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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

FZ30 battery life, the non CIPA way (1 Viewer)

pshute

Well-known member
Australia
Today I tested the capacities of the two batteries that came with my second hand FZ30, because I was thinking they were going flat too quickly. As it turns out, I was only misinterpreting the battery display, but some of you might be interested in the results.

I had read that I should get about 280 shots, as measured using the CIPA standard. That involves using flash for every second shot, turning the camera on and off every now and then, etc. I didn't do that, I just clamped the shutter down and took continuous shots till the card was full, deleted them all, and repeated till the battery was flat.

I also used MF, and manual exposure, which would also reduce the power consumption. The LCD was off, EVF was on.

On the standard battery, marked as 710mAh, I got over 2,500 shots. The 3rd party battery, marked as 1200mAh (no brand), I got over 5,500.

I was expecting quite a few more shots than using the CIPA method, but not that many! That was at 8MP. At 3MP I got about 500 and 1000 more shots respectively.

I also tested leaving the camera idle (power saving off) with the 710mAh battery. It got somewhere between 3/4 and 1 hour, I didn't notice the exact moment it went flat. I didn't bother with the 1200mAh battery, I was getting tired of it by then.

Interesting to compare with my Canon S3 - it gets 7 hours idle time out of a set of Eneloops. I can't remember how many shots, but it wasn't as high as the FZ30. Perhaps it's the much higher resolution EVF of the FZ30 that eats up the idle time.
 
Nice. I really feel I get a lot of shots off the brand name batteries for my FZ18. Off course, my comparison is a Nikon CP4500 that is five years older and still was running on the original two batteries.

Niels
 
Quite an amazing result, for both types of batteries, actually. Shows the potential, if one would really be stingy with power consumption. Thanks for having done this test, and for letting us know. I admire your stamina for not having given up much earlier!

Having the camera set for continuous focus results in only a few hundred actual pictures, of course.
 
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