Possible anorak question..Battery life.

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Hi all,

I've just come back from a weeks carp fishing in Limoges and forgot to pack my battery charger. I took 2 Nikon batteries for my D80 and found myself constantly nagging my son, who's a really keen photographer and took some fantastic wild-life and landscape shots, about wasting battery life, just in case we captured that once in a lifetime fish and had flat batteries.

My question is, if you are wandering around taking multiple shots over a period of, say, 30 minutes, should you turn your camera off between exposures and accept the increased drain on the battery each time the camera is fired up or leave it on and accept the minor 'trickle' drain from the unused camera being left on?

Not sure I've phrased this question too well.

Views are appreciated.

Comus
 
I'm not sure if this applies to Nikon but most Canon cameras have the auto shutdown set for a minute or two. As the start up is only 0.2s this doesn't interfere with the user so I assume the reasoning is that it saves battery.
 
I rarely turn mine off, it just sits on standby.
 
30D and later Canon cameras don't really switch off which is how they achieve the fast power up.
 
My 5D seems much better on batteries (perhaps they're bigger???) than my 400D. When worried about battery life on the 400 I would make sure the screen was turned off whilst still in use (theres a button on the back left hand side for this) and you can still see most of the settings through the viewfinder. I would also turn the image review off.

By habit I usually turn the camera off even if it only stays off for 5 minutes and thats what I'd do around the home - leave the room, turn the light off etc. I would agree with the above though, the cameras seem to drop into extremely low power uses after a couple of minutes anyway so you can quite happily leave them on.
 
I'd have thought too much constant on/off would be a bad thing also because the contacts would always be working or something? I'm no electrician lol.

When I'm at a motorsport event I rarely turn mine off as I'm pretty much expecting to take photos every minute, anyhow. Maybe after 1000 frames I'd move onto a second battery. This was with my D80 as well as my D300. :)
 
Thanks for clearing that up guys.

Comus
 
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