This article was written several years ago and they were using a Sony A7 something and shooting quite a bit. They exhausted four full batteries and before the end of the game they inserted the fifth and final battery. At the time the Sony A7 models were known as real battery Hogs. As I understand it this has somewhat been mitigated. We should probably keep in mind to that they were shooting a lot come up as in every play over about a three and a half hour NFL football game.
The article was probably written four years ago, if my memory serves me correctly.
Ah OK. The camera itself was known to be a battery hog.
Performance over battery life. And they probably used a low capacity battery, because it was physically small, so that the camera could be made small.
The other is the lens. How much power does the lens draw from the camera.
That is the problem with the Olympus 12-100/4 lens. With the lens stabilizer on, that lens sucks battery power. It cuts my battery life by almost 40%.
The solution is in 3 parts, which has to be balanced.
- Reduce the power consumption of the camera.
- Reduce the power consumption of the lens.
- Use a LARGER capacity battery.
#1 - But adding more features to the camera, and a faster processor, both use more power.
#2 - Olympus' new EM5-mk3 has a similar size battery as my EM1-mk1. Even if they reduced the power consumption of the camera, IF I put the power sucking 12-100 lens on the EM5-mk3, the battery life would take about a 40% hit, just from extra power that the lens takes. Hopefully the next generation of that lens will use less power.
#3 - Olympus' solution on the EM1-mk2 was a battery with 40% more capacity.