DC4800 Battery Life Poor

I bought the DC4800 almost a year ago, but have been disappointed with the battery life since the start. I even purchased an additional two batteries for it. Can other DC4800 give me an idea of what sort of life they get from a single charge.

I use the camera with the LCD and find that even with the power settings set on, the display will go after I take about 20 shots. Soon after that, the battery indicator drops to about half. I have a 128MB CF card. If this isn't bad enough, the battery takes around four hours to charge, and this is not from 'dead'.

I like the principal of digital images, in that I can take several shots in succession; without worrying about expense of film and processing; and can then dump all the rubbish shots, but I am heading off to the US for 2 weeks, and am considering taking my old Canon Eos50 instead of the DC4800, as at least I know the batteries wont die after the first day (I would get through about 5 or 6 36 exposure slide films on a good day).

Can the battery life be so poor for this camera? I have a friend with a Canon D30 who says he can get about 300 shots from a single charge. I would be lucky to get 100, and 80% of those would be without the LCD.

photoman said:

I bought the DC4800 almost a year ago, but have been disappointed
with the battery life since the start. I even purchased an
additional two batteries for it. Can other DC4800 give me an idea
of what sort of life they get from a single charge.

I use the camera with the LCD and find that even with the power
settings set on, the display will go after I take about 20 shots.
Soon after that, the battery indicator drops to about half. I have
a 128MB CF card. If this isn't bad enough, the battery takes around
four hours to charge, and this is not from 'dead'.

I like the principal of digital images, in that I can take several
shots in succession; without worrying about expense of film and
processing; and can then dump all the rubbish shots, but I am
heading off to the US for 2 weeks, and am considering taking my old
Canon Eos50 instead of the DC4800, as at least I know the batteries
wont die after the first day (I would get through about 5 or 6 36
exposure slide films on a good day).

Can the battery life be so poor for this camera? I have a friend
with a Canon D30 who says he can get about 300 shots from a single
charge. I would be lucky to get 100, and 80% of those would be
without the LCD.

Click to expand...

I use the power save on and don't use the LCD and get about 150 shots per charge. And I have the quick 1 hour charger that will work on any countries power. I do press the 4-way do-hicky on the back to the right to see how the shot came out. Am very happy with battery life using it this way.--JWP

photoman said:

I bought the DC4800 almost a year ago, but have been disappointed
with the battery life since the start. I even purchased an
additional two batteries for it. Can other DC4800 give me an idea
of what sort of life they get from a single charge.

I use the camera with the LCD and find that even with the power
settings set on, the display will go after I take about 20 shots.
Soon after that, the battery indicator drops to about half. I have
a 128MB CF card. If this isn't bad enough, the battery takes around
four hours to charge, and this is not from 'dead'.

I like the principal of digital images, in that I can take several
shots in succession; without worrying about expense of film and
processing; and can then dump all the rubbish shots, but I am
heading off to the US for 2 weeks, and am considering taking my old
Canon Eos50 instead of the DC4800, as at least I know the batteries
wont die after the first day (I would get through about 5 or 6 36
exposure slide films on a good day).

Can the battery life be so poor for this camera? I have a friend
with a Canon D30 who says he can get about 300 shots from a single
charge. I would be lucky to get 100, and 80% of those would be
without the LCD.

Click to expand...

First of all, using the LCD, flash and zoom all takes power from your battery. Try to limit them. Also, buy extra batteries with a battery charger. Battery chargers cut down the time of chargung batteries to about 1 to 2 hours. Good luck!

I used my dc4800 last summer for a weeklong event.
back then i had 2 kodak batteries plus a 1hr charger.
I take 300+ pictures a day using both LCD and flash.
I switch out the batteries when the low battery icon pops up.

I have since sold the extra battery and charger since I don't use my camera all that much. +150 pictures before the the low battery icon pups up is good enough for my uses. I also switched from Power Save On to Power Save Standard. I have not gone past 60 shots per session yet so do not know the limit.

What I do, do is turn off the LCD between shots.
You might want to think about investing in an external battery pack.
I know disney uses them w/ their dc4800.

photoman said:

I bought the DC4800 almost a year ago, but have been disappointed
with the battery life since the start. I even purchased an
additional two batteries for it. Can other DC4800 give me an idea
of what sort of life they get from a single charge.

I use the camera with the LCD and find that even with the power
settings set on, the display will go after I take about 20 shots.
Soon after that, the battery indicator drops to about half. I have
a 128MB CF card. If this isn't bad enough, the battery takes around
four hours to charge, and this is not from 'dead'.

I like the principal of digital images, in that I can take several
shots in succession; without worrying about expense of film and
processing; and can then dump all the rubbish shots, but I am
heading off to the US for 2 weeks, and am considering taking my old
Canon Eos50 instead of the DC4800, as at least I know the batteries
wont die after the first day (I would get through about 5 or 6 36
exposure slide films on a good day).

Can the battery life be so poor for this camera? I have a friend
with a Canon D30 who says he can get about 300 shots from a single
charge. I would be lucky to get 100, and 80% of those would be
without the LCD.

Click to expand...

I wasn't too thrilled with the battery performance either, but its really not that bad. I think that the person who has the D30 and gets 300+ shots hardly ever used the LCD. If I leave my LCD on all the time, sure, after 30 minutes the battery warning comes up, but you can still get lots of shots after that without the LCD working. Mine is set up for the 2 second review after the shot is taken and I get 100 shots most likely this way.

photoman said:

I bought the DC4800 almost a year ago, but have been disappointed
with the battery life since the start. I even purchased an
additional two batteries for it. Can other DC4800 give me an idea
of what sort of life they get from a single charge.

I use the camera with the LCD and find that even with the power
settings set on, the display will go after I take about 20 shots.
Soon after that, the battery indicator drops to about half. I have
a 128MB CF card. If this isn't bad enough, the battery takes around
four hours to charge, and this is not from 'dead'.

I like the principal of digital images, in that I can take several
shots in succession; without worrying about expense of film and
processing; and can then dump all the rubbish shots, but I am
heading off to the US for 2 weeks, and am considering taking my old
Canon Eos50 instead of the DC4800, as at least I know the batteries
wont die after the first day (I would get through about 5 or 6 36
exposure slide films on a good day).

Can the battery life be so poor for this camera? I have a friend
with a Canon D30 who says he can get about 300 shots from a single
charge. I would be lucky to get 100, and 80% of those would be
without the LCD.

Click to expand...

-- http://www.pbase.com/k_p98/root

Another thing that you can look into is purchasing a separate flash with a flash sync cable. I always use the camera at night which entails the use of the flash. Turning off the LCD and the quickview mode did save power but since i still need the flash and it drains a lot of power from the battery I can get only about 50 to 60 pictures. So I opted to use an external flash and just set the shutter speed to about 1/500 and just turned off the built in flash. This saved up on power and enabled me to go over 100 pics per charge.

Kiran P said:

photoman said:

I bought the DC4800 almost a year ago, but have been disappointed
with the battery life since the start. I even purchased an
additional two batteries for it. Can other DC4800 give me an idea
of what sort of life they get from a single charge.

I use the camera with the LCD and find that even with the power
settings set on, the display will go after I take about 20 shots.
Soon after that, the battery indicator drops to about half. I have
a 128MB CF card. If this isn't bad enough, the battery takes around
four hours to charge, and this is not from 'dead'.

I like the principal of digital images, in that I can take several
shots in succession; without worrying about expense of film and
processing; and can then dump all the rubbish shots, but I am
heading off to the US for 2 weeks, and am considering taking my old
Canon Eos50 instead of the DC4800, as at least I know the batteries
wont die after the first day (I would get through about 5 or 6 36
exposure slide films on a good day).

Can the battery life be so poor for this camera? I have a friend
with a Canon D30 who says he can get about 300 shots from a single
charge. I would be lucky to get 100, and 80% of those would be
without the LCD.

Click to expand...

--
http://www.pbase.com/k_p98/root

Click to expand...

photoman said:

I bought the DC4800 almost a year ago, but have been disappointed
with the battery life since the start. I even purchased an
additional two batteries for it. Can other DC4800 give me an idea
of what sort of life they get from a single charge.

Click to expand...

photoman56573 said:

Can the battery life be so poor for this camera? I have a friend
with a Canon D30 who says he can get about 300 shots from a single
charge. I would be lucky to get 100, and 80% of those would be
without the LCD.

Click to expand...

I have a DC-4800 which I bought last Sept 1, 2001. I have taken over 4,000 pictures and have done special projects for it that lasted a day. I can take about 200-250 pictures on average with it but with NO LCD and doing a 3-5 second review per shot. In our annual college Lantern Parade, I managed about 175 pictures with the single Klick-3000 battery it came with. I lasted over 5 hours with that single battery and a 128mb CF.

I have practiced taking pictures with this thing and I managed to drain it on a straight shooting with no LCD close to 1,000 shots.

I am in the process of getting 2 more batteries in the US from a friend for backup as in our country, the model does not stock this brand for batteries. I don't mind charging for 4 hours since I don't think I will have even 1 hour to charge if I were in the middle of an event, especially if you are outside where there are no outlets to plug into. Having at leats 1 battery will help.

If you think that the LCD should be on for focusing, and you alrady have 2 spare batteries, then I think you will remain unhappy with the dc-4800 as using the LCD for focusing really drains a lot from the battery.

The trick is not to use the LCD for focusing. Using it for review seems not to drain battery too much. I only use the LCD for macro or close up picture taking or if focusing is tricky (such as taking a picture where framing is critical). But even then, I try not to use it too long.

Try to practice using the viewfinder alone and you will get close to 200 if not over it each time. I once took pictures that reached 284 in a company bowling tournament with no flash.

I hope this helps.