HS20EXR question

Does anyone know it the Finepix HS20EXR has an internal backup battery soldered on the main board. This is the case in older models such as the s9500 and the s5600 I own. If this battery reaches the end of its lifespan the camera loses all its settings when batteries are changed, which is annoying, specially outdoors. These kind of batteries are nos easy to replace.

If the same is true for the HS20EXR I'm out, I am not going to buy it.

Hope someone has an answer.

Milana

All cameras have a internal batteries. Some are soldered on and some are not In some cameras, there is only a capacitor which if goes bad, you can't really do nothing about it like my oly D-560z. In any case, it will be hard to replace, since it is deep inside the camera. You would have to have take the camera apart and then put it back together.

Milana said:

Does anyone know it the Finepix HS20EXR has an internal backup battery soldered on the main board. This is the case in older models such as the s9500 and the s5600 I own. If this battery reaches the end of its lifespan the camera loses all its settings when batteries are changed, which is annoying, specially outdoors. These kind of batteries are nos easy to replace.

If the same is true for the HS20EXR I'm out, I am not going to buy it.

Hope someone has an answer.

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I don't know of anyone that has disassembled an HS20EXR, but whatever it uses, battery or capacitor, it's probably soldered in place. I understand your concern and I'd prefer the user replaceable backup batteries that some of my other cameras have, but I don't consider it a big problem for several reasons. First, the backup battery/capacitor usually lasts for nearly 10 years. Have the backups failed in your S9500 and S5600? They haven't in mine, but even if they had, they're hardly used anymore, so for the use they'd get, a set of fresh alkalines would last many more years without needing to be changed. A set of lithium AA batteries would probably be good for another 10 years. One assumes that you'd use the HS20 so much more often that the batteries in your other cameras wouldn't need to be replaced for a long, long time.

Worst case, if you get the DC coupler mentioned in the manual, you could plug the AC adapter into it (or a home-made battery pack for use in the field) and then you could safely change batteries. I have an old Coolpix 990 that has this problem, except that it was designed this way. It wasn't designed with a backup of any kind so I need to plug in the AC adapter to prevent the loss of settings when batteries are changed. For obvious reasons, they rarely need to be changed. If you get an HS20, by the time its internal battery (or whatever) dies, you'll probably have been using its successor for several years.

Thanks, my s6500 started with this problem about a year ago, three years after I bought it. It seems to be a frequent problem with several Fuji models, see link below and there are more reports on the internet.

The s6500 is a fine camera and it well would have served me for some more years if it wasn't for the battery problem.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1012&message=38344216&q=s9600+settings+lost&qf=m

You have to understand that its a old model. Batteries or capacitor will die some day. 3 years is not a short life for a battery/capacitor.

Milana said:

Thanks, my s6500 started with this problem about a year ago, three years after I bought it. It seems to be a frequent problem with several Fuji models, see link below and there are more reports on the internet.

The s6500 is a fine camera and it well would have served me for some more years if it wasn't for the battery problem.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1012&message=38344216&q=s9600+settings+lost&qf=m

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Well in my opinion it is, it renders the entire camera useless. I would agree with you if the sort of batteries were used as on computer mainboards. These last 10 years or perhaps longer. Life of a camera should not be determined by an impossible to replace battery. I also wrote Fujifilm about this issue, let's see what they have to say about it.

Milana said:

Well in my opinion it is, it renders the entire camera useless. I would agree with you if the sort of batteries were used as on computer mainboards. These last 10 years or perhaps longer. Life of a camera should not be determined by an impossible to replace battery. I also wrote Fujifilm about this issue, let's see what they have to say about it.

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Judged by your own standard, why wouldn't your opinion also be considered to be rendered useless? Try to be serious now. There are P&S cameras that never had ANY backup batteries, that would lose their settings with every battery change, yet they were very popular top of the line models that sold for nearly $1,000, and $1,000 dollars back in the year 2000 was worth a lot more than it would be in today's dollars.

If in your opinion, those cameras were useless, would you also consider them to be useless if they had internal backup batteries that were guaranteed to last more than five years? You may have had a camera whose internal battery died, but I own at least 6 Fujis that are between 5 and 6 1/2 years old and all of them work just as well as the day they were first removed from their boxes. No battery problems of any kind. Not all computer motherboard batteries last 10 years either even though that was their estimated life span. Several of the 200 or so computers that I maintained had to have their batteries replaced after 4 to 5 years of use. Not a lot, but then not very many of those computers weren't upgraded and replaced by the time they were 5 years old.

If you're annoyed because you don't expect the HS20's internal battery to last 10 years, please confirm for us that if you got a camera just like the HS20 but it had user a replaceable backup battery, you'd still be using it either often or as your primary camera nearly 10 years from now. I can understand people deciding to pass on any cameras that don't have replaceable backup batteries, but I can't understand how a reasonable person would call those cameras useless. Undesirable, ok, that I can understand. Useless? No, that position basically sounds like a petulant, impractical whine. Do you really believe that?

Im really not seeing a problem here
You get a GOOD quality AA rechargeable battery.
That will last you 500 to 1000 shots

Then when it comes time to change batteries you plug the camera in and change batteries while the camera is plugged in. That way the backup battery/capacitor never has a chance to loose the charge.
You could also just write your settings down
--
Ronald Nikon cp4500, tc-e2, canon tc-dc58n, Fuji S9000

On a side note, on a lot of older cameras with a capacitor as the backup you need to fire off the flash to charge the capacitor if I remember rightly. If you don't use your flash the capacitor never gets charged.

Paul.

That's interesting, I'm sure my old S5000 used to lose it's settings every time I changed batteries and that may explain why.
--
Noel 100

PAUL TILL said:

On a side note, on a lot of older cameras with a capacitor as the backup you need to fire off the flash to charge the capacitor if I remember rightly. If you don't use your flash the capacitor never gets charged.

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One minor quibble and a disagreement. Using the flash is sufficient to insure that the capacitor is charged, but not necessary. Just raising the flash (or preparing to take a shot using the flash) would charge the flash even if ultimately, the flash wasn't used. The disagreement is with using the flash capacitor, generally a very large and relatively leaky electrolytic capacitor, to keep the camera's clock running and maintaining volatile RAM settings. If a capacitor is used for that purpose it's most likely a small standard capacitor that requires batteries to be changed within minutes or several hours at most, or a small supercap that can keep the camera's settings safe for weeks or longer. More recently, supercaps have been used in some cell phone and small digital cameras to power relatively low power LED flashes.

http://embeddedsystemnews.com/on-semiconductor-introduces-ncp5680-10-a-supercapacitor-optimized-led-flash-driver-for-photo-flash-and-video-light-in-ultra-slim-camera-phones-and-compact-digital-cameras.html

Thanks everyone for you input and comments, I learned a few interesting new things. It is clear to me now that I am expecting a little too much of the backup batteries. Let's hope the battery of the HS20 will last a very long time.

The camera will be obsolete and replaced long before the battery needs to be.
--
I may not know much about art but I can sure recognize "artsy".

Milana said:

Does anyone know it the Finepix HS20EXR has an internal backup battery soldered on the main board.

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Take a look at my xray picture of HS20 and decide for yourself