14 ms·
I also discovered that I couldn't use my Canon SLR to record more than 30 minutes of video continuously. The problem however wasn't Canon, but that I lived in
by alibarber 2y ago
I also discovered that I couldn't use my Canon SLR to record more than 30 minutes of video continuously.
The problem however wasn't Canon, but that I lived in a region (EU) that would have imposed a customs tariff on cameras that could do that, but by keeping it under that, the camera would be classed as a 'stills' camera and so was therefore exempt.
Admittedly this is different from the case in the article - but it would appear that owning something that could physically do what you want it to is only half the battle for numerous reasons, and in this case it would have been my government demanding extra money to 'unlock' this functionality.
- tobyhinloopen 2y agoIt would likely overheat anyway hah. Old Sony cameras have the same restrictions.
- sam_lowry_ 2y agoNo, this is not the reason. If the camera records video for more than 30min, then it is a video camera, see the question answered here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34640107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34640107 In short, there is no good reason anymore, but originally this was because of EU import tarifs.
- the-grump 2y agoGP didn’t claim that’s not the reason. They’re making a joke that if the camera kept recording past 30min, it would overheat. It’s a joke.
- sam_lowry_ 2y agoIt's not a joke, older DSLR cameras would often overheat when recording continuously. My good old Canon 6D would overheat once in a while when used as a webcam with v4l2loopback.
- randerson 2y agoEven as recently as the Canon R5 Mark I mirrorless camera (which you can still buy new), overheats within 15 minutes if you're recording 8K30 or 4K120.
- Dalewyn 2y agoSome cameras do overheat from extended recording sessions, so depending on the model it's not entirely a joke.
- tobyhinloopen 2y agoIt's a joke, but it's also the truth. Many cameras won't even get to 30 minutes before overheating.
- the-grump 2y agoYeah I knew what you meant. I have one :)
- tartoran 2y agoIT's not a joke. When filming for more than 30 minutes the cameras at the time (10-15 years ago) would warm up and eventually shut off automatically to cool off.
- tobyhinloopen 2y agoFYI many modern cameras still do this.
- shultays 2y agoSometimes there are hidden menus or settings that might allow you to toggle those features. I used to work on TVs and we had a secret menu that toggles various features. Some of those features would be disabled for specific countries (mainly for patents)
- School-Cotton 2y agoThis vaguely reminds me of the fact that in many countries, pure ethanol sold for industrial purposes is intentionally made poisonous, so you can’t drink it and thus merchants don’t have to charge the taxes on it that they would for spirits.
- ivan_gammel 2y agoIt's more like "so you can't drink it" without the taxes part. Those taxes play important role in reducing alcohol consumption (though they are of course not the only tool), so making cheap ethanol poisonous and with different color closes the loophole in healthcare policy rather than opens a loophole in taxation. E.g. study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3860576/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3860576/
- amelius 2y agoCouldn't they just make it taste bad, for safety's sake?
- School-Cotton 2y agoIn some countries that is allowed, but in others it has to actually be poisonous.
- amelius 2y agoWell, I hope it is both then.
- ted_bunny 2y agoAnd in some, it's a tourist attraction. Don't drink "White Elephant" in Vietnam unless you want to wake up blind and pissing blood, at least according to a friend!
- sampullman 2y agoI don't know exactly what "White Elephant" refers to, but I've had plenty of homemade liquor in Vietnam and am mostly fine.
- jorvi 2y agoThat sounds like a relic left over from a bygone era. Like the digital storage levy we still pay despite music and movie piracy only being rampant from 1990s-2000s :) I love the EU but it certainly has its idiosyncrasies.
- c120 2y agoThis levy is not meant for piracy, but for legal access - like copying the CDs you already bought to your phone. Compared to what we used to pay on blank media it's not so bad. If the alternative is that you are not allowed to keep private copies of anything...
- ErneX 2y agoIn Spain every device you buy that has some kind of storage is taxed for piracy, the money goes to the local equivalent of the RIIA or book editors associations.
- JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y agoSame in France where the money goes to the local RIAA. Even if it’s a hard drive meant for Linux, or to store public domain stuff. It’s basically a mafia that gets our money despite copying for backup purposes being completely legal.
- Joker_vD 2y agoI wonder if the artists see any share of that money...
- JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y agoIn France it’s called the SACEM and I know a few bands that are affiliated to this association because it’s pretty much mandatory if you want to sell anything. Those bands are not famous but despite making sales, they only get a few bucks every year, or it’s the SACEM saying "we forgot to send you the check lol, no biggies." It’s the biggest legal mafia I can think of right now. Most of the money collected is sent to huge artists (like what Spotify is doing), there is nothing indie about it even if they pretend it’s for the glory of French music.
- halgir 2y agoReminds me of when lawyers successfully argued that X-Men are not human, so that their action figures would be classified as "toys" rather than "dolls" and thus charged a lower tariff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_Biz%2C_Inc._v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_Biz%2C_Inc._v._United_Stat...
- huhtenberg 2y agoThere's also Converse that adds a piece of cloth to the soles of their sneakers to be able to classify them as slippers for "taxation purposes". https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-is-why-your-converse-sneakers-have-felt-on-the-bottom-6016648/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-is-why-your-c...
- Y_Y 2y agoSnuggies are "used" and not "worn" in their promotional materials, because it's better to be taxed as a blanket than a garment. https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2017/02/snuggies-are-blankets-not-garments-for-tax-purposes.html https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2017/02/snuggies-ar...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- breakingcups 2y agoWonder if you could either sue them for delivering an insufficient product (it does not function as a slipper under the definition for longer than a day after walking) or keep returning them under warranty.
- Pawka 2y agoSounds insane. But what is more surprising to me - is why dolls were taxed differently than other toys. At first glance, it looks like stupid rules force to play silly games.
- 2y ago
- WithinReason 2y agoIf your camera is compatible with magiclantern you could lift that limit and add some really cool features: https://www.magiclantern.fm/ https://www.magiclantern.fm/
- ComputerGuru 2y agoI’ve come across this before and think it’s brilliant. Are you aware of any comparable firmware for Nikon users (not that I really have any complaints about what Nikon has provided, but this is likely a case of not knowing what I’m missing out on)?
- WithinReason 2y agoI'm not, and that's the reason why I went Canon. There is also CHDK for cheaper Canon cameras. Canon seems to be less litigous when it comes to hacking their firmware.
- bayindirh 2y agoThat requirement is reversed in the last five years IIRC. My Sony A7-III doesn't have that, for example. Neither modern Canons, AFAIK. The funnier thing is, you can't use the videos out of your camera for commercial purposes, because the video codecs inside your camera doesn't come with commercial licenses out of the box. So if you are going to use your camera for production which you'll earn money, you need to pay commercial licenses for your cameras. Hah.
- amelius 2y agoThat's fine, as long as I can record long movies with my iPhone.
- alibarber 2y agoBut is it a phone that records movies or a movie recorder that can make phone calls? [I jest, but these were almost literally the questions being asked by various commissions]
- nudgeee 2y agoHilarious. Reminds me of Pioneer CDJs as well, even on the flagship CDJ-3000 models. If you read the user manual it says: > About using MP3 files > This product has been licensed for nonprofit use. This product has not been licensed for commercial purposes (for profit-making use), […]. You need to acquire the corresponding licenses for such uses. For details, see […] Best use an open audio codec instead.
- Dwedit 2y agoNowadays, MP3 is an open audio codec. The patents have expired.
- MrDOS 2y agoThe format itself is patent-unencumbered. That doesn't mean I couldn't still write a non-free decoder and license it to Pioneer for use in their CDJs. Due to organizational inertia, I suspect that's what's going on here (e.g., they licensed a decoder from Fraunhofer or another commercial implementer twenty years ago, and have been using the same one since).
- raverbashing 2y agoSilly restrictions aside, I feel that most use cases don't have takes longer than 30min anyway (I mean, on cameras that you actually start and stop recording manually) But yeah technology evolves and the taxes remain. (Though don't complain too much or they will just pick the higher taxes for the newer cameras)
- amelius 2y agoCamera manufacturers can just enable the functionality as an easter-egg. So they just publish some activation code on some consumer forum somewhere and from then on it's the consumer's responsibility. I think they did the same thing with DVD region restrictions.
- chongli 2y agoStreaming is a major use case where the camera may be recording continuously for several hours at a time. Another one is for video meetings, though in that case I’d prefer it if my camera forced the end of the meeting after 30 mins.
- ComputerGuru 2y agoI can’t see why you think there’s a usecase for 25 minute videos but not 35 minute ones. Speaking as an amateur photographer with multiple DSLRs: I’ve certainly needed longer than that for a number of gigs.
- liotier 2y ago> I couldn't use my Canon SLR to record more than 30 minutes of video continuously Large sensors optimized for still photography overheat when operating continuously for video, so they feature safety limits. Sensor heat dissipation is a big problem and a major differentiating feature of top end cinema cameras.
- ansgri 2y agoMy Sony doesn’t have this length limit, but will readily overheat and turn off after several minutes of highest-bitrate recording. So no, overheating is trivially protected against via temperature sensors, not some arbitrary timeout.
- Angostura 2y agoI seem to recall that there is a special button sequence you can use on Canon cameras that disabled the restriction. It’s. Been many years, but Google should have something for your model.
- sokz 2y agoReminds me of the Indian public discourse when the government wanted to tax caramel popcorn in movie theatres at 18% when the normal ones were taxed at 5%.
- spuz 2y agoFunnily enough, I have actually used the 30 minute limit as a "feature" on my Panasonic Lumix G80 (the cousin to the unrestricted G85) as sometimes I would want to set up my camera and leave it recording for 20-30 minutes while I walked away to do things but wouldn't physically be able to return to switch it off. It would save me battery and SD card space because it automatically stops after 30 minutes.
- entropie 2y agoThat reminds me of https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
- vr46 2y agoIt may have been a customs and taxation issue here, but manufacturers are constantly adding costs of their own onto software before often reversing track. Examples: Leica (for Fotos) charged a princely sum for various trifles before removing these fees. Naim: charged £35 for the control app - which I paid - before going free, and now the app is the only way to control whole swathes of their increasingly-execrable hardware. These two companies’ kit is expensive, luxury, premium, however you want to refer to it, and so they probably felt comfortable wringing their customers a little more. Probably understandable in the case of Leica owners who will pay £250 for a viewfinder dioptre correction lens (puts hand up again) but less so for hifi owners. It is not that audiophiles haven’t been shown to spent inordinate sums on the dumbest, snakiest, oiliest tat this side of an Oxford Street souvenir shop, but it has to be material and palpable.
- chefandy 2y agoIt’s somewhat subjective, but I disagree it’s easier to fleece photographers than audiophiles. There are professional art photographers that use Leica cameras because they’re great, and $250 is pocket change for a lot of serious optical equipment. Look at the Canon L lenses and the like. Lots of people that buy that stuff don’t need it, but it’s not expensive solely for the sake of being expensive. I have yet to find a professional sound engineer, producer, or artist that calls themself an audiophile or uses the insanely overpriced gear marketed to them. Lots of that stuff is demonstrably bullshit and only valuable because it’s expensive.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoI think the time limit is because of the way the imports are classified. I believe that under 30 minutes, allows it to be a digicam, but over, requires it to be classified as a video camera. Most pros generally take scenes as groups of short runs, so that doesn't matter (Canon is used extensively in professional entertainment).
- p0w3n3d 2y agoThere was a custom ROM for canon available quite a few years ago... Now all I can find is https://www.magiclantern.fm/ https://www.magiclantern.fm/ but I believe the previous one was called CHDK or something like that
- p0w3n3d 2y agoGot it only in German here: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Hack_Development_Kit https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Hack_Development_Kit and on fandom.wiki there's a page ... But I used it like hundreds of years ago so not sure if it still works...
- ElizabethGreene 2y agoCHDK is what came to mind for me too. I used to make great time lapses with it. 10/10 software. It looks like they have firmware for the G5 X, but not the G5 X 2. :/
- plorg 2y agoFrom my memory CHDK was a project for Canon's consumer/point-and-shoot cameras, and Magic Lantern is for the DSLRs.
- jcarrano 2y agoIn Germany, all storage products (e.g. USB sticks) have to pay a canon "because you could use it to pirate media". Now, if I pre-paid the canon for pirating, does it mean I'm authorized to?
- hyperman1 2y agoIn Belgium, the same tax is raised by Auvibel for private copying. It allows us, in theory, to make copies of everything (except sheet music) that we acquired legally, even if we don't have access to the original anymore. So lending anything from a library or a friend, and making and keeping a copy is fair game. Still not a fan, and probably the EUCD makes most of this useless.
- Falos 2y agoYou're expected to! I think we could even calculate exactly how much.
- petecooper 2y ago>I also discovered that I couldn't use my Canon SLR to record more than 30 minutes of video continuously. My (now ancient) Canon 5D mk2 is limited to ~28 minutes of video due to file system limitations.
- ComputerGuru 2y agoIs the limitation the same regardless of quality, format, frame rate, etc? That would make me suspicious.
- petecooper 2y agoNo, 4GB equates to around 28mins of encoded video with their bitrate settings.
- jeffhuys 2y agoBut the EU doesn’t do tariffs? I thought that was exclusive to the incoming US administration, because it’s stupid.
- vladvasiliu 2y agoYes it does. You have a customs desk at every entry port, complete with a “goods to declare” sign. If you buy stuff online, you’ll also have to pay up if the products are taxed. You can learn about those here: https://taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/customs-4/calculation-customs-duties/customs-tariff/eu-customs-tariff-taric_en https://taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/customs-4/calculation-... We also have VAT (sales tax) which is levied on top of the import duties (so the tax is taxed). There are even restrictions on the quantities of some products you are allowed to carry between member states, such as alcohol and tobacco, mostly because taxes on those vary by jurisdiction.
- pc86 2y agoOne of the obvious "wtf?" things about this regulation is that regulators believe 29 minutes of video doesn't qualify as video?
- crashingintoyou 2y agoI wonder if 3rd party camera firmware will become more of a thing - e.g. https://www.magiclantern.fm/ https://www.magiclantern.fm/ or https://chdk.fandom.com/wiki/CHDK https://chdk.fandom.com/wiki/CHDK
- ComputerGuru 2y agoDo you know of anything equivalent for Nikon?
- mandibles 2y agoTaxes Rule Everything Around Me
- sombragris 2y agoThere's the well-known case of Spain in 1985, that would impose a tariff on computers with 64 KB RAM or less. At that time, Amstrad launched the CPC 464 with 64KB worldwide, but for Spain launched the special model CPC 472, wich had a daughter board with an additional 8Kb chip not connected to the main RAM and thus unusable, but enough for circumventing the tariff. That tariff was short-lived.
- jandrese 2y agoThat tariff difference between "video" and "stills" cameras having a 30 minute cutoff is funny. If you think about the vast majority of the time when shooting moving video with a handheld or tripod mounted camera it does not involve 30+ minute long continuous takes. You could have a professional movie camera with that restriction and it wouldn't be a problem in the vast majority of cases. So the restriction ends up being between things like security cameras, vtc cameras, and traffic cameras vs all other times of cameras. The relatively shitty camera in a doorbell or on your dashboard end up being more expensive to import than the fancy DSLR just because it is used in a different application.
- kjkjadksj 2y agoThis happens even outside electronics and software. I ordered some tevas recently to replace my old ones and discovered they now have a light felt layer over the rubber bottom. If I had to guess its like the converse reason of adding a similar felt layer: to classify them as slippers.
- fennecbutt 2y agoThe problem wasn't canon? Sounds like the problem was canon...trying to make more money.