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Heat vs Varicam
We just purchased our Varicam and gone through a one day overview with Panasonic. Something the instructor said has us pondering. He mentioned that we needed to warm the camera for a full 30 minutes before shooting. Now we understand the need for warming but in many instances we may not have 30 minutes before we grab footage. Just wondering how long you wait to allow the camera to warm up before a shoot.
Also, we’ve noticed that our Varicam has a slightly hotter operating temperature than our older cameras. We live in south Mississippi where the weather gets sticky hot in the summer. Are their precautions we need to take to keep the camera running in really hot weather – or do we even need to worry about it?
JR Allen –
from the heart of the Mississippi Sound -
3 Replies
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The camera does run much hotter. I just came back from shooting in Uganda. The temperatures sometimes reached 90-100 degrees and even though the camera got hot I had no problems. I hope this helps.
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Hi JR:
If this is a 27H, the newer version of the VariCam, we made some changes to the heat sinking of the CCD block, we actually have a more efficient heat sink system that pulls more heat out of the camera, that’s why it appears hotter near the front. Because of this, the 27H CCDs actually runs cooler than the older 27F cameras, FYI cold is a good thing.
I’ve used the 27F camera in Cuba, hot sun, 100 Degs + and VERY humid, others have used it in even more stressful situations, Africa etc. Quite honestly, I’ve never heard of heat causing a problem with any of the cameras.
Rest assured you should be just fine.
Steve Mahrer (Panasonic)
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Hi,
Steve is quite right about the new heat sinking that is built in to the 27H version of the VariCam. This is mostly due to the 12bit processing that takes place in the camera. But I want to tell you about another advantage of trying to at least warm up the camera ahead of time. Basically in all of the HD cameras, Panasonic and others, there is a differential in the lens to CCD distance that changes with temperature. This effects the back focus. So Panasonic designed the heat sink to put more of a constant temperature near the lens mount to keep the back focus more constant. In another words, we totally intended to use the heat generated to the advantage of the camera optics. I talk about this in quite depth at the VariCamps which I encourage you to attend if you haven’t already.
In short, the VariCam is not a “Point and Shoot” camera any more than the top of the line film cameras. It does take a reasonable amount of set up, preperation, and understanding of the technology to make compelling pictures.
Thank you for your inquiry.
Jeff Merritt
Product Line Business Manager
High Definition Products
Panasonic Broadcast
323-436-3676
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