Battery life...D1X

I am about to go into the poorhouse and get a DLSR and lenses. I like to walk all day, go out and shoot pics...could be in the country or street stuff. How does the D1X battery hold out. Could I shoot a few hundred pics on one battery? Oh ,in Raw mode?

Thanks everyone!
jo--

I am just starting in raw mode, so my experience is with JPEG. I have gotten between 400 and 450 large fine JPEGS with 1GB microdrive and preview on. Weather was moderate. Temperature has a big effect on the NiMh battery.

joann said:

I am about to go into the poorhouse and get a DLSR and lenses. I
like to walk all day, go out and shoot pics...could be in the
country or street stuff. How does the D1X battery hold out. Could I
shoot a few hundred pics on one battery? Oh ,in Raw mode?

Thanks everyone!
jo
--

Click to expand...

If you have a new EN-4 that has been properly prep'd. (At least 3 fully discahrge cycles, check http://www.robgalbraith.com under EN-4). you should easily get around 200 to 300 images in raw mode if you aren't a big user of the LCD. I am so on average I will get about 100 to 125 per battery. You can get 132 images per 1GB microdrive, and most often I find that I get one battery per 1GB card. I shoot 95% outdoor scenic work. I carry 4 batteries in my pack and a fully charged digitalcamerabattery 30Watt external battery in my car for backup. I have one EN-4 that will get about 75 shots its my oldest battery 1 1/2 years and I figure its pretty much at end of life.

Paul

joann said:

I am about to go into the poorhouse and get a DLSR and lenses. I
like to walk all day, go out and shoot pics...could be in the
country or street stuff. How does the D1X battery hold out. Could I
shoot a few hundred pics on one battery? Oh ,in Raw mode?

Thanks everyone!
jo
--

Click to expand...

Yes easily, but I would get a second battery regardless. You should also read up on battery conditioning on robgalbraith.com and Thom Hogan's web site to get the most life from your batteries.

Regards,
Trent

joann said:

I am about to go into the poorhouse and get a DLSR and lenses. I
like to walk all day, go out and shoot pics...could be in the
country or street stuff. How does the D1X battery hold out. Could I
shoot a few hundred pics on one battery? Oh ,in Raw mode?

Thanks everyone!
jo
--

Click to expand...

YOu guys are great answers coming fast...I appreciate it!!!
jo
--

joann said:

I am about to go into the poorhouse and get a DLSR and lenses. I
like to walk all day, go out and shoot pics...could be in the
country or street stuff. How does the D1X battery hold out. Could I
shoot a few hundred pics on one battery? Oh ,in Raw mode?

Click to expand...

At workshops, I usually get by on one battery a day (average about 100 pictures), that's with a fairly high LCD usage. You'd have to be using your D1x pretty heavily to need more than two batteries (assuming you can charge every night). --Thom Hoganauthor, Nikon Field Guideauthor, Nikon Flash Guideauthor, Complete Guide to the Nikon D1, D1h, & D1xwww.bythom.com

My last outings -

10 Batt2 normal charge
23 Batt2 normal charge
47 Batt1 refresh charge
60 Batt2 normal charge
30 Batt1 normal charge

Jpeg normal and LCD

My camera is not normal. Two batteries I've started to monitor them as best I can - I am not finding any consistencies. Nikon aware of situation – but I have not sent it back again yet.

But problem or not what I am seeing is a wide capture difference – one charge produced just 10 shots another 60 – I’m not making sense.

Last time I did a survey here it revealed a surprising amount of anomalies - each camera seems to be different.

Are you saying that the first number is the number of pictures per battery per charge? If that is true, something seems terribly wrong.

I am sorry you are having such a situation as much as I can tell you like the camera and love to shoot pictures.

Ger Bee said:

My last outings -

10 Batt2 normal charge
23 Batt2 normal charge
47 Batt1 refresh charge
60 Batt2 normal charge
30 Batt1 normal charge

Jpeg normal and LCD

My camera is not normal. Two batteries I've started to monitor them
as best I can - I am not finding any consistencies. Nikon aware of
situation – but I have not sent it back again yet.

But problem or not what I am seeing is a wide capture difference –
one charge produced just 10 shots another 60 – I’m not making sense.

Last time I did a survey here it revealed a surprising amount of
anomalies - each camera seems to be different.

Click to expand...

Jo,

I just finished recyling my battery 3 times and I got 178 NEF's before it died. I used a regular CF card for most of the shots, I only used a MicroDrive for about 30 shots or so...

good luck,
rich

joann said:

I am about to go into the poorhouse and get a DLSR and lenses. I
like to walk all day, go out and shoot pics...could be in the
country or street stuff. How does the D1X battery hold out. Could I
shoot a few hundred pics on one battery? Oh ,in Raw mode?

Thanks everyone!
jo
--

Click to expand...

Ger Bee said:

My last outings -
10 Batt2 normal charge
23 Batt2 normal charge
47 Batt1 refresh charge
60 Batt2 normal charge
30 Batt1 normal charge

Jpeg normal and LCD

My camera is not normal.

Click to expand...

I agree. I've used three different D1x's with my batteries, and have had at least a dozen students at workshops with D1x's, and to my recollection none of us have ever gotten less than a 100 NEFs off one battery. I don't know what to tell you Ger, but you seem to have gotten a rotten apple. Whether it be charger, batteries, or camera, it's hard to tell, but it sure does sound suspicious.--Thom Hoganauthor, Nikon Field Guideauthor, Nikon Flash Guideauthor, Complete Guide to the Nikon D1, D1h, & D1xwww.bythom.com

Thom Hogan said:

have gotten a rotten apple. Whether it be charger, batteries, or
camera, it's hard to tell, but it sure does sound suspicious.

Click to expand...

Or it may be the lens. I've noticed that the AF feature draws quite a bit of power and I can imagine that a faulty AF system (AFS or otherwise) will draw unnecessary amounts of power and the amount drawn would depend on how much AF was used. This might be a possible avenue to investigate Ger - since you are experiencing varying shot life with the battery. Maybe you can try using only one lens, if possible a manual focus lens, or just disable AF altogether, then see if the battery life changes at all.

Do you shoot in continous-AF mode?

Daniel

This situation arose after Nikon had fixed my other problems - I told them and they blamed the battery – so I bought a new battery and borrowed a battery charger and recently the MAHA charger arrived and I am now beginning to track the usage.

According to the Maha’s mAh readout both batteries will charge to 2150 (approx) mAh on a refresh charge but after being run flat on the camera my battery 2 – which is confined to the Maha battery shows a full charge at 570, 670, 704 and 628.

I have reported again and Nikon seem to think they can fix it but my two weeks with the E10 again in January, did not go well so I don’t want to go that road again in a hurry.

Daniel Wee said:

Do you shoot in continous-AF mode?

Daniel

Click to expand...

Yes. I do.

Daniel Wee said:

Or it may be the lens. I've noticed that the AF feature draws quite
a bit of power and I can imagine that a faulty AF system (AFS or
otherwise) will draw unnecessary amounts of power and the amount
drawn would depend on how much AF was used.

Click to expand...

I'd tend to disagree with this comment. A number of folk have measured battery performance with varying levels of AF use and found very little difference in terms of pictures taken, which is consistent with results on the film cameras.

What I'd want to know is whether the battery life changes with the length of time the battery is in the camera with the camera powered OFF. It has been documented that some cameras had problems with the battery compartment connection that caused them to continue to draw power with the camera OFF, and I seem to remember a similar issue with lenses making partial connection while the camera was OFF. In other words, measure the capacity of a battery just off the charger and put it in the camera. Leave the camera OFF. Check the battery capacity a few hours later. If it's down significantly, then the camera's the culprit, and the connection to the battery or lens would be the first thing to check.

What disturbs me about Ger's data is that the batteries never make it back to full capacity after one use in the camera. This seems to point to a bad cell in the battery, but it happens on both his batteries. The acid test, of course, would be if one of us with a known good battery and charger could lend it to Ger. Unfortunately, a large body of water prevents me from being to make that offer...--Thom Hoganauthor, Nikon Field Guideauthor, Nikon Flash Guideauthor, Complete Guide to the Nikon D1, D1h, & D1xwww.bythom.com

Jo,

I have gotten over one hundred many times but couldn't tell you how many it would take to run out of juice since I quit before then. But in raw format you had better have a handfull of large CFs or several 1GB MDs. You only get about 60 shots on a 1GB MD using RAW or NEF due to the size (17mb) of each photo. But, if I was spending an entire day walking I would definately purchase another En-4 battery. They only run about $100 and are cheap peace of mind.

Instead of buying a lot of CFs, an idea would be to purchase a MindStor 10 or 20GB portable hard drive to download all those photos. You could take a little break while you download them.

Norm

joann said:

I am about to go into the poorhouse and get a DLSR and lenses. I
like to walk all day, go out and shoot pics...could be in the
country or street stuff. How does the D1X battery hold out. Could I
shoot a few hundred pics on one battery? Oh ,in Raw mode?

Thanks everyone!
jo
--

Click to expand...

--Norm (slrshooter)

It's obvious from the 60 shot limit below, you were shooting TIFF. What advantage do you find shooting that over NEF?

Norman Paratore said:

I have gotten over one hundred many times but couldn't tell you how
many it would take to run out of juice since I quit before then.
But in raw format you had better have a handfull of large CFs or
several 1GB MDs. You only get about 60 shots on a 1GB MD using RAW
or NEF due to the size (17mb) of each photo. But, if I was
spending an entire day walking I would definately purchase another
En-4 battery. They only run about $100 and are cheap peace of mind.

Instead of buying a lot of CFs, an idea would be to purchase a
MindStor 10 or 20GB portable hard drive to download all those
photos. You could take a little break while you download them.

Norm

joann said:

I am about to go into the poorhouse and get a DLSR and lenses. I
like to walk all day, go out and shoot pics...could be in the
country or street stuff. How does the D1X battery hold out. Could I
shoot a few hundred pics on one battery? Oh ,in Raw mode?

Thanks everyone!
jo
--

Click to expand...

--
Norm (slrshooter)

Click to expand...

joann said:

I am about to go into the poorhouse and get a DLSR and lenses. I
like to walk all day, go out and shoot pics...could be in the
country or street stuff. How does the D1X battery hold out. Could I
shoot a few hundred pics on one battery? Oh ,in Raw mode?

Thanks everyone!
jo
--

Click to expand...

Jo,

I shot 217 NEF's this afternoon at my son's baseball game and the battery indicator still was on full. Used the monitor very little and manual focus even though I was using a AFS lens. Still getting use to AF. I shoot with a 4x5 view camera most of the time.

My D1x will show 1/2 battery. But if you turn it off and back on it will show a full battery. Not sure what's up with that.--Brian C. RobbinsRobbins Photography, Inc.Atlanta, GA

My brand new D1x battery got over 700 frames in fine jpeg mode, with lots of image playback and using autofocus. I conditioned the battery prior to first usage. A word of warning though, when you see the battery at half life capacity, this means the battery can die out on you soon at any time. I recently bought an extra 2 more batteries for $100 each to be on the safe side. I gagged at the $300 price tag of a charger though, and will wait til later to get a second charger.

Casey

joann said:

I am about to go into the poorhouse and get a DLSR and lenses. I
like to walk all day, go out and shoot pics...could be in the
country or street stuff. How does the D1X battery hold out. Could I
shoot a few hundred pics on one battery? Oh ,in Raw mode?

Thanks everyone!
jo
--

Click to expand...

--Casey

Ger Bee said:

According to the Maha’s mAh readout both batteries will charge to
2150 (approx) mAh on a refresh charge but after being run flat on
the camera my battery 2 – which is confined to the Maha battery
shows a full charge at 570, 670, 704 and 628.

Click to expand...

So based on this, one can envisage a couple of possible scenarios:-

1) The battery is not taking full charge, but since this is happening with more than one battery, this is unlikely.

2) The battery is really not that drained after all, suggesting that the battery level detection in the camera is miscalibrated, thus shutting down the camera before it is really flat - preventing you from using the full capacity. One way to check this would be to take a battery that's been run down normally on the camera and to try it on another camera.

Daniel

Chris,

The reason is very simple - ease of finding a photo program to open and edit the photos. The problem started when I tried to load Capture 2 and was told by the program I had to remove Capture 1 from my computer first. Problem is I didn't have it loaded. Started to at one point, then realized I needed to hook up my camera directly to the computer and didn't have the cable handy, so I stopped the loading process.

Now I can't find any trace of Capture 1 in my computer but still can't load Capture 2. Wrote Nikon and they said to call Tech Support. Yeah, right! Everytime I do the call waiting time is 15-20 minutes. Maybe some day I'll get through.

Till then, I shoot the largest (finest) TIFF I can and use Photoshop as my editing tool.

Also, aren't NEF files the same size as TIFF?

Norm (slrshooter)

christopher said:

Norman Paratore said:

I have gotten over one hundred many times but couldn't tell you how
many it would take to run out of juice since I quit before then.
But in raw format you had better have a handfull of large CFs or
several 1GB MDs. You only get about 60 shots on a 1GB MD using RAW
or NEF due to the size (17mb) of each photo. But, if I was
spending an entire day walking I would definately purchase another
En-4 battery. They only run about $100 and are cheap peace of mind.

Instead of buying a lot of CFs, an idea would be to purchase a
MindStor 10 or 20GB portable hard drive to download all those
photos. You could take a little break while you download them.

Norm

joann said:

I am about to go into the poorhouse and get a DLSR and lenses. I
like to walk all day, go out and shoot pics...could be in the
country or street stuff. How does the D1X battery hold out. Could I
shoot a few hundred pics on one battery? Oh ,in Raw mode?

Thanks everyone!
jo
--

Click to expand...

--
Norm (slrshooter)

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

--Norm (slrshooter)