Rapidly draining battery on new X-S10?

[Joe Hotshoe]

First post here. After years with a Canon DSLR I decided to try the Fujifilm system and bought an X-S10 with the 16-80 lens a couple of days ago. I brought it home and familiarized myself with the menus and settings for about an hour after the battery had charged. I changed some settings but nothing major. Yesterday morning I took the camera with me on a quick walk and took about a dozen photos, all jpegs, trying out the film simulations and the aperture and priority modes when I noticed the battery indicator was red and on one bar.

I charged the battery again this morning and went out intending to take a lot more photos, again all jpegs. When I pressed the review button after taking a handful of photos there was a little square "processing" animation on the LCD and the indicator light started glowing red and orange. This went on for at least a minute or two before I decided to turn the camera off. Even though the camera was off the indicator light stayed on (I think orange). I wasn't sure what to do so I removed the battery and the light went off.

I put the battery back in, took a couple more photos and then had lunch outside (camera in a case in the shade and the temperature was about 60F). I forgot to turn the camera off but I know it shuts off automatically after a few minutes. When I grabbed the camera after about 20-30 minutes body was very warm to the touch, the indicator light was red, and the battery was nearly out of juice, and the camera would not let me take a photo (I didn't notice an overheating warning and I don't even know if the X-S10 has one).

After coming home and charging the camera for an hour I went to preview the photos but there were no photos on the card. Nothing from yesterday and nothing from today. I did not delete them.

Has anyone else had this problem or heard of anyone having this problem? Is there anything I could have done to cause the battery to drain so fast? As I said, I didn't make any significant changes to the settings (and didn't turn on any of the more power intensive settings like PRE-AF) so I'm thinking there's something wrong with either the battery or the camera. Other than take it back are there other things I can try to see what is going wrong? I reformatted the card and reset the camera back to factory settings.

Any suggestions are appreciated!

 

[Labe]

Sounds like you have a faulty camera . I have the xs10 with 15-45 and the battery life is good .

The one thing I do do though is turn the camera off between shots .

Is your camera trying to connect to your phone app via Bluetooth / WiFi by any chance as that’s the only other thing I can think of.
I don’t have it turned on on my xs10 but I do on my xt200 and each time you switch the camera off it connects to my phone and downloads the images I’ve just taken but the light flickers green not red.

The other thing to try before returning it is a different SD card .

 

[PLShooter]

No, never had that problem with mine. I can go all day on 1 battery, usually turning off camera between shots, with a couple of short videos thrown in. One thing I would never do is charge a battery in the camera. For one, it takes a looooong time compared to using a charger.

Buy a Nitecore FX1 charger and a quality spare battery. The only way to go. ;-)

 

[Joe Hotshoe]

Thanks! I haven't set up the connection to the phone app yet. I'm going to try a couple of other tests today, including using a different SD card (thanks for that suggestion).

 

[Joe Hotshoe]

Good to know. It definitely sounds like something is wrong with either the camera or battery.

You aren't kidding about the in camera charging being slow! I would have gotten a charger in the store but B&H was out of stock and back ordered for 2-4 weeks.

 

[Homo erectus]

No, never had that problem with mine. I can go all day on 1 battery, usually turning off camera between shots, with a couple of short videos thrown in. One thing I would never do is charge a battery in the camera. For one, it takes a looooong time compared to using a charger.

Buy a Nitecore FX1 charger and a quality spare battery. The only way to go. ;-)

USB charging is a lot more complicated than it seems like it should be. Not all USB ports deliver the same amount of current. Some are built to charge attached devices very quickly, others are not.

My computer has a USB-C port on the motherboard and when I connect my X-T3 to it the battery charges from empty to full in a few hours which is about the same as using the charger that plugs into a wall socket.

I don't bother to use the wall charger any more as it's a pain to remove the battery grip to get to the battery in the camera body.

Between the super fast battery draw down, the locking up, and the not saving images to the sd card it seems that the OPs camera is almost certainly faulty. I'd just exchange it for a different one.

A single battery should last for about 3 or 4 hours of active shooting. That can be three or four hours of continuous shooting or three or four hours of shooting spread out over a few weeks.

Hope that helps.