I took my 1DSII out the other night to shoot 10-20 images at an event. Because I am still recovering from a spinal fusion, to save weight, I took my spare battery out of my case. Before leaving the house I checked the battery indicator on the camera. It indicated full. Image my horror when 6 or 8 shots into shooting the indicator was down to the very bottom. I don't recall this ever happening before - I seem to think it slowly went down. I probably have shot 10K images with it over the last 2 years. Is this battery near the end of its life?
The battery meter isn't so wonderful on this camera. Will show full until almost the last moment and then sink to half to empty within very few shots. Perhaps you should charge with refresh mode too.
After 2 or 3 years, the batteries will exhibit behavior similar to what you describe. If this is the approximate age of your battery, chances are that it has run its course.
Was the battery indicator blinking, or just low? Until it starts blinking, you've still got a long way to go...it only has two segments, and it will start blinking when it's nearing the end of its charge (it's on page 20 of my 1D Mark II N manual...should be close to that in yours. Try a refresh, see if that helps.
I hate to dis-agree with Ben...but if you've only shot 10k pics in the past two years, I doubt the battery is in need of replacement.
If you haven't been using the camera much due to your surgery then the battery self-discharge may have been significant. That combined with the nature of the status indicator could easily be the problem. Refresh and charge the battery. Ditto for the spare.
If a refreshed battery shows the same problem then either it, the charger, or the camera are defective. If only one battery is affected then the camera and charger are in the clear.
It is pretty much impossible to measure the condition of batteries by the two-step battery meter which can, for example, show 1 bar, then ejecting and reentering the battery can show two again, and for a significant number of shots. I found it hard to measure the condition of battery by real-world usage too, there are factors (such as LCD usage) on top of # of shots taken.
Instead, to at least compare the state of my batteries, I put the camera into slideshow/playback mode and looked to see how long the camera would play back for until it died. I found a far greater variation than I was expecting - times varied from 11 minutes to 150 minutes! I knew some batteries were worse than others but hadn't realised it was that bad. Brand new batteries in my 5D, after a couple of charge-discharge cycles, lasted from memory a bit over 3 hours of slideshowing.
Thanks for all the suggestions. Now that I think about it my surgery was 6+ weeks ago & I haven't shot didley since then. I will try the refresh & charge.
thanks agian
