Battery Life Question

jrasche2003 · Jan 10, 2013

I have a question on battery life. I have a Canon 300D with a Sigma Lens. Is there any known problems with battery drain when the camera is not in use? Would I be better off taking the battery out when I am not using the camera?

Thank you!

TCampbell · Jan 10, 2013

You're worried about self-discharge while the camera is not in use? Don't worry about it. I don't take the batteries out of my camera other than to charge it and I have no problems with the batteries self-discharging.

Batteries last a LONG time in a true DSLR because of the way the camera works.

In a point & shoot, the only way you can see to frame up the shot is for the shutter to be open literally doing a live video shoot of your possible shooting subjects and then plays that in live-view on your LCD screen. That really takes a lot of power. When you press the shutter button, it simply captures that frame.

When you use a DSLR, the shutter is closed and the sensor isn't active. It's not processing anything. It's hardly taking any power at all. When you decide you're going to take a photo of a subject, the camera wakes up, focuses and meters the shot, then very quickly takes the shot, then goes back to sleep except for the LCD screen (which isn't showing live video.) The power drain is MUCH MUCH lower.

I've taken my camera on daily walks where I might shoot 25 photos a day for a week without ever bothering to charge the camera. At the end of the week I hadn't even used half the battery power.

When you power off your camera, you're really just disabling the button controls, turning off the display, and putting the camera to sleep. The power switch is really a soft-switch. It doesn't actually cut power to the camera. But the draw is extremely small. You could come back in 6 months and you'd probably find your camera batter still has a lot of power in it.

If you are only occasionally using the camera (e.g. only pull it out for special occasions) then I probably wouldn't store the camera with the batteries in it. But if you're shooting even semi-regularly (once every week or two) then don't bother to pull the batteries.

jrasche2003 · Jan 10, 2013

Thank You-that is exactly what I was looking for. I read somewhere that the lens can drain the battery, so I was a bit curious.

Thanks again for you help. No back to my dummies book ha!

Josh66 · Jan 10, 2013

jrasche2003 said:
I read somewhere that the lens can drain the battery, so I was a bit curious.

I guess it's possible, since it has electrical contacts - I wouldn't worry about it too much though.

The battery will drain a little more 'hooked up to stuff' than it would out of the camera, but the difference is not enough to lose sleep over. If you're talking long term storage, I would definitely take the batteries out (of any electronic device), but that would be for a different reason.

deeky · Jan 10, 2013

By my guess, what they were referring to was that a lens with image stabilization will drain the battery faster than one without. But again, that's only when you have the stabilization in the lens turned on.

gw2424 · Jan 10, 2013

TCampbell said:
You're worried about self-discharge while the camera is not in use? Don't worry about it. I don't take the batteries out of my camera other than to charge it and I have no problems with the batteries self-discharging.

Batteries last a LONG time in a true DSLR because of the way the camera works.

In a point & shoot, the only way you can see to frame up the shot is for the shutter to be open literally doing a live video shoot of your possible shooting subjects and then plays that in live-view on your LCD screen. That really takes a lot of power. When you press the shutter button, it simply captures that frame.

When you use a DSLR, the shutter is closed and the sensor isn't active. It's not processing anything. It's hardly taking any power at all. When you decide you're going to take a photo of a subject, the camera wakes up, focuses and meters the shot, then very quickly takes the shot, then goes back to sleep except for the LCD screen (which isn't showing live video.) The power drain is MUCH MUCH lower.

I've taken my camera on daily walks where I might shoot 25 photos a day for a week without ever bothering to charge the camera. At the end of the week I hadn't even used half the battery power.

When you power off your camera, you're really just disabling the button controls, turning off the display, and putting the camera to sleep. The power switch is really a soft-switch. It doesn't actually cut power to the camera. But the draw is extremely small. You could come back in 6 months and you'd probably find your camera batter still has a lot of power in it.

If you are only occasionally using the camera (e.g. only pull it out for special occasions) then I probably wouldn't store the camera with the batteries in it. But if you're shooting even semi-regularly (once every week or two) then don't bother to pull the batteries.