M8 battery performance for wedding work.

[keithdunlop]

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.

 

[Artorius]

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.

 

[gavinlg]

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.

 

[keithdunlop]

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.

 

[ckuang]

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