LiveView will cook your camera?

[warwickwater]

Theres a few reviews/ mentions online of a new app (nothing to do with Breeze) that allows you to record video on EOS's that werent designed to by effectively recording the liveview stream to disk. for example:

http://i.gizmodo.com/5139089/canon-liveview-dslrs-messily-hacked-to-record-video

theres talk though that using liveview for extended periods will permanently damage the camera by overheating the sensor. In a photobooth you could have liveview running for maybe 4-5 hours at a stretch, in an already warm environment. anyone got any view on this, or any 'real' booth users happy to tell me this rubbish and their 1000Ds or 450Ds are running fine?

[Chris Breeze]

I haven't heard of anybody damaging a DSLR by using live view for too long. Live view causes the sensor to get warm which will increase noise in the image but I don't think it gets hot enough to damage it.

[dfinkel]

I recently got a 5Dii and while I was at Imaging USA in Phoenix last month, I spent some time with the Canon Prof. Services folks getting my other bodies cleaned and tuned. These are the guys that get broken professional cameras and do the repairs, so they know what they are talking about.

I was saying that for my needs the record to video capabilities of the 5Dii just weren't that interesting as you are limited to about 20 minutes in the documentation. The guy (who really knew his stuff) from Canon said this is because of the Fat32 limitation of CF cards which limits you to 4GB in a single file. Do the math and this equates to about 20 minutes of shooting. He said if you hook up the camera to a computer and record to its hard drive, you are essentially unlimited in the amount of video you can record (up to the limit of the hard drive's volume). So I said, "yeah, but I thought the limitation was also that the CCD heated up and you would fry your camera". He said that as long as the ambient temperature is around room temperature, this is just not an issue.

I know you are looking at doing still images and not video, but if what he says is correct, then you should not have a problem.

David

[scalesusa]

I've used live view for hours at a time in my studio on my 40D. Sometimes, the view on the monitor will become wavy and full of noise, but the captures are fine. This has happened on two different cameras.

As far as I can tell, the noise has nothing to do with sensor overheating, its happening at random.

I'm just upgrading DSLR Remote to be able to use my 5D MK II, but being the second generation, I expect the issue to disappear. I do not yet have a AC adaptor for it, so I'm limited by the battery life for now.