I almost exclusively do still photography, and bought my Sony A7RIII for that purpose thinking it would be great to have a fantastic video camera if I needed it. Well, now that we're in a time of Coronavirus I'm needing to record services at my church (I'm a priest) only to discover that the camera stops recording after 30 minutes. Why Sony does this is a mystery to me? Is there anyway around this? Can I tweak the camera so it can record for an hour if I need to, or even two hours? Would that damage the camera?
The 30 min limit was put in place to meet an EU rule that sought to distinguish cameras that shot stills + video vs purely video based cameras such as camcorders. On the A7RII and below (A7, A7II, A7R and some of the A6xxx models) there was app developed that would allow you to disable the 30 min limit. When Sony removed the app capability on the A7III and A7RIII it became impossible to remove that 30 min restriction. Your choices are: get an A7RIV or a6400/a6600/a6100 as Sony removed the 30 limit in accordance with the EU dropping the policy in 2019. Or get an external recorder like an Atomos and you can record as long as you want.
Wilfredo wrote:
So, something for the EU affects the rest of the world. Interesting. Never heard of an Atomos, I will look into it. Thanks!
Yep. Until the 2019 change, the EU added an extra tax for video cameras. Stills cameras that recorded longer than 30 minutes internally were subject to that tax. It was cheaper for most companies to just limit the recording on all cameras rather than have EU versions and everyone else versions.
