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Olympus EM10 Mk ll

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NeilCutler

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Hello, I would appreciate some feedback from fellow users.

I have an em10 mk ll but get less than 150 photos from fully charged to dead. I don't shot video and WiFi is turned off. I assume that the rated 320 is under lab conditions but I was still expecting to get 220 under normal use of focus, exposure adjust and shoot.
How does anyone else's perform?
I have shot 114 on first charge and 143 on second charge. Use was over 3 weeks each charge.
Thanks
 
NeilCutler said:
Hello, I would appreciate some feedback from fellow users.

I have an em10 mk ll but get less than 150 photos from fully charged to dead. I don't shot video and WiFi is turned off. I assume that the rated 320 is under lab conditions but I was still expecting to get 220 under normal use of focus, exposure adjust and shoot.
How does anyone else's perform?
I have shot 114 on first charge and 143 on second charge. Use was over 3 weeks each charge.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Not sure but you may want to try another battery first.

I had the E-M10 and turned off IS and Cont AF to extend battery life.
 
Member said:
NeilCutler said:
Hello, I would appreciate some feedback from fellow users.

I have an em10 mk ll but get less than 150 photos from fully charged to dead. I don't shot video and WiFi is turned off. I assume that the rated 320 is under lab conditions but I was still expecting to get 220 under normal use of focus, exposure adjust and shoot.
How does anyone else's perform?
I have shot 114 on first charge and 143 on second charge. Use was over 3 weeks each charge.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Not sure but you may want to try another battery first.

I had the E-M10 and turned off IS and Cont AF to extend battery life.
Click to expand...
 
Something is wrong, that's for sure. I use my E-M10 in a power saving way (turn on, shoot, turn off) and I don't use built-in flash. That way, I routinely get 500-600 shots on a charge.

My first suspect would be a faulty battery, but if it behaves the same with another battery, then it it's the camera itself that's causing problems.
 
Subsequent battery charging can often increase battery life .. or so I am told .. If new ?? give the battery time to get up to fuller charge ??

:)
 
What's interesting about EVF-based mirrorless cameras is that it's actually not the number of shots that really determines battery life, but the duration it's switched on. Generally, a battery seems to hold for 3-4 hours of continuous use - whether you shoot 100 or 900 images during that time. The prime battery drain is not the shutter, but the display and electronic viewfinder.

So if you get 100 shots during 6 hours, you might well have an above-average battery. If your battery is dead after 1 hour, you might have a battery problem, even if you shoot 400 images.
 
NeilCutler said:
Hello, I would appreciate some feedback from fellow users.

I have an em10 mk ll but get less than 150 photos from fully charged to dead. I don't shot video and WiFi is turned off. I assume that the rated 320 is under lab conditions but I was still expecting to get 220 under normal use of focus, exposure adjust and shoot.
How does anyone else's perform?
I have shot 114 on first charge and 143 on second charge. Use was over 3 weeks each charge.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Number of photos is a terrible way to measure battery life on any "live view" camera (m43, any mirrorless, and P&S). Since the sensor is on all the time (and probably the LCD/EVF), the battery is constantly using power whether you're taking a photo or not. A better gauge is on time, or the time the camera is on. You should be getting about 2.5 hours I think.

Another user on this forum posted his E-M10 test results here. This shows that he took 954 photos one time, and 150 another, and both lasted two and a half hours of on time.

If you left the camera on and took the 110-140 photos over a 2.5 hour period, your battery life was as it should be. Solution: turn of the camera when you're not taking photos.
 
haslo said:
What's interesting about EVF-based mirrorless cameras is that it's actually not the number of shots that really determines battery life, but the duration it's switched on. Generally, a battery seems to hold for 3-4 hours of continuous use - whether you shoot 100 or 900 images during that time. The prime battery drain is not the shutter, but the display and electronic viewfinder.

So if you get 100 shots during 6 hours, you might well have an above-average battery. If your battery is dead after 1 hour, you might have a battery problem, even if you shoot 400 images.
Click to expand...
 
The on time comments are interesting. Does my camera tell me the on time anywhere.

Another thing I noticed was the battery warning level.
It shows full for ages then drops to two thirds. When it does this I only get another twenty shots before it dies.

The camera shop is a highly respected business and they seem to think there may be something wrong so will take it back to them anyway.

Thanks for everyone's input.
 
haslo said:
What's interesting about EVF-based mirrorless cameras is that it's actually not the number of shots that really determines battery life, but the duration it's switched on. Generally, a battery seems to hold for 3-4 hours of continuous use - whether you shoot 100 or 900 images during that time. The prime battery drain is not the shutter, but the display and electronic viewfinder.

So if you get 100 shots during 6 hours, you might well have an above-average battery. If your battery is dead after 1 hour, you might have a battery problem, even if you shoot 400 images.
Click to expand...
 
NeilCutler said:
The on time comments are interesting. Does my camera tell me the on time anywhere.

Another thing I noticed was the battery warning level.
It shows full for ages then drops to two thirds. When it does this I only get another twenty shots before it dies.

The camera shop is a highly respected business and they seem to think there may be something wrong so will take it back to them anyway.

Thanks for everyone's input.
Click to expand...
No power-on time counter per charge AFAIK, but that's actually not a bad idea... Every Android phone has this in the battery life section of their settings, and mirrorless battery life is more akin to a phone or laptop than a more mechanical device. You don't measure you phone's battery life in emails sent or pages loaded, you look at a very rough uptime approximation.
 
NeilCutler said:
The on time comments are interesting. Does my camera tell me the on time anywhere.

Another thing I noticed was the battery warning level.
It shows full for ages then drops to two thirds. When it does this I only get another twenty shots before it dies.

The camera shop is a highly respected business and they seem to think there may be something wrong so will take it back to them anyway.

Thanks for everyone's input.
Click to expand...
It's the battery. Don't take your camera back, there's nothing wrong with it. They'll keep it for three weeks and you won't have a camera for the holidays. They may even lose it or damage it. Just get another battery. It's an easy test. The worse thing that can happen is you get an extra battery.
 
Member said:
NeilCutler said:
The on time comments are interesting. Does my camera tell me the on time anywhere.

Another thing I noticed was the battery warning level.
It shows full for ages then drops to two thirds. When it does this I only get another twenty shots before it dies.

The camera shop is a highly respected business and they seem to think there may be something wrong so will take it back to them anyway.

Thanks for everyone's input.
Click to expand...
It's the battery. Don't take your camera back, there's nothing wrong with it. They'll keep it for three weeks and you won't have a camera for the holidays. They may even lose it or damage it. Just get another battery. It's an easy test. The worse thing that can happen is you get an extra battery.
Click to expand...
 
Impulses said:
Impulses said:
NeilCutler said:
The on time comments are interesting. Does my camera tell me the on time anywhere.

Another thing I noticed was the battery warning level.
It shows full for ages then drops to two thirds. When it does this I only get another twenty shots before it dies.

The camera shop is a highly respected business and they seem to think there may be something wrong so will take it back to them anyway.

Thanks for everyone's input.
Click to expand...
It's the battery. Don't take your camera back, there's nothing wrong with it. They'll keep it for three weeks and you won't have a camera for the holidays. They may even lose it or damage it. Just get another battery. It's an easy test. The worse thing that can happen is you get an extra battery.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
haslo said:
What's interesting about EVF-based mirrorless cameras is that it's actually not the number of shots that really determines battery life, but the duration it's switched on. Generally, a battery seems to hold for 3-4 hours of continuous use - whether you shoot 100 or 900 images during that time. The prime battery drain is not the shutter, but the display and electronic viewfinder.

So if you get 100 shots during 6 hours, you might well have an above-average battery. If your battery is dead after 1 hour, you might have a battery problem, even if you shoot 400 images.
Click to expand...
 
Well, not entirely true anyway. An oversimplification at the very least.

Battery capacity is rated in mah or milliampere-hours. Your typical camera battery may be rated for 1000mah. That means it will supply 1 Amp of current for one hour, 0.5 Amps for 2 hours, 0.25 Amps for 4 hours, etc. This is considered the load on the battery. Since the load is dependent on the design of the various components in the camera and the usage of the components, battery capacity can vary dramatically. That's why there is a standard for measuring battery consumption, created by an organization called CIPA . We all know that right? The standard is based on measurements designed to simulate the usage by an average person. Are they realistic? No. But the standard is designed for comparison of one camera to another. It is not an absolute measurement of battery life in either worst case or best case scenarios.

Taking a shot as defined by CIPA involves certain operations. There may be power zooms, flashes and other operations involved in taking a shot. For example, I know that the Olympus image stabilization is a great power hog.

So unless you ask how one uses the camera typically, it's not clear whether their capacity results are valid or not.

Simply stating your battery should typically last for 2.5 hours is clearly erroneous. The number of shots can be used as an indicator if the usage is of an average type. I would expect or assume such usage from a novice which the OP apparently is.

haslo said:
What's interesting about EVF-based mirrorless cameras is that it's actually not the number of shots that really determines battery life, but the duration it's switched on. Generally, a battery seems to hold for 3-4 hours of continuous use - whether you shoot 100 or 900 images during that time. The prime battery drain is not the shutter, but the display and electronic viewfinder.

So if you get 100 shots during 6 hours, you might well have an above-average battery. If your battery is dead after 1 hour, you might have a battery problem, even if you shoot 400 images.
Click to expand...
 
NeilCutler said:
The on time comments are interesting. Does my camera tell me the on time anywhere.

Another thing I noticed was the battery warning level.
It shows full for ages then drops to two thirds. When it does this I only get another twenty shots before it dies.

The camera shop is a highly respected business and they seem to think there may be something wrong so will take it back to them anyway.

Thanks for everyone's input.
Click to expand...
Panasonic lists an on time (they call it "Recording time") in the manuals for at least all their current m43 cameras, right under the CIPA shots number. Heck, most of the manuals list a couple different lenses results of both the CIPA photos and on time, and EVF vs LCD (if the camera has both).

Exanple: page 28, GX7 Advanced owner manual

This shows the EVF on the GX7 uses more power than the LCD, and the 20mm 1.7 lens uses more power than the kit 14-42mm II. (EVF vs LCD varies from camera to camera.) The CIPA number you always see for this camera (350) is from the LCD + 14-42mm.
This shows the EVF on the GX7 uses more power than the LCD, and the 20mm 1.7 lens uses more power than the kit 14-42mm II. (EVF vs LCD varies from camera to camera.) The CIPA number you always see for this camera (350) is from the LCD + 14-42mm.

I'm not sure if Oly lists their time results. Also, panny lists the movie record times, another time based number to use to gauge battery life. Of course, if you use your camera with different settings and different lenses and different tempertures than the CIPA test conditions, YMMV.
 
Peter Mathews said:
Well, not entirely true anyway. An oversimplification at the very least.

Battery capacity is rated in mah or milliampere-hours. Your typical camera battery may be rated for 1000mah. That means it will supply 1 Amp of current for one hour, 0.5 Amps for 2 hours, 0.25 Amps for 4 hours, etc. This is considered the load on the battery. Since the load is dependent on the design of the various components in the camera and the usage of the components, battery capacity can vary dramatically. That's why there is a standard for measuring battery consumption, created by an organization called CIPA . We all know that right? The standard is based on measurements designed to simulate the usage by an average person. Are they realistic? No. But the standard is designed for comparison of one camera to another. It is not an absolute measurement of battery life in either worst case or best case scenarios.

Taking a shot as defined by CIPA involves certain operations. There may be power zooms, flashes and other operations involved in taking a shot. For example, I know that the Olympus image stabilization is a great power hog.

So unless you ask how one uses the camera typically, it's not clear whether their capacity results are valid or not.

Simply stating your battery should typically last for 2.5 hours is clearly erroneous. The number of shots can be used as an indicator if the usage is of an average type. I would expect or assume such usage from a novice which the OP apparently is.
Click to expand...
Of course on time isn't perfect either, but it's better when comparing your battery life vs expected, than using the number of shots. For mirrorless cameras that is (for dSLRs number of shots is probably better than on time). And as you state, CIPA is designed to compare different cameras' battery lives, not as a number for users to expect to always get.

Mirrorless cameras continuously uses battery juice, whether you take one photo or 12 or 70 in one minute. Check out these test results for two cameras, same setup with only difference is the frequency of photos taken (thanks to Airmel for doing the tests!): E-M1, E-M10. As long as the cameras don't go to into sleep mode, the time on is pretty darn consistent. And if sleep time isn't counted as "on time" (as it's asleep, not really on), then the on time is pretty consistent across the whole test. Unlike the number of photos.

Sure, if a user uses different settings than the above test (or CIPA), then sure the time on will be different. But it will be still far more comparable than number of photos.
 
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