walkerbob
Well-known member
I recently returned from the US Figure Skating Championships in Saint Paul MN, where I used my D300, Nikon 18-200mm F/2.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S DX VR-II lens, and internal EN-EL3e battery to shoot 70,000+ photos over an 8-day period.
I was generally in the arena for 12-14 hours per day, shooting about 8 hours of 2-4 minute competitions. I generally shot either short (1-2 frame) or longer (5-7 frames) bursts at 6 fps.
I could reliably get 5000-6000 photos per battery each day. I carried two spares, and tended to switch between events in the middle of the afternoon if the first battery was down to 30% or so.
Early in the event, shooting 5000 photos per day, I really didn't need a spare battery. On the 3 days of 10,000-12,000 photos I needed the second battery, and on the day of 16,000 photos I don't remember if I put the third one in near the end or not.
I tended to immediately dump each CF card to a Nexto DI digital wallet ( http://www.nextodi.com/en , a device I highly recommend!) so I didn't do much reviewing or otherwise using the monitor. But during each 2-4 minute competition I pretty much kept the camera active.
Overall I was quite pleased with the battery performance.
Unfortunately, I also experienced the dreaded spurious "out of power" issue occasionally, some days not at all, other days 3 or 4 times. I panicked the first day, thinking my D300 was going to die, but then see it's unfortunately a common problem. I didn't get around to trying the "insert a piece of paper" trick, but did find the whole problem annoying (and once or twice causing me to miss a shot I would have preferred to get).
I was generally in the arena for 12-14 hours per day, shooting about 8 hours of 2-4 minute competitions. I generally shot either short (1-2 frame) or longer (5-7 frames) bursts at 6 fps.
I could reliably get 5000-6000 photos per battery each day. I carried two spares, and tended to switch between events in the middle of the afternoon if the first battery was down to 30% or so.
Early in the event, shooting
I tended to immediately dump each CF card to a Nexto DI digital wallet ( http://www.nextodi.com/en , a device I highly recommend!) so I didn't do much reviewing or otherwise using the monitor. But during each 2-4 minute competition I pretty much kept the camera active.
Overall I was quite pleased with the battery performance.
Unfortunately, I also experienced the dreaded spurious "out of power" issue occasionally, some days not at all, other days 3 or 4 times. I panicked the first day, thinking my D300 was going to die, but then see it's unfortunately a common problem. I didn't get around to trying the "insert a piece of paper" trick, but did find the whole problem annoying (and once or twice causing me to miss a shot I would have preferred to get).
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