reggieb Offline Upload & Sell: On
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xnavyguy wrote:
check the manual around page 145.
I put mine in Airplane mode and also turned off the send to smart device. Seems to have taken care of the battery drain issues.
I mean, that is the obvious workaround, but the battery life is just so bad. One of the features that I was really excited about with this camera was the connection to the phone, downloading photos is cool, but I was more excited about the syncing of time and GPS coordinates. No more forgetting where I took a shot, or to change the time on it when I am in a new time zone. It would just grab it from the phone, and bada bing, bada boom, you're good to go.
But the reality is that it sucks the battery so fast, it's just amazing. I mean, I have never seen bluetooth cause such an insane battery drain. There is something wrong with it. And out of the box, the settings are insane. Why does it keep the bluetooth connection alive after you shout it off, even if you either took all raw photos, don't have auto download on, or its finished transferring to the phone? It gives a message that it's so that it can keep transferring photos. Nikon, if there are none queued up, they can't magically appear before I've turned the camera on again, so shut it off! This is such simple UX that they got so wrong I'm baffled by it. Sure, you can turn that off, but you shouldn't even have to. There is no reason to keep the connection open if it's not doing anything, and can't possibly start doing something until it's turned on again.
Don't get me wrong, I love the camera, but this one thing is a disappointment. There have always been a couple things that they could put in to the firmware so easily that would go so far in improving UX (how about writing to your backup card when the camera is idle, so it doesn't slow burst mode?!?!?!?!?!). As a developer that does UX, I am dumbfounded that they don't add a few little changes that would take a day to code and greatly increase the user experience with their cameras, it just makes no sense. The ROI is so obvious, they could probably ask a firmware dev to do it in his spare time one day and it would get done., unless their development staff is so bare-bones that they're working overtime every day just making things work (which doesn't seem to be the case, their release cycles are such that I don't think it's the case).
Anyway, I really hope they release a firmware fix for the battery drain issues, there is no way that a simple Bluetooth LE connection that's getting a data object that contains two strings (Lat-Lng) and a datetime should require so much power. There has to be some sort of bug in the code. I get it if you're transferring hundreds of photos and videos over wifi, that's different. When you're not doing that, there is no reason for the battery drain. I suspect it's a simple matter of something not getting turned off when it should (maybe the wifi radio). I've been thinking about it (and been frustrated about it) for the last day and a half as I get ready for a backpacking trip where I will be away from power. I really want the GPS coordinates of my shots, but also need 5 batteries to last a good 2.5 days (just got a 5th battery from Lens Authority).
Has anyone found any third party, higher capacity batteries, that actually work with the D500?
EDIT: Going to try this with the two battery packs that I already own. http://www.amazon.com/Newmowa-Charger-Nikon-EN-EL15-D800E/dp/B00QGJ919U?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00
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