Battery saving tips for the A7/A7r

My only complaint about the A7 is the battery consumption. Let's start a thread about how to save battery life. Love to hear anyone's ideas.

Put it in Airplane mode.

Airplane mode.

Turn off image review.

Turn EVF quality to low.

Use manual focus only.

Turn off prefocus.

tesch said:

My only complaint about the A7 is the battery consumption. Let's start a thread about how to save battery life. Love to hear anyone's ideas.

Click to expand...

turn OFF Play Memories
mainly use manual lens
* should triple battery power

Buy spares. Genuine Sony spares. And an external charger (BC-QM1 - larger but handles multiple Sony battery types, handy if you have more than one Sony cam including camcorders) or the native and much smaller NP-FW50 only charger, the BC-TRV.

Both have status indicators showing roughly the state of charge of your pack which can be useful.

Other than that:

• Pre AF OFF
• Airplane Mode ON

That keeps going all day on less than two fully charged packs and often I return with the first pack still in the camera and two spares still charged in my bag.

I have both Sony & non-Sony spare batteries. There is nothing magical about Sony batteries other than 3x price. My non-Sony batteries are Wasabi Power and came with a free charger (2 batteries+charger for around $27). Also I use a dual charger from Amazon and it works great.

I too have airplane mode off. I also have prefocus off and image preview off. I noticed the battery lasts quite a long time when using MF lenses. When I use the kit lens battery drains faster.

I also bought a spare battery and charger, both genuine sony ones. This way I can charge two batteries at once if needed I don't know, I just feel better using genuine sony batteries and charger =/

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I only shoot JPEG =]

Power management needs a better firmware.

Agree with suggestions: use manual lenses; pre-focus off; airplane mode on (this prevents all wifi apps from starting); monitor off; EVF brightness at 0 or no more than +1; go into standby mode after 10 sec. The best conservation technique I have found is per the user guide: turn off the camera when you have a pause in your shooting.

As for battery brands, Sony's are outsourced to China, so really no better than the top China OEM brands. I have had good results with "Pisen" batteries and chargers. I have 2 batteries with me at all times: small to fit in pockets, and far cheaper than buying the add-on battery pack.

Despite the marketing, new batteries degrade very quickly from 99% to 85%, and thereafter degrade slowly down to about 60%, then drop very fast so to be useless. LIon tech being similar for all batteries, one can expect similar results from reputable manufacturers.

In addition to all the great tips here I have to add that the built in USB charging capability of hte Camera is a great feature in my mind that's often overlooked. 1 out of 3 outings I'll grab my camera bag with 3 batteries and run out only to realize I forgot to charge them and have 50% left in one battery to shoot on. Or worse it'll be dead because I left it in the camera -- of which the A7 series have an aweful firmware issue that lets it drain the battery even when completely turned off if left for about a week or so, like it's in standby mode keeping the OS cached for quick startup.

But, to my point, get you a good 10,000 (or more) battery pack and a you can charge your batters in the camera back while you are out! On more than one occasion I've been able to get 2 of my batteries back to full charge while traveling, eating, riding in taxi, walking around, etc....

It's such an overlooked feature!

Toss one of these and a USB cable in your bag and you'll soon find that it'll save the day when a normal wall charger is rendered useless:

tesch said:

My only complaint about the A7 is the battery consumption. Let's start a thread about how to save battery life. Love to hear anyone's ideas.

Click to expand...

Turn display quality from high to standard in menu settings. This was proven to be a big battery drain by the author of the A7 guide. There is really no difference in visual display quality by using standard. If Wi-Fi is used to remotely control the camera or share something, it will hardly use any battery. Pre focus is hard on the battery but I find it to be necessary. Using the EVF vs LCD doesn't make a difference.

Buy an extra battery.

Actually A7 is not that bad with battery life, last month I had a trip to a national park and that was the first time that I need my a7 keeps working for long time. After taking 32GB photos (some of them are taken by time-lapse app, and these time lapse photos are all long exposure and at least 10s) my battery still have more than 20% battery left. I was really surprised by this result.

ronguo said:

Power management needs a better firmware.

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1000% agree, less than 2 weeks with my A7r's power off and my battery is dead, I've done all the power save things I can find.

My NEX-7 can go a month without use and still have a charge.

I just carry 8 spare batteries. I've bought so many bodies that I don't use at the same time, plus a set of Wasabi spares (8 Sony and 2 wasabi total). One night of shooting with my A7S used 6 batteries, with a manual focus lens but mostly VF usage.

I'm giving serious thought to switching from a 2 body Nikon system to a 2 body A7s system and one of the few things from a professional use POV that is a real sticking point is the useless battery life.

Going from a Nikon D3s that can do 2400 shots per charge to a piddling 300-400 would be a major PITA on location - I'd need 6 batteries per camera to get the same number of shots in one day.

sroute said:

Buy spares. Genuine Sony spares. And an external charger (BC-QM1 - larger but handles multiple Sony battery types, handy if you have more than one Sony cam including camcorders) or the native and much smaller NP-FW50 only charger, the BC-TRV.

Both have status indicators showing roughly the state of charge of your pack which can be useful.

Other than that:

• Pre AF OFF
• Airplane Mode ON

That keeps going all day on less than two fully charged packs and often I return with the first pack still in the camera and two spares still charged in my bag.

Click to expand...

+1!

Best regards,
Pedro