With respect Sir, I think you are off-base here in many ways. I do not disrespect your opinions, but I think you are breaking a number of professional codes of conduct here.

1) As has been very well expressed, there is a time and a place for everything. This discussion is not the place for expressing your political viewpoints regardless of how valid or other wise they may be. The principle here is put your political viewpoints where they belong which is not in this section of the forum. Please redirect them to either chit-chat or the attic.

2) As a professional photographer, the principle as very well expressed by Kymarto, is to behave as a professional photographer and to record the scene, especially with photojournalism without introducing a personal bias.

3) If one is a professional member of the US armed forces, at least an active member, I thought that one was not supposed to criticize the Commander-in-Chief regardless of one's own personal feelings. You are clearly not following that edict, from which I assume one of two things, either you are retired and not active, or you are breaking the rules which could be considered unprofessional. Whether you like Obama or not, he is still the Commander-in-Chief. The same could be said about George W. Bush when he was in office. He also comes under much criticism from various factions and for very valid reasons, but this is not the place to discuss those things.

I certainly mean no disrespect to your service, nor to your viewpoints, merely how and where you make them. I respectfully suggest that by placing these comments in the wrong part of the forum you are undermining your own professionalism and credibility. I know for a fact that my 90 year old Uncle-in-law who is still strong and vigorous and displays his purple heart from Iwo Jima proudly above his mantle piece shares some similar opinions, but he also knows that there is a time and a place to express them. He and I agree on many things, and we disagree on some others and we enjoy debating them, but not always in a public venue, which this is.

First please don't attack me for using off brand batteries. I have used off brand as well as the Canon batteries that camera with the cameras. Last week I charged up all my batteries both Canon and off brands. When I put them in the camera, camera showed full charge, 2 shots later the batteries are dead, all I have is a black screen. I switched out the battery for another fully charged one, same thing couple of shots and battery is dead. This has not happened with the Canon battery yet. But when I was using my Canon SX50 2 weeks ago same thing only this time it also happened with the Canon battery as well.

I have not done any firmware updates on any of the 3 cameras. Since I have never had this happen before I need to find out why they are doing this. Both the T3i and SX50 are about 4 to 5 years old and so are the batteries for them, they do not use same size batteries. The T5i is about a year old as is its batteries.

I understand that batteries wear out over time with use, could this be the problem that I am having? I keep all of my gear stored in bedroom closet and its not used an awful lot. Does anyone have any ideas on what is wrong?

Thanks,
zuzanne