My latest adventures with the R-D1 batteries

[Eyal_bin]

Hi all,

I wanted to share my latest, and slightly optimistic, experience with the RD-1's battery issue.

The problem is that usually when I go out photographing I shoot during the entire day, since my photographing style is street photography I leave the camera on during the whole time in order to be always prepered. I usually finish 3 batteries during a day's shooting session (around 6 hours total).
Lately, 2 out of 3 batteries I had gone bad, and I was left with only 1 battery that lasted for 2 hours max, pretty sad...
Depressed as I was, I went out shooting couple of days ago. In order to maximize my photographing time I started to walk with the camera in my hand for the whole time and turn the camera off when I have few spare moments, while keeping my finger on the on/off button in case I need to quick draw and shoot. To my great surprise my battery life was extended to far and beyond 2 hours (It lasted for almost 5 hours).
My explanation to this is that most of the battery power in the R-D1 is wasted on standby time while powered on and not on actually shooting, therefore truning the camera off instaed of leaving it on segnificantly increases the battery duration, although it is less comfortable to hang around with the camera always attached to the hand, and I have to constantly check if the camera is on or off before taking a shoot, unfortunatly I forgot couple of times and a good photo was lost, but after some practice checking the on/off status becoming a second nature.

All in all, what I described here is pretty much working for me, not perferct, far from it even, but at least I can shoot for more than 2 hours with only 1 battery.

I hope that this imformation will be useful to other photographers as well.

 

[btgc]

So now there's a dilemma between battery and on-off button resources 🙂

 

[Ezzie]

My experience too really. It does drain in standby, quite quickly as you say.

 

[Krosya]

What do you have your "Power Save Timer" setting at? You can have it on 3min and it should be Ok too, I think.

 

[Eyal_bin]

What do you have your "Power Save Timer" setting at? You can have it on 3min and it should be Ok too, I think.

I thought of that, but it's not working for me because:
a. I want to be in control when my camera is on or off.
b. I have a habbit of pressing the shutter, even when the camera is off, if I do it with the standby mode, I will "wake" the camera from stanvy and acheive nothing.

Thanks for the advice.
Eyal

 

[LCT]

...I have a habbit of pressing the shutter, even when the camera is off...

More a finger issue than a battery issue then. Just kidding. 😉

 

[Eyal_bin]

More a finger issue than a battery issue then. Just kidding. 😉

Guess who is going to have parkinson 30 years from now 😱

 

[menos]

I too prefer the on/off switch over letting the camera go into standby mode.
I do this not to conserve energy, but to fight the very long wake up time from standby.

Contrary to you, my camera doesn't seem to drain significant battery power on standby.
Occasionally, I left the camera on over night in the bag and waking it up, the next day, the battery indicator still showed a full charge.

All in all, I am very, very happy with the battery power of the R-D1 and the economy.
I am ok, to switch the tiny batteries during a longer shoot, as they are cheap, light and give much more frames, than one roll 135.

 

[conradyiu]

perhaps my habit does changes even I move from film rf to digital R-D1, sometimes standby but sometimes on & off my R-D1, moreover, I shoot carefully as if it's film so not much shot for even a day that the battery does it's job well