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I have recently got a Fuji X-T4 and did some overheating tests in various 4k video modes. I repeatedly overheated the camera without a break to see where the limits for video shooting are.

I know that the auto-shutoff is a safety feature, but would it be possible that the sensor gets damaged if I keep it at the heat warning level for an extended amount of time?

I changed the battery in between and filled up the cards

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  • \$\begingroup\$ If the thermal protection didn’t activate, why do you assume you overheated the sensor? \$\endgroup\$
    – Eric S
    Sep 26, 2020 at 12:56
  • \$\begingroup\$ Good point - Although the camera shut off automatically if pushed really hard a couple of times, I kept it filming at lower resolutions so that it "only" warned me of the temperature. So my question was if the repeated overheating till shut-off and keeping it in the warning mode will deteriorate or damage the sensor. \$\endgroup\$
    – Walter
    Sep 26, 2020 at 13:17

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The immediate consequence of overheating is an increased noisiness in the analog circuitry and possibly failures in the digital circuitry. There is no immediate damage to be expected before the camera becomes non-functional. However, the longterm consequences are vastly accelerated aging of the sensor, leading to hot pixels, loss of sensitivity, worse noise behavior particularly at longer exposures, and eventual failure of electronics.

While the effects in the analog circuitry are gradual, failure modes in the digital circuitry tend to be invisible at first.

It's the same why people do not really want to buy CPUs that have been regularly overclocked/overheated: they are expected to start having dropouts much sooner than CPUs operated according to design specs.

So take reports of "I overheated my sensor and nothing happened" with a solid grain of salt: it's a bit like "I smoked a cigarette and didn't get cancer" and does not really make it a good idea to follow the "I did not notice anything happening last time, so it must be safe" mantra.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Thank you for this comprehendable answer! The CPU analogy makes sense. Obviously Im not going to push the camera every day - just wanted to be sure that the overheating is going to deteriorate the sensor. Ah btw, I recently tried to test for hot white pixels because of that and found ~5 hot pixels when exposing 10seconds at ISO160. The same pixels were more visible at higher ISO and same SS. Using an APSC X-trans sensor in the X-T4, would you say this is expected behaviour? \$\endgroup\$
    – Walter
    Sep 26, 2020 at 13:19

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