Z9 Battery life

My Z9 arrives in the next few days, switching from sony bodies (a7iv / A7RV ) for work use.

I generally shoot long days with dancers / aerialists, and they are group days with lots of subjects - I would shoot up to 4000 shots on a busy day, usually autotransferring to an ipad, so using wifi - maybe 9am through to 6pm with little break

With sony, 4 batteries (2 in a grip replaced during the day) would be plenty. Is it likely that 2 EN-EL18D will do a similar job.

I know there are variables, I am not asking anyone to be definitive - I'll have to try things out for myself to be sure, and have redundancy - but many here will certainly have a much better idea than me, so I am interested in people's experience and whether in general you would expect to be able to shoot all day on a couple of batteries?

You might get into a second battery. It's good to have an extra one just in case. Seriously. It's lasts longer than any camera battery I've ever owned.

MattPointZero said:

My Z9 arrives in the next few days, switching from sony bodies (a7iv / A7RV ) for work use.

I generally shoot long days with dancers / aerialists, and they are group days with lots of subjects - I would shoot up to 4000 shots on a busy day, usually autotransferring to an ipad, so using wifi - maybe 9am through to 6pm with little break

With sony, 4 batteries (2 in a grip replaced during the day) would be plenty. Is it likely that 2 EN-EL18D will do a similar job.

I know there are variables, I am not asking anyone to be definitive - I'll have to try things out for myself to be sure, and have redundancy - but many here will certainly have a much better idea than me, so I am interested in people's experience and whether in general you would expect to be able to shoot all day on a couple of batteries?

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I cover day long events and might shoot up to 14 hours straight and have depleted two batteries in a day, and do not use wifi or bluetooth on my Z9. That's still better them my Z6II that I burn through 7 or 8 batteries.

The good thing though is that I can run the charger or run the Z9 off of my MacBook Pro power supply or a power pack.

Jerry_P_M said:

The good thing though is that I can run the charger or run the Z9 off of my MacBook Pro power supply or a power pack.

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Or an even more compact solution is to get a PD power brick and put the depleted battery on charge (again using the supplied charger) while using the second battery. It may not totally recharge but whatever charge it takes will take you to the end of the day after two full batteries.
I haven’t gone through a full battery in a day, but I do not use the camera as much as you are projecting.

I have shot a whole Indy 500 twice with Z9 and one fully charged battery. This means arriving at the track at 5:00am and shooting a lot from about 5:30am to after the last press conference at around 7:00pm. I don't know how many shots I shoot during that time...probably not 4,000 on any one body. I do have extra charged batteries just in case but have not had to use one on a Z9. Also I don't use WIFI. I do think that battery life is about more than just clicks. The WIFI and anything else the camera is doing while turned on will deplete the battery on Z cameras. On time is a factor.

Even though the battery life is very good I would never be without an extra charged battery but I can't imagine going through two fully charged batteries in one day of almost any kind of shooting.

Have yet to go through a full battery on my z9. There are others that have supposedly done 11,000 shots or more on a EN-EL18d. Burst mode and not pixel peeping . One of the best explanation of battery life is provided by Steve Perry


Carry a spare battery is good advice, already given, Charge 2nd battery using a battery charger, also given. Round it out with Steve’s advice and no problem with 4000 shots. ]]

Have fun.

six34sigma said:

Have yet to go through a full battery on my z9. There are others that have supposedly done 11,000 shots or more on a EN-EL18d. Burst mode and not pixel peeping . One of the best explanation of battery life is provided by Steve Perry

https://backcountrygallery.com/mirrorless-shooters-critical-advice-about-battery-life

Carry a spare battery is good advice, already given, Charge 2nd battery using a battery charger, also given. Round it out with Steve’s advice and no problem with 4000 shots. ]]

Have fun.

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Good video.

His listed run times seem spot on as to what I am seeing with my Z9

I was surprised though that in his power conserving tips that he didn't mention wifi. Wifi and bluetooth are the first things I turn off.

He did mention airplane mode though, and that addresses the wireless stuff.

MattPointZero said:

My Z9 arrives in the next few days, switching from sony bodies (a7iv / A7RV ) for work use.

I generally shoot long days with dancers / aerialists, and they are group days with lots of subjects - I would shoot up to 4000 shots on a busy day, usually autotransferring to an ipad, so using wifi - maybe 9am through to 6pm with little break

With sony, 4 batteries (2 in a grip replaced during the day) would be plenty. Is it likely that 2 EN-EL18D will do a similar job.

I know there are variables, I am not asking anyone to be definitive - I'll have to try things out for myself to be sure, and have redundancy - but many here will certainly have a much better idea than me, so I am interested in people's experience and whether in general you would expect to be able to shoot all day on a couple of batteries?

Click to expand...

I shot 3 days of the Avalon Airshow earlier this year, took >4000 photos, all on a single battery.

MattPointZero said:

My Z9 arrives in the next few days, switching from sony bodies (a7iv / A7RV ) for work use.

I generally shoot long days with dancers / aerialists, and they are group days with lots of subjects - I would shoot up to 4000 shots on a busy day, usually autotransferring to an ipad, so using wifi - maybe 9am through to 6pm with little break

With sony, 4 batteries (2 in a grip replaced during the day) would be plenty. Is it likely that 2 EN-EL18D will do a similar job.

Click to expand...

It should work for you with 2 EN-EL18D

Member said:

I know there are variables, I am not asking anyone to be definitive - I'll have to try things out for myself to be sure, and have redundancy - but many here will certainly have a much better idea than me, so I am interested in people's experience and whether in general you would expect to be able to shoot all day on a couple of batteries?

Click to expand...

I happened to have EN-EL18A and EN-EL18C, so I have 3 in total.

The battery life has been much better than expected, I shot an airshow with almost 3500 shots and still had two bars left.

MattPointZero said:

My Z9 arrives in the next few days, switching from sony bodies (a7iv / A7RV ) for work use.

I generally shoot long days with dancers / aerialists, and they are group days with lots of subjects - I would shoot up to 4000 shots on a busy day, usually autotransferring to an ipad, so using wifi - maybe 9am through to 6pm with little break

With sony, 4 batteries (2 in a grip replaced during the day) would be plenty. Is it likely that 2 EN-EL18D will do a similar job.

I know there are variables, I am not asking anyone to be definitive - I'll have to try things out for myself to be sure, and have redundancy - but many here will certainly have a much better idea than me, so I am interested in people's experience and whether in general you would expect to be able to shoot all day on a couple of batteries?

Click to expand...

I use my Z9 for sport and local events and airshows,, normally less than what you would do in a day unless it's marathon or surfing, for sports with a lot of burst shooting, one battery can easily do way more than 4000 shots, but for slowly events, like street fair and carnival..... i always need two batteries to get thru a full day event. I almost never use LCD, always EVF, also turn off the auto switch between LCD and EVF, so always in EVF mode, also hardly review pictures on the spot. I have Auto review turned off , for Mirrorless, what I see and what I will get i already saw it before I pressed the button, so really no need to review it, plus, if it's actually OOF, it's too late to re-create the shot anyway, it's gone, just move on, so I never bother to review anything on the spot. but i still ALWAYS have two fully charged battery when I head out, I have charger at home, in my office, in my cars, i actually keep a few spare batteries fully charged in the car and in the office all the time too juse in case I forgot to grab the battery from the charger when I rush out the door.

Thanks for all the detailed responses, I really appreciate it.

I'll certainly have 2, and I have the advantage of being indoors, so one can go on charge while depleted, and from the experiences here, that is likely to keep me going.

I am sure before long I will get a third to cover failure, however unlikely - it's just quite a considerable layout making the change over from Sony, so I am trying to be as efficient as possible in the initial spend. The whole world is crazy expensive at the moment, so it seems prudent - although I did manage to get a Z9 at essentially Z8 price, so it's working pretty well. Just by the time you add up new CFEB cards etc, it's still a costly time, and I am yet to have the conversation with my wife about how how I absolutely have to have the 85mm 1.2 for some mostly made up reason

Actually I just got notification from the courier that the camera should land with me today, so with luck I will get a chance to start testing this all out for myself.

Thanks for all your input,

I'm facing the same problem, did you get any solution ?

John Cote said:

Even though the battery life is very good I would never be without an extra charged battery but I can't imagine going through two fully charged batteries in one day of almost any kind of shooting.

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Indeed, with regular photo shooting I have yet to exhaust a single z9 battery in one day… and this with a mixture of long bursts, bits of video and short bursts… (wild life and sporting events).

I typically don’t use the back display panel unless on a tripod, and use the EVF for capture, menu management and playback, not least because I am long sighted so I adjust the Z9 diopter control for the EVF.

The one area where I have exhausted a battery and would get through two in a day is AutoCapture. Here a battery lasts around 4 hours give or take, and is the one function where I feel parts of the z9 body getting modestly warm. Essentially the camera is on and is image processing constantly even if images are not being triggered and captured and the displays have turned off. I think the capture and its associated DSP is actually one of the significant power draws.

BTW by design blue tooth is going to be absolutely minimal power draw. However wifi and the GPS receiver are going to use more power. I leave wifi off in the field, Bluetooth typically stays on, and I leave the GPS receiver on. When back in the office I either use the Z9 Ethernet port or remove the memory card to extract the images.

--
Simon
https://www.flickr.com/people/suffolkimages/

An airshow, for about 4 hours, baking hot, ~5000 frames and the battery was at 50%.

However, if you're also planning to do WiFi offload the whole day that may entirely change the battery usage, I have no idea how much power that takes. I've never been able to get any transfer solution to work reliably that I gave up on that feature.

Roland Wooster said:

An airshow, for about 4 hours, baking hot, ~5000 frames and the battery was at 50%.

However, if you're also planning to do WiFi offload the whole day that may entirely change the battery usage, I have no idea how much power that takes. I've never been able to get any transfer solution to work reliably that I gave up on that feature.

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My wife uses the wifi on her Z6 and yes, it does consume a lot of power.

For me, wifi and bluetooth get turned off as soon as I unbox and power up my camera for the first time.

batleys said:

John Cote said:

Even though the battery life is very good I would never be without an extra charged battery but I can't imagine going through two fully charged batteries in one day of almost any kind of shooting.

Click to expand...

Indeed, with regular photo shooting I have yet to exhaust a single z9 battery in one day… and this with a mixture of long bursts, bits of video and short bursts… (wild life and sporting events).

I typically don’t use the back display panel unless on a tripod, and use the EVF for capture, menu management and playback, not least because I am long sighted so I adjust the Z9 diopter control for the EVF.

The one area where I have exhausted a battery and would get through two in a day is AutoCapture. Here a battery lasts around 4 hours give or take, and is the one function where I feel parts of the z9 body getting modestly warm. Essentially the camera is on and is image processing constantly even if images are not being triggered and captured and the displays have turned off. I think the capture and its associated DSP is actually one of the significant power draws.

BTW by design blue tooth is going to be absolutely minimal power draw. However wifi and the GPS receiver are going to use more power. I leave wifi off in the field, Bluetooth typically stays on, and I leave the GPS receiver on. When back in the office I either use the Z9 Ethernet port or remove the memory card to extract the images.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info - I have the camera now, so I guess I need to do some testing - with gps and wifi off, if I can maintain a bluetooth link maybe the battery life will be reasonable?

MattPointZero said:

Thanks for the info - I have the camera now, so I guess I need to do some testing - with gps and wifi off, if I can maintain a bluetooth link maybe the battery life will be reasonable?

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Whether the battery life is reasonable or not I guess only you can judge. However the Bluetooth enablement is going to be minuscule - and I suspect in real world will hardly be noticeable if at all.