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a6000 battery life

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Thomas Gutjahr

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Seems the a6000 has a relatively short battery life (250 shots per charge). Did anyone try to optimize usage and what was done to achieve it? How many shots did you manage to get?

What happens if the prefocus AF is switched off?

Would operating the a6000 only using the EVF help?

Can WiFi be de-activated or switched off?

Anything else to conserve battery life?
 
Thomas Gutjahr said:
Seems the a6000 has a relatively short battery life (250 shots per charge).
Click to expand...
250? that is the lowest I've seen quoted thus far. The official batter life is:

Shooting (still mages)
  • Screen Approx. 180 min. Approx. 360 images
  • Viewfinder Approx. 155 min. Approx. 310 images
Typical movie shooting
  • Screen Approx. 60 min.
  • Viewfinder Approx. 60 min.
Continuous movie shooting
  • Screen Approx. 90 min.
  • Viewfinder Approx. 90 min.
Viewing (still images)
  • Approx. 275 min. Approx. 5500 images
Member said:
Did anyone try to optimize usage and what was done to achieve it? How many shots did you manage to get?

What happens if the prefocus AF is switched off?
Click to expand...
Member said:
Would operating the a6000 only using the EVF help?
Click to expand...
evf has more dots, more dots means more drain
Member said:
Can WiFi be de-activated or switched off?
Click to expand...
yes, there is an airplane mode
Member said:
Anything else to conserve battery life?
Click to expand...
 
I would just buy a second or even third battery and not worry about it... 3rd party will be out soon enough (if not already) by some very good brands... for an extra $20-30 - its money well spent.
 
Use the EVF more, and turn down LCD Brightness.. These are two things that helped quited a bit..

and finally yes get 3rd party batteries..
 
Remember that battery life estimates are usually based on a CIPA rating, which performs a very specific testing parameter, usually involving shots taken at a specific interval, image review used every so often, and with some shots involving flash, cycling focus, etc. It's considered a 'harsh' test which tries to present a worse-than-average use battery life estimate. It's rarely an exact number. Much depends on precisely HOW you shoot - what settings you have, how often you are firing in succession, whether you leave the camera on or turn off in between, what focus modes, what viewing source (EVF or LCD), and so on. Typically, on my every-day vacation shooting and casual mixed shooting, I do a bit better than the CIPA rating - my NEX-5N was rated over 400 shots, but I could usually pull 550 or so out of a battery. On the other hand, if I was out shooting birds or wildlife, where I'm firing quickly and often, I would exceed 900 shots.

With my A6000, I shot through exactly two full batteries on Saturday - both drained down to the point that the battery warning had lit up red, and the camera actually shut down. I came home with 1,590 shots...so I averaged 770 shots per battery charge. That was heavy use - it was not quite as long as I've been able to push the NEX-5N, however, remember that I essentially could not use AF-C on the NEX-5N, and never did. With the A6000, I was in AF-C mode for a vast majority of the day, testing the camera's tracking abilities...so the focus system was getting a workout.

I turn off my image review function, I turn airplane mode on, I turned off pre-focus, and I was switched to EVF only, rather than the auto mode switching between LCD and EVF. I had sleep mode set to 1 minute. I generally left the camera on the entire time, rather than powering down.

Hope that helps!
 
I can confirm the dreadful batterie life of the a6000. I have finally not tested to take pictures until the camera switch off due to the empty batterie but I'm sure that my a6000 cannot reach the specifications of SONY.

I'll would like to provide my experience of one day. We made a city tour. The weather was sunny and I took a lot of photos (exactly 147). For that I switched the screen to "Sunny Weather" because the monitor was to dark. Most of the photos were taken in the "Superior Auto" mode, some in "Pana Mode" an a few in "Aperture Mode". The sleep mode is set to 1 Minute. The Auto Review is 5 sec. WiFi is in airplane mode.

After taken 147 photos the batterie charge indicator shows 18%. That's life ;-)

I know, there a several settings to optimise the batterie life. But I don't by a camera because of the the terrific features and later I deactivate this features to have better batterie life.

To be honest my Lumix GX1 has a much better battery life. Two days with one battery are more or less default. For the SONY it is inverse: two batteries per day.

On the other side: the quality of the pictures, the AF, the overall speed is really incredible. So, at the end of the day the batterie life is not annoying me because of the high quality of the pictures and the features of the a6000.

Amazon offers several packages were two batteries and a charger is included. I bought one of them for appox. 25€.

I have to recharge my iPhone and my iPad every day. Now a third device is recharging the batteries over the night. So what ;-)
 
Don't forget that there are 2 types of FW50 batteries:

- The "made in Japan" (classic)

- The"Made in China" (with a Sony hologram, and minor weight)

The second version is very lightweight, but has 40% (aprox, IMHO) of the classic version.

--
https://www.flickr.com/photos/helen777/sets/
 
Last edited:
Helena777 said:
Don't forget that there are 2 types of FW50 batteries:

- The "made in Japan" (classic)

- The"Made in China" (with a Sony hologram, and minor weight)

The second version is very lightweight, but has 40% (aprox, IMHO) of the classic version.
Click to expand...
 
I remember that my other EVF cams all got less than a stellar number of shots from the Sony batteries. I found then, and still find with the a6000, that keeping the camera on when not shooting, sucks more battery than taking photos. So I have it set to turn off in 2 minutes and that seems to work well.

I've done two large test shoots, so far. And got like 350+ shots first time with like 44% battery left. And 850+ shots last time with 33% left. Granted I shot a ton of bursts that time. Some as long as 23 frames :-)

I bought 2 cheap 3rd party batteries (with charger) just in case. It was worth the $30 just for the charger (charges in like a third of the in-cam charging time) with an included car adapter, the batteries were a bonus :-)

Steve
 
Managed to get an original Sony battery in an ACC-USFW1 kit with battery, bag and 8 GB (yeah!) SDHC card for a good price.

Don't know when this was introduced, but mine was produced end of 2013. The battery was totally empty but I had no problems recharging it.

The price was about the price of a compatible battery price. Which made it a excellent deal ;)

The bag is nicer than expected. Fits the A6000 with 2 kit lenses nicely. A6000 with 16-50, a 1.4/50 and 2.8/135 fit as well.
 
Thomas Gutjahr said:
Seems the a6000 has a relatively short battery life (250 shots per charge). Did anyone try to optimize usage and what was done to achieve it? How many shots did you manage to get?

What happens if the prefocus AF is switched off?

Would operating the a6000 only using the EVF help?

Can WiFi be de-activated or switched off?

Anything else to conserve battery life?
Click to expand...
700 shots, with any battery, is feasible.

The biggest battery drain (by far) is the LCD/EVF (EVF being worse).

Turn off the auto-review (no chimping) and set the time-out to be less than 1 minute.

Make sure the EVF does not trigger the camera to go back on when dangling against your chest.

Then, the number of shots merely depends on how long it takes you to compose each shot. You can count on roughly two hours of 'display time', and can derate from there. AF, shutter, even processing (RAW/JPG) have little impact. To get 600 shots in 180 minutes, you should take no more time than 90/600 = 18 seconds per shot, on average.

AF and WiFi do not impact this as much as most fear. WiFi on a cell phone drains batteries faster :-)

But, consider the time you may take to look at images, chimping or not, it is easy to see that you may spend 20 or 30 minutes just looking at images, or in preparation for shots.

As you get more comfortable with the camera, your number of shots will go up.

Again, auto-review set to OFF and time-out to be short are the biggest savers.

Airplane mode does not have a big impact.
 
These low number of shots per battery cycle surprise me, as mine lasts for a really long while.
Last night I went to a jazz concert with the family, and then to the park, and took 347 shots. The battery went down from 100% to 66%.
Prefocus off, image review off, airplane mode on when not using any wireless features. I always shut down my camera when not taking shots too.

I did notice that when using legacy lenses the battery drains even slower, presumably as it doesn't use any power for power zooming and such, and that indeed, shooting video in xavc-s really drains a lot of power.
I don't even carry a spare battery, as I don't really need one for the amounts of pictures I usually take when going out.
 
Really, ever since I got my first digicam many moon ago, first thing I realized was that I needed to have more than one battery. I have three for my a6000: the original and two aftermarkets. When I travel I use the same charger and cord for my phone as my camera in order to top the battery off. You simply can't avoid it.
 
I have been shooting heavily on the street in Paris for the last 3 weeks for Men's Fashion Week and Women's Fashion Week and I typically get over 1000 images per battery but I shoot in what I consider a unique way. I have got up to 1300 images per battery and over 1000 is very consistent. First thing I might consider is I always shoot in bursts and have my camera set on the highest frame rate and I often take 5-10 frames of the same shot. I also use 64GB fast cards so the buffer is empty very fast. I have 1/2 of the eyepiece sensor covered with the Lightdims LED sticker to keep the eyepiece from turning on. I shoot probably 85-90 + percent of my images using the screen set to max Sunny day and not using the eyepiece and I have the image review turned off. I always turn the camera off in-between taking images and have the pre auto focus turned off as well. Airplane mode is on too. I shoot with two cameras so I don't have to switch lenses plus I carry two additional batteries,
 
I found that going into the menu eats up battery life even if I'm in there for a couple of minutes.
 
mgillespie said:
As for a6000 batteey performance, mine was OK standard, but so much better with preAF turned off. Thats the biggest battery killer i found.
Click to expand...
Can you guide me on how to turn off the pre AF? Which specific config is it on the menu settings. Thanks in advanced!
 
zerosicks said:
mgillespie said:
As for a6000 batteey performance, mine was OK standard, but so much better with preAF turned off. Thats the biggest battery killer i found.
Click to expand...
Can you guide me on how to turn off the pre AF? Which specific config is it on the menu settings. Thanks in advanced!
Click to expand...
  • Press the Menu Key
  • Navigate to the Settings Main Menu (one with the Gear icon)
  • Navigate to the 3rd page under that
  • Pre-AF should be the very first option on that page. Set it to OFF


Here is a photo of that screen on the camera, if it helps :)



fe7ae4ab75e74ce5a68cfe4f714caff4.jpg



--
Flickr PhotoStream - https://www.flickr.com/photos/tuxdude
 
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