Peltier Cooled Sony A7S

[MarkS]

The Sony A7S already has the lowest dark current of any consumer camera.  However, the camera body is metal, so just by attaching a Peltier and fan to the base it is easily possible to achieve 9C of cooling at the sensor:



When testing it, I covered the body in rags to give a small measure of thermal insulation.  This is just a start: with better thermal connection to the base e.g. a cold plate with more surface area bolted to the tripod mounting thread I reckon this could be easily improved upon.

I calculated the temperature reduction by measuring thermal noise in the dark exposures, which almost halved when the Peltier was switched on.

Mark

[JohnP]

Mark - looks impressive - How exactly did you mount Peltier to camera? For such a quick test the results look very promising. John

[Roy]

Potentially this means that other metal bodies cameras could similarly be modified. The point here is that most of the budget Canon DSLRs that people use (myself included) are plastic bodied and hence are not suited to this modification.

[MarkS]

Mark - looks impressive - How exactly did you mount Peltier to camera? For such a quick test the results look very promising. John

A piece of garden wire attaches to each side of the heatsink and goes over the top of the camera - you can see it in the picture.  It's just an experiment - not a finished design!

Mark