Z6 Battery Life for a “Photo Walk” scenario.

My Z6 is similar, and my batteries are well over their 10th cycle. Are people taking 700+ individual photos or many similar photos using a high FPS mode? Because I shoot single shot most of the time and get around 360 images per charge.

Davide Rota said:

I see some contrasting experiences in the thread:

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Correct.

If the same question was asked about a DSLR I would anticipate similar contrasting experiences.

CIPA is a specific test method - for use as a comparison between cameras rather than the exact number of shots shooting x way or y way.

Davide Rota said:

some don’t go over the 200 shots in the day (without wifi/bt, menu fiddling or excessive monitor usage) while others report 1k shots in the day so no consensus it seems.

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Correct - when used macro flowers outdoors waiting for a lull in a breeze ideally requires power on. Shooting this way I get around 200-220 shots. I also get no more than 600 doing this with the D850.

Similarly when shooting stars at night at 15-25 second exposures I also get around 200 shots.

I have had indications for "fast sequence" shooting I could get around 750 shots; but usually use my D850 for this.

Davide Rota said:

Could simply be that the camera drains the battery when on and the number of shots is not really a factor so it’s about a day of usage no matter what.

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Generally plus 1.

Davide Rota said:

Anyway I will ask Nikon if this is expected behavior and encourage everybody who is experiencing disappointing performance to do the same.

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I disagree!

If you do not shoot exactly as in CIPA - you get more or fewer shots than in the test.

Spare batteries (which do not have to be Z body specific) cost about 1.5% of a Z7 kit price and about 2.5% of a Z6 body + FTZ price.

Leonard Shepherd said:

Similarly when shooting stars at night at 15-25 second exposures I also get around 200 shots.

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Interesting. Do you switch the battery when depleted or you have an external power source?

gianfranco75 said:

Leonard Shepherd said:

Similarly when shooting stars at night at 15-25 second exposures I also get around 200 shots.

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Interesting. Do you switch the battery when depleted or you have an external power source?

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I would normally take about 100 shots for night sky shooting, with the battery around 45-55 used by the end of the session.

I do have 2 spare D7 batteries though.

One good thing for 2019 is that Nikon / 3rd party suppliers should bring out power grips that all 2 x EN-EL15 batteries to be used

Also wondering whether a power grip could be built for the Z's that allow the D5/s battery to be used

Leonard Shepherd said:

How you use the camera is important.

When waiting for the peak of the action moments I get about 200 shots with the Z7, compared to about 600 with the D850. In theory if I shot as in CIPA I should get a lot more shots from the D850.

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Using the Z 7 yesterday mainly for 25 shot focus stacking sequences the battery showed 78% after 228 shots.

This is from an average for me of around 200 to about 900 a charge by changing the way I use the Z 7.

Leonard Shepherd said:

Leonard Shepherd said:

How you use the camera is important.

When waiting for the peak of the action moments I get about 200 shots with the Z7, compared to about 600 with the D850. In theory if I shot as in CIPA I should get a lot more shots from the D850.

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Using the Z 7 yesterday mainly for 25 shot focus stacking sequences the battery showed 78% after 228 shots.

This is from an average for me of around 200 to about 900 a charge by changing the way I use the Z 7.

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Yep.

If you want your battery to really last a long time, maximize the ratio of captures to time on. On the Z7, focus shift shooting is a great way to do that. I don't use FSS on the Z7 much, but I use focus bracketing on the GFX 50S almost every day. The GFX is not known for its battery life, but I get 2000-3000 exposures per charge when making 50-shot sequences for later stacking.

When I was using an a7RII for this series , which involved manual captures of 20 to 120 shots per pano, I'd regularly get a couple of thousand exposures per charge, and that camera has battery life that is, if anything, worse than the Z7.

Jim

As I reported elsewhere, my Z6 battery life is also on the low end, less than 200 shots during an all day outing, so the battery is gone by noon. I now carry 4 batteries, one in the camera and three in my gear.

In the last few days, I have discovered my battery is completely drained after being on the shelf a few days. This is new, so I've fully charged a battery and turned the camera on to see how long before the battery is gone.

I'll report the results.

Lawrose said:

As I reported elsewhere, my Z6 battery life is also on the low end, less than 200 shots

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Depending on what for and how I am using my Z7 my usage is either around 200 or around 800 shots.

Lawrose said:

In the last few days, I have discovered my battery is completely drained after being on the shelf a few days.

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The battery should drain a little even when switched off in a camera body where it powers the clock and powers a green light at the rear when attaching or detaching a lens.

When a battery drains completely in "a few days" when not in a camera there is a high probability of either a defective battery or a defective charger.

As the capacity of a newly charged battery can be viewed in the setup menu, battery information, it seems straightforward to imply or exclude a charger problem.

Leonard Shepherd said:

When a battery drains completely in "a few days" when not in a camera there is a high probability of either a defective battery or a defective charger.

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I should have been more clear. The battery was in the camera on the shelf, not by itself. My experience with these batteries by themselves is that they last much longer, although they too lose their charge after enough time. Time permitting (which it usually is), I will fully charge all 4 of my batteries before I go out shooting, and the same at the end of the day/shoot, whichever comes first.

I just lost 10% in a bit over an hour with my test so no need to run it overnight. I simply left the camera on and it went down 10% in an hour. I am now experimenting with turning "Send while off" off. Up to now, I have been a big SnapBridge fan, but I'm guessing that wireless connections and powering the TV screens in the camera are just too much to expect these batteries to handle for very long.

When I go out shooting, I have 4 fully charged batteries, and as I wrote in my earlier post, each one lasts under 200 shots, but altogether I can shoot all day and night. So, I guess I didn't notice how significant the battery drain is and I'm now taking steps to shut down any operations that aren't necessary to capturing the image.

I'll report if turning off the sending while off feature makes a difference.

Lawrose said:

I should have been more clear. The battery was in the camera on the shelf, not by itself.

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Thanks for the clarification.

Lawrose said:

I just lost 10% in a bit over an hour with my test so no need to run it overnight. I simply left the camera on and it went down 10% in an hour.

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Naturally the more functions you have running the quicker the battery drains.

Lawrose said:

I am now experimenting with turning "Send while off" off. Up to now, I have been a big SnapBridge fan, but I'm guessing that wireless connections and powering the TV screens in the camera are just too much to expect these batteries to handle for very long.

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If you have time doing comparisons of different discharge rates with different settings and posting the results should be helpful to other Z6 users.

Same for me david.

I shot an event at work recently with the Z7 and stupidly forgot to check my battery was charged the night before. I started the evening with about 50% battery, shot 1200 photos and about 10 minutes of 4k video and had 15% battery left at the end.

So I put a fully charged battery in the camera and I turned off the option to send photos to the Snapbridge app on my iPhone while the camera is off. I left the camera on and after two hours, there was a 5% decrease in the battery supply.

I can live with that. Of course, normally I would not leave the camera on when not using it, so I would now expect even better results while the camera is not being used. I'll check agin in the morning. Naturally, the best results will come when we start with 100% charged batteries, and I suggest having more than one.

My Z6 uses less than 1% battery per hour, turned on, but sleeping, sitting on the shelf. The test used 4% in 5 hours. Leaving the power turned on is easier than flipping the power switch, but it's no faster to wake from sleeping than from power on. Leaving the Z6 turned on, none of my current settings will revert to a possible startup default.

I also tried bursts of 50 shots of raw+jpg pairs, 500 total, and it used around 2% of the battery. Taking images isn't a huge drain at all.

So: The screen or EVF displays seem to use most of the battery life.

See my informal test below, I got about 30% of battery drain per hour if the rear screen is left on.

~~~

From my post in an older Z6 battery life thread:

I read another thread where the poster didn't like the 1-2 second long wakeup time. Yeah, it can be annoying if the shot needs to be taken quickly.

I've been using 20 second sleep time settings to extend battery life. But for walking around for an hour or two, or bringing a spare battery, I wondered about battery usage with the screen staying on.

The sleeping Z6 used a bit less than 1% of battery per hour. I don't turn the switch off while I'm walking around with the camera, I just let it go to sleep mode.

Screen display battery usage

I did an informal test of a 30 minute sleep time, with the back screen on, and the camera sitting on a shelf. These are percents from the Z6 menu, there's likely some inaccuracy.

start: 68% battery.

30 minutes later: 55%. 13% in 30 minutes.

60 minutes later: 40% 15% in 30 minutes

So: about 30% of battery per hour, just for keeping the screen on.

For a couple of hours session, I'll probably set it to 10 minutes or 30 minutes "c3 Power off", not it's "unlimited" setting, just in case I forget to power it off.

Continuous shooting battery test

I use 14 bit raw + jpg Normal* ( 'star'=the higher quality 'normal').

Start: 60% battery. mechanical shutter with the auto front curtain setting. No snapbridge. I just held the shutter button, no refocusing (I use the AF-On Only focusing) during the bursts.

500 raw+jpg images at release mode High. This worked great. The display never dropped below r10 (10 buffer shots remaining). After 100 or 150 at a time, it takes some seconds to finish writing/processing, counting up to the total shots number on the display. But I don't have to wait to shoot more.

The 500 shots used just 2% battery. It's at 58% battery now.

"Number of shots" doesn't have much to do with battery usage. It's the composing and screen display that eats up battery power. I used about 30% of the battery per hour, with the camera just sitting on a shelf with the back screen on. With the screen off (the camera sleeping), it's just 4% in 5 hours.

Lawrose said:

Leonard Shepherd said:

When a battery drains completely in "a few days" when not in a camera there is a high probability of either a defective battery or a defective charger.

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I should have been more clear. The battery was in the camera on the shelf, not by itself. My experience with these batteries by themselves is that they last much longer, although they too lose their charge after enough time. Time permitting (which it usually is), I will fully charge all 4 of my batteries before I go out shooting, and the same at the end of the day/shoot, whichever comes first.

I just lost 10% in a bit over an hour with my test so no need to run it overnight. I simply left the camera on and it went down 10% in an hour. I am now experimenting with turning "Send while off" off. Up to now, I have been a big SnapBridge fan, but I'm guessing that wireless connections and powering the TV screens in the camera are just too much to expect these batteries to handle for very long.

When I go out shooting, I have 4 fully charged batteries, and as I wrote in my earlier post, each one lasts under 200 shots, but altogether I can shoot all day and night. So, I guess I didn't notice how significant the battery drain is and I'm now taking steps to shut down any operations that aren't necessary to capturing the image.

I'll report if turning off the sending while off feature makes a difference.

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So, just in case. A while ago, my Z6 started using the battery up a lot faster than it had been. Originally (genuine Z6) battery when off (all wireless bits too) it would basically not discharge when switched off or even when sitting quietly in standby mode. Its self discharge rate was negligible. As far as I could tell, just like a DSLR. Then quite quickly it began to discharge noticably faster, around 5% per hour. I could leave it overnight and see a 40% drop even when fully off. Way off normal. After some thorough testing, resetting (in case it was firmware not turning WiFi etc off (yes, I had been using it quite a bit leading up to the point it began misbehaving) I could see it was a consistent issue.
At this point I contacted Nikon and on their advice sent it to them to have a look at. They confirmed there was an issue and very nicely, sent a loaner as I was about to go away. My one got a main board replacement on warranty plus a clean. I couldn’t fault Nikon UK’s service. Since it’s been back, it’s worked just fine. No expected battery drain. I’m still using WiFi again and haven’t had any repetition.
So, if you are really, really sure you have a consistent battery drain and really have got all the normal suspect settings off you just might have a real problem. Give Nikon a call and explain.

Richard B99 said:

So, if you are really, really sure you have a consistent battery drain and really have got all the normal suspect settings off you just might have a real problem. Give Nikon a call and explain.

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Wow, and as a loyal Nikon guy I must say somewhat disappointing, although I realize nothing is perfect and it's wonderful that Nikon listened to you and addressed the problem.

I would not hesitate to take my camera to the Nikon facility here in Los Angeles, but after the usual internet research, I learned - and confirmed - that turning off "send while off" stopped the drain. In fact, it stopped it 100%. My battery stays fully charged while turned off, at least overnight, and that's enough for me.

No loss of connectivity either, since SnapBridge has stopped working for auto-transfer, since some upgrade or other on my Apple devices. (It did work wonderfully up until recently.) I use a card reader now and my laptop with the XQD cards when I am on the road. For my SD card models, a card reader and my iOS devices.

All depends how you shoot. I've drained a battery in about 400 shots in a few hours (constantly menu diving, image review and adjusting flash settings), and I've shot well over 1,000 images on a single battery as well that lasted all day.

Did a photo walk this weekend and snapped 929 frames in 2 hours, 48% battery left, EVF 90% of the time, AF-C eye AF and wide, 30 sec on the sleep timer, manually chimping every 4-6 images or so, no menu diving, never turned camera off throughout the shoot.

All single frame mode, 14 bit raw. I don't use the camera's wifi or Bluetooth at the moment.

I turn things off like active d lighting, AF assist light, high iso, diffraction compensation and auto distortion. Kept vignette and long exposure NR on. I shoot raw only.

Lawrose said:

Richard B99 said:

So, if you are really, really sure you have a consistent battery drain and really have got all the normal suspect settings off you just might have a real problem. Give Nikon a call and explain.

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Wow, and as a loyal Nikon guy I must say somewhat disappointing, although I realize nothing is perfect and it's wonderful that Nikon listened to you and addressed the problem.

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Yes, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised with the good service after hearing poor reports. It's disappointing when something goes wrong but good service really makes a difference of your overall perception.

Lawrose said:

I would not hesitate to take my camera to the Nikon facility here in Los Angeles, but after the usual internet research, I learned - and confirmed - that turning off "send while off" stopped the drain. In fact, it stopped it 100%. My battery stays fully charged while turned off, at least overnight, and that's enough for me.

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'Send while off' is a quite dangerous setting when it comes to battery life and it should be a first check if the battery 'suddenly' drains. It was definitely something I check when things went wierd.

Lawrose said:

No loss of connectivity either, since SnapBridge has stopped working for auto-transfer, since some upgrade or other on my Apple devices. (It did work wonderfully up until recently.) I use a card reader now and my laptop with the XQD cards when I am on the road. For my SD card models, a card reader and my iOS devices.

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Curiously, while I'd been using wifi and Snapbridge a good deal, I've never used it for general downloading purposes. It is useful to download and post the odd photo from the field. I just take too many photos so its always been card reader and pc. I used wifi for a lot of remote camera control and review of images taken when doing this (aka chimping) but thats the acceptable side of capturing images when you are 10m from the camera, wirelessly focussing and setting exposures and still trying to capture the moment. I'd really like to do this from further away and I'm likely to splurge on a CamRanger 2 quite soon to give more like a 50+ m range. Plus that uses no camera battery.