My battery life has been poor ever since I received my camera back in April of 2016. The camera came with the new 20 battery. I purchased another battery as a backup (also the newer 20 battery) after reading that it takes several charge cycles before the batteries (and camera) perform their best. Well, it's been almost a year now and my battery life is still incredibly poor (so bad in fact that I carry around 4 batteries now for backup). I'm lucky to get 300-400 shots per charge, and that is with airplane mode ON, no image review after photo is captured, standby display at 6s, touch controls OFF, and minimal review of images. I shoot a mix of landscapes and wildlife, so I'm back and forth between single shots and small bursts. Here is an example of my battery life from the last shoot (from 4 different batteries, all cycled dozens of times now):
Battery 1 - No. of shots: 107; Charge: 41%
Battery 2 - No. of shots: 420; Charge: 18%
Battery 3 - No. of shots: 250; Charge: 51%
Battery 4 - No. of shots: 107; Charge 8% (I was doing a lot of long exposures and using live-view with this battery)
I'm at a loss at what could be draining the battery. I'm at the point where I am considering sending the camera back to Nikon before the 1 year warranty is up. When I first noticed the problem I tried calling Nikon customer service. They told me that I needed to use the new charger that came with the camera, and the newer 20 battery, which of course I was using. They took my information and said they would contact me via email if they had any more information. I never received any further communication from them regarding the issue.
I absolutely love the camera, except for the annoying card errors, occasionally not turning off when switching off the power, premature paint wear/chipping, and the battery life (which I find the most troublesome). I often go on multi-day backpacking trips and even carrying 4 batteries is not enough, especially if I'm doing any long exposure work. I have two D300s bodies that perform exceptionally well as far as battery life goes, and was expecting the same performance, or better, from the Nikon D500. Sadly this isn't the case.
Before I send the camera back, is there anything that I'm missing here? I've read others are getting 1000-2000 shots per charge, I'm lucky if I get 500. Anyone else experiencing these issues? And for those getting great battery life from your camera: are you shooting single shots, or using it for bursts to obtain the excellent battery life?
I'm a sports shooter so I mainly shoot bursts. I easily get about 1000 frames. I recently shot ski racing wth a 300 PF and was changing the battery after about 1000 frames even though it still showed about 1/3 charge. I would send the camera in to have it checked.
Depending on your shooting habit but if you do a lot of burst shots, really, you should be able to get well over 1000 shots easily. Once, my memory card was full before I ran out of one battery. I do this often while reviewing and deleting some pictures even.
Even if you do single shots only, battery no 2-3 may sound reasonable but generally, you should be able to get quite a bit more than 4-500 shots per battery with normal shooting.
I can get 1000-2000 shots per charge but I am shooting decently long bursts. I have image review off and airplane mode ON. But I do spend some time reviewing images on the LCD on the back.
Your numbers don't make any sense. Are you getting battery drain overnight with a battery in the camera but camera OFF? I see virtually no drain over many days of standby.
I would do some basic troubleshooting to see what aspect of the camera's operation is bleeding power. I'm going to guess it's not the actually shooting that does it but instead the intervals in between. For example I would try the following experiments and see how much the battery drains for each case (start with a fully-charged battery for each):
1) Camera off for 24 hours
2) Camera on for 24 hours (using default metering/sleep timeout)
3) Camera on for 8 hours with very long metering/sleep timeouts (or disabled)
snapsy wrote:
I would do some basic troubleshooting to see what aspect of the camera's operation is bleeding power. I'm going to guess it's not the actually shooting that does it but instead the intervals in between. For example I would try the following experiments and see how much the battery drains for each case (start with a fully-charged battery for each):
1) Camera off for 24 hours
2) Camera on for 24 hours (using default metering/sleep timeout)
3) Camera on for 8 hours with very long metering/sleep timeouts (or disabled)
So I ran a little experiment last night based on your suggestions. I set my Standby Timer (c2) to "No Limit" from 6s, and within just a couple of hours my battery was down to 25%. Before going to bed I switched the timer to 10min and when I woke up this morning the camera was at 11% battery remaining.
I have also tried leaving the camera on for 24 hours with the Standby Timer set to 6s, and the camera still showed 100% battery after an entire day. I left it for 48 hours (same settings) and the camera was down to 97%. What's going on here?
Zack Clothier wrote:
So I ran a little experiment last night based on your suggestions. I set my Standby Timer (c2) to "No Limit" from 6s, and within just a couple of hours my battery was down to 25%. Before going to bed I switched the timer to 10min and when I woke up this morning the camera was at 11% battery remaining.
I have also tried leaving the camera on for 24 hours with the Standby Timer set to 6s, and the camera still showed 100% battery after an entire day. I left it for 48 hours (same settings) and the camera was down to 97%. What's going on here?...Show more →
That's interesting. I just set up your first experiment on my D500 (c2 = "No Limit"). I'll report back after a few hours on what the battery drain is.
When "c2" is set to infinity, the camera is on, sensor working, all internals full speed ahead, draining power like crazy.
Just set it to 4s, meaning, if you not asking camera to do anything, it will "go to sleep" after 4s, i.e, not draw any power. The moment you touch any controls like shutter button, it will "wake" instantly.
snapsy wrote:
That's interesting. I just set up your first experiment on my D500 (c2 = "No Limit"). I'll report back after a few hours on what the battery drain is.
Ok, on my D500 w/c2 of "No Limit" the battery drained 17% in exactly one hour (88% -> 71%). This was with the LCD touch controls disabled and Airplane mode on. So that roughly matches your 75% drain after a few hours (assuming "few" means around 3 hours).
snapsy wrote:
Ok, on my D500 w/c2 of "No Limit" the battery drained 17% in exactly one hour (88% -> 71%). This was with the LCD touch controls disabled and Airplane mode on. So that roughly matches your 75% drain after a few hours (assuming "few" means around 3 hours).
So that sounds about right, it was probably close to 3 hours.
Zack Clothier wrote:
So that sounds about right, it was probably close to 3 hours.
Goofed on the math - my 17%/hour equates to 50% for 3 hours. So if yours dropped by 75% then that is a significant difference. I would try it again for exactly an hour to get a precise measurement.
snapsy wrote:
Goofed on the math - my 17%/hour equates to 50% for 3 hours. So if yours dropped by 75% then that is a significant difference. I would try it again for exactly an hour to get a precise measurement.
After 1 hour with the standby timer set to 'No Limit' my battery was 72% (down from 100%). A 28% drop in one hour. I have the 300mm PF attached, with VR on.
Zack Clothier wrote:
After 1 hour with the standby timer set to 'No Limit' my battery was 72% (down from 100%). A 28% drop in one hour. I have the 300mm PF attached, with VR on.
Ok, good. Your body is bleeding power 64% faster than mine during the camera's full-power idle state - that would likely account for your low shot-count per charge in actual use. I have a 35mm DX f/1.8G mounted on mine. I don't think the VR matters since it shouldn't be engaged during the idle state. I would repeat the same experiment with no lens attached, to see if the drain is related to the mount/lens communication.
snapsy wrote:
Ok, good. Your body is bleeding power 64% faster than mine during the camera's full-power idle state - that would likely account for your low shot-count per charge in actual use. I have a 35mm DX f/1.8G mounted on mine. I don't think the VR matters since it shouldn't be engaged during the idle state. I would repeat the same experiment with no lens attached, to see if the drain is related to the mount/lens communication.
Down to 42% in 2 hours. Will now try without lens attached for 1 hour.
snapsy wrote:
Ok, good. Your body is bleeding power 64% faster than mine during the camera's full-power idle state - that would likely account for your low shot-count per charge in actual use. I have a 35mm DX f/1.8G mounted on mine. I don't think the VR matters since it shouldn't be engaged during the idle state. I would repeat the same experiment with no lens attached, to see if the drain is related to the mount/lens communication.
Down to 72% after 1 hour with no lens attached, exactly the same.
Zack Clothier wrote:
Down to 72% after 1 hour with no lens attached, exactly the same.
Next thing to look at are media cards and settings. What cards do you have installed? And have you ever attempted a settings reset to see if it affects the issue?
I don't have a D500 but I had a similar issue with my D7200. If I took pictures quickly, say 100 pictures in 15-20 minutes, the battery would only drain a few percent, as you would expect. But if I took the same number of pictures over a 4-5 hour time span, letting the camera go into stand-by mode between shots, then the battery would drain down to only 45-50% remaining. Many times I would get only 200-225 shots per battery (the D7200 is rated for 1150 shots). It seemed like somehow the battery was draining even during stand-by. Anyway, it took two trips to Nikon but eventually they replaced the "memory compression board" and this finally fixed the problem. If I were you I would send it in. Something is definitely wrong and you've done enough troubleshooting to accurately describe the problem to Nikon. Hopefully, they can figure it out.
