I have at long last - hurrah! - joined the digital age and got my little snappy snapper, with 8 mega pixies and x6 zoom lens or something! But blimmin hell, the batteries don't last long do they. It keeps switching off after every few flashes saying the batteries are low. Is it supposed to do that? No, of course I haven't read all the manual disk! Watch out all - there's now a new pap about!
Mine's pretty heavy on batteries although yours sounds a lot worse. Not got around to getting rechargeables, but i'm told it's worth investing in good ones. You need to check out the amp hours they produce on the side. Some are a lot less than others. Can't remember the units, but it might be mAphs for miliamphours or something like that.
Amps? Eh? Can you both put that into easy language, I'm not that advanced yet! But I have managed to download and email some I've done. Simple, for you maybe, but a big advancement for me!
Right... Here goes... Imagine a river. To make water flow, there needs to be a change of height - from the top to bottom of a mountain. That in electrical terms is the voltage. Now the amount of water flowing down might be measured in pints per second but in electric this is known as current which in amps. But the amount of pints per second that come out at the bottom of the river also may depend upon any obstacles in the way - rocks, trees, bends etc. These are resistances to the flow and known by that name in electronics too. So we've quoted in the above posts, look at the milliamp hours. Well this is the current that the battery can deliver for so many hours. So voltage is the push. Current (amps) is the flow, and resistance is what slows the flow.
recharchables... dont get anything less than 2500m.. pays in the long run... will last for ages... and stop zooming in and out, that wastes batteries.. and turn off the option that shows every photo after youve taken it.. that wastes batteries.. in fact turn the lcd screen off and look through the viewfinder... we managed an entire week in paris, 750 photos, with a 8x camera, on one set of 4x2500 batteries... mind you.. our fuji is very good on power draining... the olympus was horrendous, but that is xd cards for ya...
These are the best I have found and use when I travel. Energizer Lithium E2 http://www.energizer.com/products/hightech-batteries/lithium/Pages/lithium-batteries.aspx Your flash will use up the battery more than almost any other feature, so switch it off unless absolutely necessary. It is also possible that you may adjust the brightness of the flash "-1, -2, 0, +1, +2" (and therefore save some power). That feature will be buried somewhere in the "Set Up" menu, or equivalent. Make sure you are using the "automatic-turn-off-camera" feature too, this will switch everything off after a minute or two if you forget to (you'll find that setting in the menu above). My camera has an eyepiece and also a large LCD screen, guess which one uses more power? :wink: Maybe you're just using it a lot at the moment as it's your new toy (bottom line...use lithium batteries) hth.. S
see im not fussed on lithiums.. they are so damn expensive and cannot be recharged... cost a fortune... about £7 for a pack of 2.. they may last a while but they are damn expensive... the couple i tried lasted a bit longer than 2500mAh rechargables but couldnt afford to buy that many,.... check out http://www.kaieteur.uk.com/products.php?cat=45 tis actually mike who runs the shop next door to mine... his 2500mAh uniross batteries are the ones we use and at a decent price of about £7 for 4...... for that money you can afford to buy 12 and have batteries charged all the time in your camera bag.... might be able to get ya a deal with him..
Thanks everyone who has posted! I will get the hang of it eventually. Still wading through all the work (top secret MI6 stuff - ) pix at the moment. Is that a joke?
Yeah, true. But then I travel a lot, don't have a home, and can't accommodate all the gear for recharging and all the different adaptors etc... It does cost more but a couple of packs will last me two months and if I'm somewhere developed (or sane) recycling is usually an option. (Not the best perhaps but better than nothing). For those that do a lot of photography, how long do your rechargeables last approx? :conehead:
Trav, I use a Canon Powershot 710 (A710? whatever ) and it takes 2 AA batteries. If I use standard alkalines they start to show low batteries almost immediately (though I think I can use the camera at least 50 more pics when I hit low battery light). I now use 2700mAh rechargeables and they last me a few days using the camera intensively or a few weeks of moderate use (never charged the whole time I was in the States - 15 days - and didn't even hit low battery!). And I use my zoom a lot. I'm a total rechargeable convert.
Thanks, when I settle it's a done deal, but for now the Lithiums work well. About two weeks of heavy useage for the 4 in my Fuji (S9500).
