M8 battery life

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wcl4

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May 26, 2009
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i just recently acquired a M8 and my question is regarding battery life. For the 2nd time, after shooting maybe 50 shots, the battery went dead. The meter first said full battery, didn't even move a notch (well maybe one), and a week later the battery is dead. I may have left the camera on S, but I thought this body auto powered off after 5 min or whatever the camera preset is. If this is the case, shouldn't the battery last longer than that? I have the screen set to normal, and picture review is off although I do tend to review pictures manually.

Suggestions?
 
...is your auto power off "on" (user selects the time)... this can be set to "off", which means that it doesn't shut down/sleep per se after a few minutes of keeping your finger off the shutter.
 
M8 battery should last much longer than 50 shots.
And fully battery charged should be able to keep for months.
There is something wrong. Are you using genuine leica battery?
 
Yes, genuine Leica batteries, and I keep it on a shelf in my office or I carry it around in a camera bag with me. I think I read that the battery life is around 400 shots? I suppose I could take that many shots and test it out?
 
If you're carrying it around in a bag and leaving it on 'S' then the shutter could be being nudged and the camera awoken inadvertently.

If it's not too much trouble, why not remember to switch it off for a week?
 
I turned preview off and have auto power off. When I use preview manually only every 2-3 pictures I get about 200 shots from a fully loaded battery. That is very disappointing. Compare it to a Canon G10. The battery is not larger. Even when you use full live view, preview and zooming all the time you get much more pictures with that camera.
 
tom.w.bn said:
I turned preview off and have auto power off. When I use preview manually only every 2-3 pictures I get about 200 shots from a fully loaded battery. That is very disappointing. Compare it to a Canon G10. The battery is not larger. Even when you use full live view, preview and zooming all the time you get much more pictures with that camera.
Click to expand...

If you have auto power off selected to off, doesn't that mean the camera won't power down if you leave it on "S"? Germans and their command of the double negatives!
 
wcl4 said:
If you have auto power off selected to off, doesn't that mean the camera won't power down if you leave it on "S"? Germans and their command of the double negatives!
Click to expand...

Oh. My sloppy use of the language. I use auto-power-off, that means it is on.
 
Oh my, I didn't even notice your location Tom! I was talking about Leica - seems kind of confusing what the auto off and turning it off means.
 
I have the auto-off off, and switch the camera on when I raise it to the eye, and off when I am finished. I absolutely hate having to wait for it to power up, and this way I have acquired the reflex to power it on just a few seconds before starting to shoot. I have missed fewer shots after getting this habit than before, and also battery life gets really good.

The only thing that is really annoying, is that sometimes the battery reading can go from two bars to completely dead in a second.

I now have 3 batteries, and battery life is not a big issue with me. If I were to shoot faster, or 500-1000 exposures a day like before, it would of course be a problem. But then I would probably use Nikon anyway!
 
The power-on time with the latest firmware is 0.7 seconds, less than the time you need to raise the camera to your eye, and certainly less than the time you need to focus.
 
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