Canon Patent Application: Actively Cooled Small Cini Camera

In this patent application (2024-135864) Canon is exploring increasing the heat dissipation in a small R5C-looking camera body. In particular, Canon is worried about the heat buildup around the media card, and looking to improve heat dissipation around the card without increasing the size of the camera. With good reason, those CF Express cards can get quite toasty.

According to the present invention, it is possible to efficiently cool the recording medium while suppressing the device from becoming larger. 

Cooling the region serves actually three purposes;

1. increases the longevity of the card itself
2. increases the speed at which the card can write and thus the camera can write. Thermal throttling is a thing with media cards.
3. decreases the heat build-up inside of the camera.

As Canon mentions in their patent application, as the bit rate and resolutions increase so does the heat generated by the card media.

With the increase in writing bit rate due to future improvements in image quality, it is predicted that the amount of heat generated by the recording medium will further increase, so it will be necessary to efficiently cool the recording medium.

I think this is one of the better diagrams that illustrates what Canon is doing here. 118 is the media card and the fan is 111. Air is blown in the direction of the arrows and thus, over top of the card surface, effectively cooling it. Also because air blows outwards over the card it helps alleviate any heat buildup internally due to the card temperature.

This is obviously not something Canon put in the R5 Mark II, since it’s actively cooled with an internal fan, but it does beg the question that maybe Canon is still looking at making a small cinema actively cooled camera in the same vein as the R5C.

As with all patent applications, this is a look into the research that Canon is doing, and may not end up in an actual product.

Japan Patent Application 2024-135864

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