We’ve all heard or read those tips for getting the most out of your smartphone’s limited battery life, but what about us photographers? How do you make sure you’re squeezing every last shot out of your DSLR or mirrorless camera? This video will tell you.
These 7 tips were put together by the folks over at SLR Lounge, and they might sound familiar. That’s because some of them are very similar to what you might do on your smartphone. Whether it’s turning off wireless connection settings, or turning down your LCD’s brightness, chances are good you’ve done at least a few of these with your phone.
That’s not to say that all 7 cross over. So check out the video up top and jot down the short list below for the next time you find yourself down to the last few photos on a busy shooting day:
- Turn off all of your camera’s wireless connections
- Turn off stabilization
- Turn off automatic sensor cleaning
- Turn off image review (and stop chimping)
- Turn down your LCD screen’s brightness
- Turn off your camera between shots
- Replace batteries that are dying faster than they should be
Sourse: petapixel.com
Petapixel are scraping the bottom of the barrel with this article. The best idea is not to use the camera at all and keep the battery in its original packet. Petapixel seems to be very short on content recently.
I keep hearing people talk about ‘Chimping’ and that we shouldn’t be doing it … WHY … having a preview image on the back of a camera to check exposure ( in some difficult lighting scenarios ) and focus is one of the benefits of digital cameras. Think back to the ‘ Good ole’ days ‘ of shooting film, no such luxury then .. how many shots we’re binned because of small errors. A lot of time, effort, and expense goes into my photography, so I don’t take any chances. Chimp Away I say. Good tips on camera batteries BTW.
The bottom line is that if you are likely to be so stretched for battery power that any of these ‘tips’ will make a difference, carry more batteries. This is almost akin to trying to make sure your film camera was loaded on the very first sprocket hole, just so you might get an extra frame or two! No sensible photographer ever took the chance of a mis-load and always had spare film.
As to the particular advice, number 6 is not necessarily correct. It depends upon the times involved. Clearly, if you took a shot, turned it off, then turned it on again because you want another shot straight away is a nonsense which no one would consider. However, the booting up of a camera is a heavy drain, so turning off is only efficient if the periods of not using it are quite long.
8- or 1- if you shoot raw, turn off all raw processing (lens distortion, fall-off, iso noise, long exposure noise etc.)… you don’t really need these if ever you review pictures on the camera to check for focus or framing.
Basically turn off your camera – batteries will last a lot longer. What a stupid article.
Tip #8. Don’t shoot with a mirrorless camera
Don’t shoot with a digital camera for that matter. Batteries in my Yashicamat have been cranking along for a couple of years now.
I haven’t used my A1 since 2003 and the battery is still good.
They forget the most important: turn off the camera.
Turn off stabilization Turn off automatic sensor cleaning Hahahahahaha 🙂
Use the optical viewfinder.
Also:
– Turn off burst mode (or equiv) when not using it
– Turn off High Performance mode when not using it.
– On fixed lens cams, turn off macro mode when not using it (it makes the AF work a lot harder on normal subjects)
– Don’t buy Fuji (just kidding, I love my Fujis, but the battery life leaves a lot to be desired) 🙂
Turning off sensor cleaning is just a bad idea. It hardly uses any battery power and helps tremendously at keeping dust off of your sensor. Wet cleaning on a regular basis is not really fun and always has a very slight risk of something going awry. The old sensors without cleaning routines would get so dusty constantly and you would have to wet clean because as soon as it gets any kind of moisture on the surface all that stuff sticks pretty hard.Same goes for stabilization. It offers a massive benefit at a very small power cost. Just turn off the rear screen. That will give you the biggest boost. Image review kills it too. Its just like your phone, the screen and live view are the two biggest battery killers that dwarf everything else. You can milk a battery for a very, very long time if you become selective about what you shoot, avoid using live view or the rear screen at all, and turn the camera off as soon as you are done shooting. If you need to chimp you can always push the play button.
There should be settings for camera to only activates stabilization on shutter press, my camera has one
“Replace Batteries”? Really.
Batteries have limited recharge cycles. I certainly have batteries that have less than ideal capacity left. Maybe even 50-70% I’m guessing. I use grips on all my cameras, so having a 2nd battery is usually more than adequate for the 1000 or so shots I might squeeze off on one body. I turned off image review and my battery life went up quite a bit really. The rear screen is a battery killer so I leave it off and use the top plate LCD mostly for settings. I also shoot with DSLRs so that’s a huge savings right there only having to really power the meter, shutter, sensor and lens.