13 Ways To Stop Your Sony A6300 Overheating!

[the_ad id=”20″]The Sony Alpha range is constantly growing in popularity and although we have already published a number of articles going over various camera accessories that we would recommend our readers consider using with their Sony Alpha camera body, we have decided to go in a slightly different direction with today’s article. We have noticed more and more people reaching out for assistance over the last few weeks due to their Sony a63000 overheating in various situations.

Due to this, we have decided to dedicate today’s article to various things that you can implement to allow you to quickly and easily prevent your a6300 from overheating during use. Now, there is absolutely no need to try and implement all of these tips and tricks as some will be specific to certain niches while being useless in others. Additionally, depending on the niches you work in, some of these tips may be more useful for you than others to help keep your camera body as cool as possible.

We have also tried to include as many free steps as possible in the list too to ensure that any of our readers who are on a tight budget can also get some value from the article and potentially stop their Sony a6300 from overheating too. That said though, as, with most solutions, the paid solutions are much better than the free ones but the free options can provide some benefit if implemented.

Additionally, the actual task at hand will also come into play too as the vast majority of overheating problems with the a6300 tends to occur when capturing video footage rather than capturing photographs. If you exclusively use your a6300 for photographs then you can probably get away with only implementing the free options in the article and totally remove your overheating issues without having to spend a cent.

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Deal With Battery Heat

As you probably know, the main source of heat in your Sony a6300 is the camera’s battery and due to the very small and compact design of the a6300, this excessive heat really has no easy way to dissipate out of your cameras body so it just keeps building up. In our opinion, the cheapest and most effective way to prevent your a6300 from overheating is to invest in some cheap NP-FW50 batteries so you have spare sets available.

Now, simply having the spare batteries in your camera bag is useless, you will have to take an active approach to get the most out of this method but when done correctly, it can prove extremely effective with the lowest possible price tag. As we touched on earlier, your camera’s battery is the largest source of heat in your a63000 and much of that heat is held in the battery prior to transferring into your actual camera body.

The plan with this method is to switch out your active camera battery in your downtime as often as possible to remove the heat that has built up in your active battery. The frequency that you will be switching your camera battery out will change depending on what you are actually doing but people have reported having success with around fifteen-minute intervals for high frame per second, high definition video is optimal.

Essentially, when you get a chance you will just remove your current battery from your a6300 and place one of your cold spare batteries into the battery housing. Now only does this allow the hot battery to cool down quicker due to having better heat dissipation to the atmosphere but it will take time for the spare battery to heat up and start transferring heat into your camera body. This gives your camera a decent window to dissipate the heat that it is already holding from your hot battery while your spare battery is generating heat.

When done correctly, you can pretty much use this hot swapping method exclusively throughout the course of a session without running into any overheating issues at all. On top of this, you don’t have to folk out for the official Sony NP-FW50 version of the batteries, there is plenty of cheap third-party NP-FW50 options that you can use helping to keep your costs as low as possible.

Use An External Power Source

If you don’t like the idea of having to switch out your batteries on a regular basis for whatever reason another solid option is to totally switch over to using an external power source for your a6300. Although this does increase the costs, it also totally removes the need for you to switch your camera batteries while also being more efficient at preventing any overheating issues too.

You will have to pick up a decent NP-FW50 dummy battery that you will use to jack into your a6300 to actually power it. Depending on your situation, you can then plug it into a regular wall based power outlet or if you are out and about you can also add a high output USB power bank to your camera accessories to charge it on the go.

This will still power your camera as required allowing you to capture the videos and photographs that you need but as the primary power source is outside of the camera body, it quickly dissipates its heat into the atmosphere rather than your Sony a6300 camera body. Although this may sound difficult to do, the whole process is extremely smooth and easy.

Check Your SD Card Datarate

Although most people are usually aware that the primary heat source in any camera is the battery unit, many people are unaware that the second-highest heat source in your camera when capturing high definition or 4k footage is actually your SD card. This is often due to the SD card being used not having the correct data rate for the footage that you are capturing and resulting in excessive heat generation that can quickly cause your camera to overheat.

We would always recommend that our readers go with an SD card with a minimum of 90MB/s shooting speed and 170MB/s transfer speed if you are doing a large amount of HD or 4k video work. Thankfully, you can easily fault find this with your current SD cards as both data rates should clearly be visible on the label of your current cards. Chances are, if your current cards meet the recommended data rates above then they are fine and will not cause you any issues with overheating.

On the flip side of this though, if you are using a slow data rate card then we would highly recommend that you update at least one of your SD cards to something that at least meets the minimum transfer speed to test if this can help reduce your overheating issues. Now, keep in mind that the card linked to there is only the minimum recommended transfer speed so it may not totally correct your overheating issues but does have a solid chance of drastically increasing your recording time before you get your overheating warning light.

In our opinion, if you are primarily recording in 4k then you should really be looking at a 130MB/s recording, 250MB/s transferring speed card to minimize the heat generation while recording. Thankfully, the prices of these higher transfer speed SD cards has fallen drastically over the last few years meaning you can easily pick them up at similar price points to their slower counterparts.

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Switch To External Storage

Now, this next method essentially takes upgrading your SD card to higher transfer speed to the next level and switches you over to external data storage totally removing the heat from the SD card from your camera body. Although some people who work in a fixed studio swear by it, we wouldn’t actually recommend this just for overheating issues due to the cost of the gear as well as the fact that it is totally useless if you have to move around on a regular basis and switch back to fast SD cards.

Anyway, many people who use this method recommend the Blackmagic HyperDeck Shuttle 2 as their goto external storage solution. If you do work in a static location and need external storage for additional reasons other than just to deal with your overheating problems it may be worth looking into. In the grand scheme of things though, we would always recommend you go with upgrading your SD cards over this option anyway.

Increase Surface Area For Heat Dissipation

Although we have not tried this one ourselves, we have seen a number of reports from the community saying that housing their camera in something like a SmallRig a6300 case has helped increase the amount of recording time they have before getting an overheating warning light. This is due to the heat being transferred from your camera body to the camera cage than can then dissipate it into the atmosphere at a quick rate than your actual camera body can.

In all honesty, we would prioritize any of the methods above over adding a camera cage to your camera accessories just to prevent overheating but if you already have one it is well worth trying. Additionally, not only does using the camera cage help increase the robustness of your a6300 but also allows you to easily mount additional camera accessories to it during use with ease.

Thermal Paste And Thermal Pads

This is another suggestion that we have not actually tried ourselves and would not recommend that our readers use unless you know exactly what you are doing. Although both thermal paste and thermal pads can be extremely efficient at preventing overheating issues on some electronics, they usually have clearly marketed areas that tell you where you should be applying your thermal paste for optimum heat dissipation without putting your gear at risk of short-circuiting.

That said though, a large number of photographers, videographers, vloggers, and streamers do report using these items to easily reduce the heat in their camera bodies without having to shell out a ton of money. We have noticed that some photography stores have started offering these services for their customers and will provide you with a guarantee to cover their work so if your local photography store offers this then it is definatley worth looking into.

Although we would not recommend that you try this yourself unless you are confident in your abilities, the video below shows a user adding a thermal pad to their Sony a6300 and shows how to disassemble, fit, and re-assemble your camera.

Mini Umbrella

This next one can actually be surprisingly effective but it will depend on the weather of your local area more than anything else. Depending on where you live, heat from the sun’s rays can actually cause a higher build-up of heat in your camera body than both the heat generated from your camera battery and SD card combined. A quick and easy solution that many people have successfully implemented to prevent this is to add a mini umbrella to their collection of camera accessories.

Depending on the tripod that you use, you may actually be able to mount umbrellas directly to your tripod while you work. If you are in a very hot location and working in direct sunlight on a regular basis then this is well worth trying in our opinion as it has proven to be a very effective method with many other photographers and videographers in hotter locations around the world.

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Tilt The LCD Display

Moving on, we have our first totally free method of reducing the heat in your Sony a6300 and that is to simply tilt your LCD display panel away from the camera body as shown in the image above. For the vast majority of people who use the a6300, the heat generated from their LCD screen will be the third-highest source of heat behind their battery and SD card. If you leave your screen pressed up against your camera body this just increases the amount of heat in the camera and can lead to overheating.

Simply tilting your screen off the camera body increases the airflow for the screen and helps to keep it cool and ensure that the majority of the heat it generates is dissipated into the atmosphere rather than into your camera body. In our opinion, even if you are using a paid solution that we recommended above, you should also be tilting your screen when possible to help reduce the heat in your camera body without having to spend a cent.

Open The Battery Door

Our second free method is to open your battery door while using your camera to increase airflow to your primary heat source in your a6300, your battery. Now, this does present a number of its own problems as you may damage your battery door when doing this or your battery may accidentally fall out if not secured correctly.

In our opinion, picking up some spare batteries and using the trick we went through in our first point above or using a NP-FW50 dummy battery with a wall outlet or a USB power bank is a much better and safer solution but if you are on a budget this may be worth trying.

Open The Flash Housing

Although we have no data to back up how effective this next suggestion is, we do see it mentioned on a regular basis on social media and niche related forums. The theory is that opening the flash housing on your camera increases airflow to your camera body and helps to dissipate the heat. In all honesty, we have no idea if this is actually helpful or not but we thought that we would include it as we see so many people recommend it to other people with overheating issues.

Take Advantage Of Airplane Mode

One of the best free solutions to stop your Sony a6300 from having problems with overheating is to simply turn on airplane mode in your camera settings. Now, you have to realize that this will not fix your overheating issues but it can help to extend the amount of time that you are able to record without the overheating warning message showing up for you. This is due to airplane mode turning off a bunch of features in the camera that run in the background but may not even be being used for your session. This, in turn, reduced the energy draw of your camera from your battery and helps slightly reduce the heat that it will be generating to power your camera when airplane mode is turned on.

Check Your Frames Per Second

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This is another one that may not be possible if you are on a job where you have to record in the highest frames per second but some of our readers may be able to implement it and have some success. If you don’t have to use the maximum frames per second for your video resolution then don’t. Try and knock it down to the minimum usable standard as this will reduce the draw on your battery and help to reduce the heat the battery generates, especially if you are using 4k video footage. Now, this is similar to our airplane mode suggestion and is not a long term solution or a full fix but it can increase the time frame that you can record without having issues.

Update To Latest Firmware

Sony is great at pushing out firmware updates to try and correct the common issues that their cameras are using. Unfortunately, though, people who use Sony camera bodies are not usually as great at keeping their camera updated to the latest firmware build and you really should. Sony pushed out a new build for the a6300 back in 2016 that included the auto power-off feature in the camera settings seen in the image above.

Ensuring that you at least have this 2016 firmware build running on your camera rather than the default shipping one adds this option and may help prevent your Sony a6300 overheating during use. That said though, we have seen mixed reports about the effectiveness of the auto power-off setting with some people saying it helped them whereas others have said it did nothing.