Battery Life with the Olympus 100-400

First of all, I am pretty happy with the results I'm getting from the Olympus 100-400, even wide open at 400mm as shown below. Having said that, battery life seems to drain faster when using this lens. I would guess that it's the IS system but the 12-100 has IS and drain from it seems normal. Has anybody else noticed this? Perhaps the IS uses more power due to larger, heavier glass in the lens? Could the AF motors use more power?

dgrogers said:

First of all, I am pretty happy with the results I'm getting from the Olympus 100-400, even wide open at 400mm as shown below. Having said that, battery life seems to drain faster when using this lens. I would guess that it's the IS system but the 12-100 has IS and drain from it seems normal. Has anybody else noticed this? Perhaps the IS uses more power due to larger, heavier glass in the lens? Could the AF motors use more power?

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It could be the size of the focus group and/or the focus motor has a higher current demand.

I will verify that used side-by-side on two identical cameras the 300 Pro uses more current than the 40-150 Pro, draining the battery faster. My presumption is dual-IS is the big difference. Focus demand could be different too, but they're also different designs: the 300 has a single focus group and the zoom focus is split between two groups.

Have the 12-100 but never used it in a two-camera shoot so don't have a real-time comparison with another lens.

Cheers,

Rick

Another thought is lens IS is always be on unless you turn it off by the switch on the lens. I did not see an option to only have lens IS active when the shutter is half pressed (which is how I have IBIS set). This is likely causing a large drain. Does the 300mm act this way?

The 300 mimics the 12-100 in being all or nothing and other than the lens on/off switch. In addition to IS auto and modes 1-3, the other setting I can think of is the half-press activation, which I keep on.

The manual doesn't set the 100-400 apart from the other two lenses, but I understand while it acts in concert with IBIS it's not full dual-IS. Could it be powered up all the time?

Cheers,

Rick

Skeeterbytes said:

The 300 mimics the 12-100 in being all or nothing and other than the lens on/off switch. In addition to IS auto and modes 1-3, the other setting I can think of is the half-press activation, which I keep on.

The manual doesn't set the 100-400 apart from the other two lenses, but I understand while it acts in concert with IBIS it's not full dual-IS. Could it be powered up all the time?

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I would doubt that. In the lenses I am most familiar with, lens IS is only active on the half press, other wise it is inactive - even if the camera is turned on. There is no reason for it to stabilize if the system is not trying to focus. Consider - if you are on a walk and choose to leave the camera on - if it were active the whole time - it is trying to stabilize all kinds of large movements. I seriously doubt any of the lenses with IS or systems with sync IS would activate any of it - except on half press. IBIS is the same way.

WileEC_ID said:

Skeeterbytes said:

The 300 mimics the 12-100 in being all or nothing and other than the lens on/off switch. In addition to IS auto and modes 1-3, the other setting I can think of is the half-press activation, which I keep on.

The manual doesn't set the 100-400 apart from the other two lenses, but I understand while it acts in concert with IBIS it's not full dual-IS. Could it be powered up all the time?

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I would doubt that. In the lenses I am most familiar with, lens IS is only active on the half press, other wise it is inactive - even if the camera is turned on. There is no reason for it to stabilize if the system is not trying to focus. Consider - if you are on a walk and choose to leave the camera on - if it were active the whole time - it is trying to stabilize all kinds of large movements. I seriously doubt any of the lenses with IS or systems with sync IS would activate any of it - except on half press. IBIS is the same way.

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I'll have to run more tests tomorrow but I did see a noticeable difference in the viewfinder when the IS switch was turned on vs turned off without touching the shutter button. It is easier to focus on a spot when is is engaged before attempting focus on a long lens.

IBIS is only active in half press if you have your camera set up that way (which is default). You can set it to always on if you dig through the menus.

This is a fairly heavy lens re-adapted from the Sigma 100-400mm full frame. The glass inside is heavy and the camera has to feed the focus motors.

The stabiliser as you have noticed only kicks in at half press so it is already optimised from that point of view however the lens is just big and drains more power than a lighter lens

You could try to disable SyncIS and retest. I shot 304 pictures with my 100-400 on EM-10 mk2 and still had battery to upload them via cable, then shot some more next day with 17 f1.8 (maybe just 10) until the low battery warning appeared, so battery usage was excellent.

I typically only use RAW mode single shots, LCD only unless it's sunny or I need to hold lens very still, let camera go to sleep before walking with that lens or turn it off - I can definitely feel it moving the IBIS if I don't turn it off so that might be a battery drain.

It may also help battery to use the focus limiter on it to prevent motor hunting - I have to use it for small birds in tree canopies because it would hunt / be too slow otherwise to rack the zoom.

Most important variables on my list would be the outside temperatures (but now it's sunny more than 10 Celsius / 50 F Springtime), shooting style, refresh high rate option active or off, S-OVF simulation and how much sleep time the camera gets. My camera sometimes does get warm and eats battery.

I'll get the E-M1 III next week and maybe if it's sunny take the 100-400 for a spin again!

It is not excellent. The camera takes normally 420 shots with a full battery the test involves zooming turning the camera on and off etc. So 300 something is a drop of 25% which is definitely to do with the weight of the lens elements

Sync IS still only works when you half press and putting the limiter again only works when you half press and if the camera does not focus it may keep scanning depending on your settings

I get 400+ shots in burst with the Leica 200mm 2.8 that is a heavy lens and has IS always on so I guess this lens is just power hungry

Electronic shutter and keeping evf to 60 fps may help

I apologize for pressing wrong reply button earlier ) was a bit too excited to write about the experience.

Thank you for the eshutter, it's gold advice. Evf could get me further - need to try it. First hand impressions with handheld macro were that EVF drains faster but maybe it was lens focusing longer periods instead... need to try the other primes.

I used the lower end E-M10 ii with CIPA rating 320 due to smaller BLS-5 battery. Unfortunately can only be sure on the 304 with mechanical shutter during first day, the second day I recharged without noting number of shots.

Were it true to have been total around 310 on mechanical shutter, it would mean I got quite lucky at 10/320 so wasted 3%.

Yes that’s good

as i said the lens is idle until you press half shutter so turning IS off is not the key
enjoy your lens!

Interceptor121 said:

The stabiliser as you have noticed only kicks in at half press so it is already optimised from that point of view

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That's not what I'm noticing at all. When I hold my E-M1.3 with the M.Zuiko 100-400 attached to my eye at 400mm with IS switched off on the lens, the viewfinder is jerky as you would expect with this kind of reach. When I flip the IS switch on the lens to the on position, the viewfinder becomes very noticeably smoother. It gets better yet when I half press the shutter button.

The other user has a camera without sync IS

I support Sync IS sucks more battery but this lens does not fully support it?

Interceptor121 said:

The other user has a camera without sync IS

I support Sync IS sucks more battery but this lens does not fully support it?

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It does not support sync IS. Horizontal and vertical motion is taken care of by the lens, rotational motion is taken care of by IBIS.

You are seeing some effect at half press it means the camera is doing something as the lens itself kicks at half press

as far as I recall it supports roll stabilisation on the sensor so that will use battery power

on cameras where this is unsupported it will not affect battery life as nothing happens before half press

personally I don’t like the stabilisation at half press only it doesn’t help farming when you are handheld