Sleep mode

I've been a little concerned lately about the number of times I turn my camera off and on. I've been worried that I'm either going to break the little switch or wear it out.

I was reading a discussion of the pros and cons of using Sleep Mode, and wondered if I should do the same thing.

The pros are that it saves battery life. The cons are that there is a slight delay in waking the camera up, and you might miss "snap" shots. You wake the camera up by half-pressing the shutter button.

I went to the camera manual and there was no reference to sleep mode.

In the discussion I was reading, someone had mentioned something about Auto Power Off, so I looked for that in the manual. Sure enough, Canon calls it, Auto Power Off. When I first set my camera up, I had set that to Disable, so I set a 2 minute delay before the camera went to sleep.

Yesterday, I was practicing wireless tethering my camera to my tablet, and the wireless connection kept cutting off. I couldn't figure it out; then last night when I was lying in bed, I remembered I had set that Auto Power Off after two minutes.

Duh.

*slaps forehead*

Today, I set that Option back to disable, and the problem went away. The manual says that if you are connected wirelessly, it ignores that 30 second, or 2 minute, or 15 minute Auto Power Off, but I think that only applies to the wireless remote shooting using the Wireless Remote Control device BR-E1.

What about you? Do you use Sleep Mode or Auto Power Off, as Canon calls it?

I think it might be handy if you are photographing an event where you are taking 100 or 200 shots in a relatively short amount of time.

Steve Thomas

Steve,

I do use Auto Power Off. I set it for 15 mins, which is the second longest option on my 7D.

I used to set it to a shorter value, like 2 or 5 minutes, but I found that when sitting in a bird hide waiting for a bird to appear, the camera would often turn off before the bird (s) arrived... 15 mins works best for me.

I use auto power off, set for two minutes. Keep in mind that also puts a limit on how long Live View will stay up.

I remember more than a time or two leaving my old Rebel XT (350D) on in the case between sessions. After it went to sleep the battery drain was so low as to be negligible. I suspect my T8i is even better. I have no worries about the power switch durability. My shutter will probably die first. And I strongly suspect waking up is, if anything, faster than powering up since there's less to do.

I was reading through the manual for the 18-135mm IS USM lens, and was surprised to learn that the lens has a Sleep Mode of its own, irrespective of the camera's Auto Power Off function.

The manual doesn't say what the time delay is, but you wake it up with a half-press of the shutter button.

Interesting.

Steve Thomas

Hi, I have assigned "turn off screen" to a button on my EOS M6 and frequently use that. Not sure if it is better than sleep mode.

dolivaw wrote:

Hi, I have assigned "turn off screen" to a button on my EOS M6 and frequently use that. Not sure if it is better than sleep mode.

Dolivaw,

I'm not really knowledgeable about all these things, but as I understand it, if the camera is not turned off, or put to sleep, the image stabilization functions are still working, which drains your batter faster.

Steve Thomas

stevet1 wrote:

dolivaw wrote:

Hi, I have assigned "turn off screen" to a button on my EOS M6 and frequently use that. Not sure if it is better than sleep mode.

Dolivaw,

I'm not really knowledgeable about all these things, but as I understand it, if the camera is not turned off, or put to sleep, the image stabilization functions are still working, which drains your batter faster.

Steve Thomas

I don't know about IBIS but my IS lens uses no power unless I've half-pushed the button, and then only for a few seconds unless I hold it down. So it's not draining power just sitting in the case with the camera on.

Len Philpot wrote:

I don't know about IBIS but my IS lens uses no power unless I've half-pushed the button, and then only for a few seconds unless I hold it down. So it's not draining power just sitting in the case with the camera on.

Ken,

After researching this for a little while, I've basically learned that there little or no drain of your battery by leaving your camera on.

There was a discussion on DPR Review back in 2014 I think, where some people talked about leaving their camera on for weeks at a time.

One thing I read was a guy who said, "Some cameras rely upon a small amount of charge from a battery to maintain the settings memory."

Another guy said (and the manual also says) that if you leave the camera connected to another device by way of Bluetooth, the camera will continue to search for a Bluetooth connection, even if the camera is Auto Power Off state, which will drain your battery.

That was about the only thing I saw.

Steve Thomas