the other is a hand warmer in the shape of a camera that eats batteries.

I have sent the bad R1 back to Canon and CPS is currently waiting for guidance from Japan on how to fix it... at least they are acknowledging that there is an issue. Is anyone else noticing rapid battery drain as well?

My R1 overheated on its first event shoot. I was shooting single frames only (no bursts, no video) in a room-temperature environment -- hardly a challenge for the design intent of the camera. I was using a Lexar 512 GB Diamond card.

This FB thread provides clues that the make/model of card in use may affect whether or not the camera overheats.
  • What make/model of card(s) have you been using? Is it possible you used different types of cards in the camera which overheats vs the camera which does not overheat?
I plan to send my camera to CPS for testing.
  • Can you share the CPS service request number associated with your return of the bad R1? I'll use it to ensure CPS is investigating this issue in a coordinated manner.
 
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I used my R1 for the first real outing (should say outdoors outing) yesterday. I was shooting in 50 degree (F) weather and shot around 5000 images and had no issues. Was using precap and in a mix of sun and shade, never saw a single bar for temp but that was expected to not see any.
 
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