Sony A7RV freezing during super macro photography

12 hours ago, Crowie said:

One other thing to mention is that I’ve always written to both memory cards simultaneously in RAW format - same SD cards - for both my A7III and A7RV. I’ve not been able to replicate the problem top side today and am taking the camera and lens into the Sony service centre.

I wonder if writing to two cards uses more battery power?  Does it take longer to clear the buffer?  I would consider this a mandatory setup for weddings, but i've never written to two cards underwater.

5 minutes ago, JayceeB said:

I wonder if writing to two cards uses more battery power?  Does it take longer to clear the buffer?  I would consider this a mandatory setup for weddings, but i've never written to two cards underwater.

There is extensive material on this

In essence a camera has only one ram buffer and one bus so it will write to two cards at the same time

The slower card will throttle the channel and if it errors lock up the camera.

It does use more battery and produces more heat how much difficult to say

On 3/4/2023 at 8:41 AM, Interceptor121 said:

The Sigma MC11 does not support CAF with any lens only SAF is supported and frankly why would you need CAF on a fisheye?

@Interceptor121This discussion is about cameras freezing, not lens choices. Your opinion on the use of AF modes is hence irrelevant and hence your statement comes over as excessively argumentative. 

On 3/4/2023 at 5:48 PM, Interceptor121 said:

Then you wonder why your camera freezes?

Is unhelpful. No problem with your pointing out a compatibility issue, but your tone comes across as hectoring, dogmatic and aggressive. Please moderate your tone. 

I am aware that language nuances and the way we communicate with each other will vary for individual to individual, and we need to be tolerant of this, but please consider the way your posts appear before pressing post. 

Quick update from my side.

Sony have had my camera and lens for a week and as expected they couldn’t replicate the exact problem. They rang me after the first couple of days to tell me they couldn’t find anything, but I was then able to give them the specific details of when/how the problem materialised and they tried for another couple of days.

They’ve just called back to say that when using fast memory cards they couldn’t find anything, but when they swapped to slow cards (I didn’t ask which ones, but presumably slower than the Sandisk SD Extreme Pro’s I’ve been using), the camera would occasionally freeze (image still on screen) whilst trying to write to the cards. He said it could take up to a minute to do this at which point the camera would then return to normal, ie without having to power it off. He could see the flashing led light showing it was still trying to write to the card.

I’m now wondering whether my camera would have returned to normal had I not turned it off whenever I experienced the problem - in the 30+ times this happened on my trip, I always tried turning it off/on to reset it and it would always take about 30 seconds to do so. Of course I wouldn’t have been able to see any flashing led light inside my housing.

This doesn’t explain why I couldn’t replicate the problem topside, but I’m looking for the positives! I will swap to cfexpress cards on my next trip, possibly even writing to a single card at a time.

Thanks again for the feedback, much appreciated.

Paul

Your wrote that after the freezing you didn't find photos on your card.

34 minutes ago, Crowie said:

Quick update from my side.

Sony have had my camera and lens for a week and as expected they couldn’t replicate the exact problem. They rang me after the first couple of days to tell me they couldn’t find anything, but I was then able to give them the specific details of when/how the problem materialised and they tried for another couple of days.

They’ve just called back to say that when using fast memory cards they couldn’t find anything, but when they swapped to slow cards (I didn’t ask which ones, but presumably slower than the Sandisk SD Extreme Pro’s I’ve been using), the camera would occasionally freeze (image still on screen) whilst trying to write to the cards. He said it could take up to a minute to do this at which point the camera would then return to normal, ie without having to power it off. He could see the flashing led light showing it was still trying to write to the card.

I’m now wondering whether my camera would have returned to normal had I not turned it off whenever I experienced the problem - in the 30+ times this happened on my trip, I always tried turning it off/on to reset it and it would always take about 30 seconds to do so. Of course I wouldn’t have been able to see any flashing led light inside my housing.

This doesn’t explain why I couldn’t replicate the problem topside, but I’m looking for the positives! I will swap to cfexpress cards on my next trip, possibly even writing to a single card at a time.

Thanks again for the feedback, much appreciated.

Paul

As I wrote if you write to both cards and one for any reason chokes this can lock the camera looks like this is what is happening

The camera will eventually write to a sector on one of the card that is problematic and start going for a wonder

I recommend you consider writing only to one card if you upload your photos on a computer what is that you are protecting the potential failure of a single card vs another or the computer going lost?

For photos is fairly simple keep writing on that card without ever deleting a file and keep uploading on your computer every dive or every day. The issue is only if you don't have a computer but you can connect to a sony camera in a variety of ways and back up to a tablet or other device

12 minutes ago, Interceptor121 said:

As I wrote if you write to both cards and one for any reason chokes this can lock the camera looks like this is what is happening

The camera will eventually write to a sector on one of the card that is problematic and start going for a wonder

I recommend you consider writing only to one card if you upload your photos on a computer what is that you are protecting the potential failure of a single card vs another or the computer going lost?

For photos is fairly simple keep writing on that card without ever deleting a file and keep uploading on your computer every dive or every day. The issue is only if you don't have a computer but you can connect to a sony camera in a variety of ways and back up to a tablet or other device

Thanks, yep I hear you, as I said before, if I don’t have any issues at all I would prefer the extra redundancy over not - I don’t always take a computer on my dive trips, although currently looking at the best options for portable backups on these trips. If I have any issues I will definitely switch to a single card. I may even try this on my current SD cards to check if this gets around the problem - it would be good to know this is definitely the problem.

35 minutes ago, Davide DB said:

Your wrote that after the freezing you didn't find photos on your card.

Yes I did say that, but then I always turned the camera off when it froze, so not sure if that would have prevented the camera from completing its writing to the card. I’m clutching at straws…

Impressive customer service to actually call you and talk through the issue. 

Thanks, yep I hear you, as I said before, if I don’t have any issues at all I would prefer the extra redundancy over not - I don’t always take a computer on my dive trips, although currently looking at the best options for portable backups on these trips. If I have any issues I will definitely switch to a single card. I may even try this on my current SD cards to check if this gets around the problem - it would be good to know this is definitely the problem.