M8 battery performance for wedding work.

keithdunlop

www.keithdunlop.com
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I have begun a transition away from my Nikon DSLR system to the M8 for wedding work and I have a question about battery performance.

Specifically, I would like to know from other professionals using the M8 for weddings how you cope with the mediocre battery performance. I'll be running my own tests in a couple of weeks, but I read about people getting less than 400 shots per battery on the M8. This is obviously a far cry from the 3000+ shots I can get out of my D2x (and that's with running non-AF-S lenses and chimping).

Based on my average wedding coverage, I estimate that it would take 5-6 batteries to get through the day. It doesn't make sense to me that the M8 requires that much more juice to run than a DSLR.
 
Are you sure you aren't shotgun shooting with your DSLR? With a film slr/M I only shoot about 10 rolls of 36 exposure film. More than enough to cover a 4 hour set. I am getting twice that amount with the M8 and 2 batteries. I find that with no chimping, I can get over 6Gb on the M8 with power for almost another 2 Gb left over. I shoot WAY too much, IMO.
 
d700 and d3 can get over 3000 shots on single charge. Likewise the canon 1d and the new 5d mk2 is not far off that. My old E-3 would get around 1200 and my current 5d gets about the same.
 
Art

We do full day coverage and sometimes shoot up to 12 hours at multiple locations. Average coverage is about 1,500 shots per event for 8-10 hours.
 
my take

my take

hey Keith, I've recently started using a leica M8 for my wedding work just to see how that goes, and yes, the battery performance is no where near that of the D3. however, 4 of the leica batts works out to around the same weight and size of the d3 battery, so i am actually ok with it. Now instead of swapping film, i just swap batteries once in a while. prob get around 250-350 shots per charge w/o chimping. nothing spectacular but i can live with it.

i think the high iso performance is going to be more of a problem than the battery issue
 
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