Photoladybon Loc: Long Island

With my two nikons 850 and 500 I could go an entire day and shoot upward of 1000 images per battery. Not so with my new Olympus MFT--so I simply turn it on and off when not in use. I can then get a full day's usage on a battery. However, I have 3-5 spare batteries for each system and always have them charged and ready for use. Not an expensive investment for real piece of mind. Not a big deal to switch out batteries and not heavy to carry.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Yeah, I'll agree to that. I wouldn't attempt to photograph a soccer match without a USB-C power supply in my pocket or backpack, with a cable running up my sleeve to the camera. So yeah, a D850 or other dSLR still makes sense for that application.

johnec Loc: Lancaster county, PA

I’m guessing it’s because the LCD is 2.1 million dots while the EVF is 3.6 million. Not sure but that’s my guess.

Arca

Stant52

My only digital camera is a Lumix FZ1000. I always carry two OEM spares with me. It is just cheap insurance to complete what I want to do in the day. My heaviest usage was at the 'Uffizi Gallery' in Florence. I must have taken about 600 pictures that day. What used up the power was turning the camera on and off, and all of the zooming in and out that I did to frame the photograph in the best way possible according to my taste. In addition to the zooming, I was using the fold-out, tilting screen to shoot above the heads of other museum-goers. All of this contributed to battery drain. I was glad I had a spare with me at the time. But now I always carry two spares with me.

For what it is worth, I also carry the wall-outlet battery charger with me on vacations. When I forgot that at home while on a trip to New Orleans in 2018, I decided to have 'Amazon' deliver to my hotel a USB powered battery charger for my particular battery. It has worked well, albeit I have not had a need to use it very much. But I am glad I have it. I am pretty sure it would work well in the car, driving from one area of a national park to another and other shorter distances too. Incidentally, many hotels have work spaces on their desks which have USB ports for longer, overnight charges.

As an aside, Taking that idea from the hotels, I purchased a new lamp for my office which has two outlets and two USB ports, in addition to the two light bulb sockets.

Hope this information is helpful.

Arca

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Technically, possibly....
Noticeably, I doubt it.
It depends on the "power per 'dot' " for each screen. Are they the same? Micro-amps?, Nano-amps?
The LCD MAY be using a brighter light, but then that would be a function of the back-light, not the number of pixels in the screen. Does the EVF use a back-light? Not as bright as the LCD? The back-light probably uses more power than the screen itself.

So I would guess any difference, may be primarily because of the back-lighting difference between the screens.

I myself am not going to worry about it though. But I do shut the LCD off as I always use the viewfinder in my DSLR and my bridge, except for image review and changing settings. Yes, why power something I'm not using.

The focusing motor probably uses more power than either screen.
Wanna save a lot of power? Focus manually... Turn off image stabilization...

BebuLamar

The difference may in the type of display. The LCD panel is TFT LCD the viewfinder is OLED. But I search the internet it seems that OLED consumes less power than LCD backlight.

ND32 Loc: Greeneville TN

Look for mAh's 1600 or more. That is the rating that counts the most for stamina. My batteries sell in anywhere from 1100 -1850 mAhs.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

That too!

In any case it's not something that will keep me awake nights.

To get a definitive answer, someone should put an ammeter on the battery and check power (current) consumption with each screen on.

PHRubin Loc: Nashville TN USA

I wound up with 3 batteries for my main camera, the original Canon and 2 Vivitar brand. I don't pay any attention to how many shots each gets. I numbered them with a silver sharpie. I don't re-charge them after each photo session and I do have the camera show each photo when taken (chimp). I keep going until the camera tells me the battery is almost empty. I rotate batteries #1,2,3,1... and so on.

While I don't use it anywhere near as often, I do a similar thing with the 2 batteries (not needing 3, I gave one away) for my T2i. I am surprised how long those stay charged in camera when rarely used.

I have yet to have a camera battery become unusable.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

I've had two become unusable in eleven years.
(Yea, my camera is that old.)

PHRubin Loc: Nashville TN USA

My T2i is also 11 yo, and it replace the previous XT which I sold.

gessman Loc: Colorado

This doesn't answer your core question but is related - early on with a Sony crop sensor camera you can kill a battery just trying to find something in the menu without firing a single shot. The full frame models with the bigger battery do much better but still aren't great. That is why I went to the trouble of posting my last thread at https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-703134-1.html

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

I shoot sports events. Some days run 8 or more hours of near non-stop shooting. I think the most I've ever shot in a single day was 9000 images, but I frequently shoot between 1500 and 4500 in a day.

I have battery grips on two Canon 7D Mark II (DSLRs), with each grip holding two LP-E6N batteries each. I regularly get upwards of 2500 or 3000 shots with each, so am confident a single battery in good condition would be able to take at least for 1200 to 1500 images. I bet it's actually more because I usually change batteries when I see them getting under 25%, don't wait until the camera quits. I carry one extra set of batteries for each camera and I have a third camera with me usually (a less frequently used full frame model) so have a total of twelve LP-E6N batteries. Six in the cameras all the time and six as backup. Because some events are multiple days, I also have some extra chargers to be able to fully recharge up 6, 8 or more batteries overnight.

This is better with modern lithium batteries, than it was with Nimh in the past. With those I always carried two sets of spare batteries per camera.

Canon rates the 7D Mark II for just 700 shots per single battery, but I am easily getting double that. The original 7D, which I also used, was rated for more: 800 shots per charge. The current Canon 90D is much more efficient, rated to get 1300 shots per battery charge.

I also use a Canon M5 mirrorless camera.... which uses a smaller battery and gets far fewer shots per charge with it. It's rated to do less than 300. I haven't really tracked it and take far, far fewer shot with it than I do with my DSLRs. I probably beat the rated shots per charge, though not by much and still carry an extra LP-E17 battery for use in it.

There are a number of things that can be done to conserve power in cameras.

1. Don't use built-in flashes!
First of all, the manufacturers' testing is done in a standardized way called "CIPA". When the camera has a built-in flash, that must be used for 50% of the shots to arrive at the CIPA rating. As a result cameras without a built-in flash often can look more power efficient. However, you can significantly increase the shots possible with a camera that has a built-in, simply by not using that flash at all! It's a heavy drain on the battery (plus built-in flashes are crap for other reasons). Use an accessory flash instead. That flash will have it's own power source and saves the camera's battery power.

2. Minimize use of the rear LCD screen.
Many cameras are set by default to automatically replay the last image taken on the large LCD screen. I turn that off to save a lot of power. Instead I occasionally call up a shot myself to check things. Doing this also discourages the distraction of "chimping", i.e. staring sown at the back of your camera instead of concentrating on shooting and keeping your eye to the viewfinder and the camera aimed at your subject(s).
My cameras also have a menu page where I can store links to the things I most frequently access in the menu... which makes access a lot faster than having to navigate through the entire menu. The cameras also have a "quick" screen that can be called up on the LCD with a single button, where a lot of the most basic adjustments can be done. I use that occasionally, but often just use the dials and watch the settings in the viewfinder instead.

3. Set the camera to go into sleep mode in as short a time as possible.
This was a problem with older cameras that were slow to wake up and caused me to miss shots. Today's cameras wake up instantly, so there's no reason not to have them go into sleep mode in a relatively short time, to conserve battery power. I think mine are set to 30 seconds.

4. Turn off unused features such as GPS or WiFi.
I use neither of these on any of my cameras (if they even have them). But I understand that they also draw some power. Sometimes they even stay active and continue drawing power when the camera is in sleep mode. If not really needed, might as well turn them off.

There are other power users you simply can't do anything about. Active AF and image stabilization actually don't appear to use a lot of power, but certainly use some. If shooting active subjects you may use them a lot. I've often shot with an image stabilized lens on one camera alongside another camera with a lens that doesn't have that feature, and see virtually no difference in the number of shots I got before needing to change batteries.

DSLRs with an optical viewfinder tend to be a little to a lot more power efficient than mirrorless cameras with an electronic viewfinder. This because the DSLR's optical viewfinder (OVF) can be used any time and doesn't draw much power (just to display the AF points and some camera settings info). In contrast, the electronic viewfinder (EVF) used in almost all mirrorless cameras is a small screen that has to be powered up all the time while the camera is in use. It's constantly drawing a through-the-lens view from the image sensor and displaying that within the viewfinder. When the camera is turned off or goes into sleep mode, the EVF goes completely dark. The power draw of an active image sensor sending a signal to the display in the EVF, is in addition to all the other power usage that's common to both mirrorless and DSLR cameras. Manufacturers have been aware of the issue with mirrorless and working on it. A few models of mirrorless have even used "hybrid" viewfinders that are partly optical to help them be more efficient. This isn't typical, though.

gessman Loc: Colorado

This doesn't answer your core question but is related - early on with a Sony crop sensor camera you can kill a battery just trying to find something in the menu without firing a single shot. One thing to avoid is having to go into the menu to change settings when out shooting. There are times when a single battery is not sufficient like when shooting long time lapse or video and changing batteries will interrupt your ongoing process. The full frame models with the bigger battery do much better but still aren't great. That is why I went to the trouble of posting my last thread about substitute batteries at https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-703134-1.html

Dannj

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