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Re: [OM] Battery life in micro 4/3 camera

Subject: Re: [OM] Battery life in micro 4/3 camera
From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 3 Sep 2016 12:56:29 -0700
On 9/3/2016 6:53 AM, Chuck Norcutt wrote:
I agree with Wayne.  Never trust batteries and never be without a spare (or 
two).

Yup-yup. Green Batteries is still selling those great little battery wallets. One with spare card in the interior pocket is no burden at all in a pocket. My regular bag has three such, and if I leave it behind for some reason, at least one goes in pants pocket. There's now a Sony battery in one, which I need to label.

My regular practice when buying a new camera is to buy a set of two additional, third party batteries with charger. I don't want any surprises at awkward times and they are so inexpensive. I have an additional reason over most folks. The chargers all come with an input jack for 12v, and I can charge them directly, sans 12-110v converter, in our Turtle. Some come with cable, some without, but I have plenty of cables by now.

My new to me A7, with new DTSE battery, croaked after under 90 shots. I popped another battery in and shot on, put the exhausted one in the charger. The A7 battery seems a little small (?), but has the advantage of powering many Sony models. I did use the camera with WiFi remote control for some time and a fair number of shots, which I imagine uses up the battery faster, perhaps quite a bit faster.

I don't know yet whether this is typical, the battery is not up to snuff, it needs a couple of discharge cycles to reach full capacity, WIFi and lots of menu use getting used to the camera and setting it up for my use, or some combination, caused the short shot life. BUT, and this is the point, I had a spare at hand, and was not inconvenienced.

That said, if you're still using the original Oly battery that came with the camera (I assume that's what I sent you), since the camera was purchased in January 2013 that battery is now approaching 4 years old.

I have always considered the lifetime of lithium camera batteries to be 3-4 years so it's probably just getting old and tired.

I've happily used batteries older than that. But I don't keep much track of shot life in practice, so they could be getting lower in capacity, and I might not notice.

I always shoot raw or raw+jpeg and, IIRC, the E-m5 battery was good for about 300 shots.

I'm thinking that was the upper limit, and I often got less. But again, I stopped paying much attention after getting a stable battery set, and I use 3rd party batteries first.

The Canon 5D was good for about 400+ shots but had far less display electronics 
to run.

Yup, sounds about right.

Follow Wayne's advice and buy a couple of spares from ebay. You can find them on US ebay for about USD 10. I've had a couple of different brands but have always preferred (and Moose too, I think) the "Progo" brand for both battery and charger. This US seller <http://www.ebay.com/itm/Progo-Battery-and-Charger-Kit-for-Olympus-BLN-1-Olympus-OM-D-EM-5-1600mAh-/152190193132?hash=item236f3e0dec:g:0qQAAOSwbsBXn9HC> wants a lot more than I can remember paying but maybe you can find it cheaper in NZ. Moose may want to chime in here too.

I've had good luck with other brands on other cameras, DTSE, Wasabi and some other one. With the E-M5, I was getting odd results with the Wasabis, with what seemed like good shot life one time, poor another. After some research, I came to the tentative conclusion that no one had fully decoded the OM-D battery interface. It seems that the camera relies on info from the battery about remaining charge. Absent that info, it just uses voltage, and may shut down when there's still plenty of charge, to be on the safe side (and perhaps to punish users of non Oly batteries?)

Progo claimed to have decoded the interface, and had good reviews, so I now have three and have been happy with them. In the field, I run two cameras in parallel, with three spare batteries at hand. I use the Progos first, and they do seem to report charge correctly to the camera, so the Olys are hardly used.

At least one reviewer of the Progos noted that the nominal voltage of the Progos is higher than the Olys, and claimed that getting best shot life from them required using the Progo charger. Conversely, he claimed his testing showed that the Olys got best life from the Oly charger. Here's where possibly incomplete interface decoding may come in, with the Oly charger and battery communicating in a way it can't with the Progo batteries?

It's largely speculation, with inadequate testing to know much for sure. The bottom line for me is that I mostly charge with the same brand together, but don't obsess, have been happy with my batteries, and now continue to be so with the E-M5 IIs.

Conclusion - I would stick with Progos for OM-Ds.

--
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
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