When Sony’s a7R II hit the market boasting internal 4k recording, it wasn’t long before people began complaining of the camera suffering from overheating after only a few minutes of recording, undermining its utility as a video camera. Especially since Sony was advertising it as such, a lot of people were upset that their expensive camera didn’t perform. As it turns out, the temperature threshold was set perhaps a little to conservatively, and a firmware update was released before long that mitigated the problem.

There were high hopes that the a6300, with a smaller sensor and no in-body image stabilization might not have the same problem. I took a chance on it and have been shooting with the a6300 since April. I usually shoot a combination of photos and video, and while I’ve had pretty good luck, I have run into the dreaded thermometer icon a couple of times. Recently, the camera had a hard test courtesy of the heat and salt-laden humidity of a summer day in Houston. I’m sad to say it was a bit too much for the a6300, as it took less than an hour outside, with only a few minutes of video recording, before it shut down. I took it back inside before powering it back up, so I can’t say how long it would take to cool down and keep shooting in that environment, but definitely would have been disruptive on a real shoot.

I’ve said before that you know it’s summer in Texas when you walk outside into >90 degrees F and think, “It’s pretty nice out.” Those of us in climates like us would probably do well to avoid using a miniature large-sensor camera as our primary video shooter. For my part, now that I have a decent E-mount lens in the 18-105 F4, I might look at adding an FS5 to my kit.