rscheffler
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 p.1 #13 · Leica M11 series: is your standby setting draining your battery? | |
Fred, was your timing test done with a memory card installed, and if so, did it already contain any images? What speed rating was the card? Another variable might be how many, if any, images are on the internal storage, but I expect that to be very fast memory.
My impression from my now quite old M240 and M9 is that the camera 'polls' the card on start up to determine how many images are on it, free space available, etc. The more that's on the card, the longer this process takes. I have also noticed this happens with my Canon mirrorless cameras, but it appears to only cause noticeable delay if I have thousands of images on a card. If it's turned on rather than woken from sleep the delay is longer, though there can also be a delay from waking up with many thousands of images on the card and if a card is on the slow side (SDXC v30 vs. v90). It's been a while since I've checked this behaviour with the Leica but the Canon cameras will allow shooting within a second or two of a cold start with thousands of images on a card while the camera continues to poll the card. Some other functions such as image playback, adding or checking folder info, copying images between cards, etc., are delayed until the polling has completed.
With both the M9 and M240 I completely disabled sleep to keep the camera on until physically turned off. This was primarily when covering events that might be hours or a full day long, so that the camera would always be immediately ready. Yes, this drained batteries and with the M9 I would carry 5. The M240's battery life, as you know, is much better than the M9's yet I still usually carried 3 in addition to the one in the camera. I think your choice of 10 minutes is a reasonable one for situations where you're more or less in 'photo mode' while out and about, in that you are probably taking a photo more often than every 10 minutes, therefore the camera will almost always be ready.
One habit I got into in situations where I would need the camera to be ready, was to occasionally half-press the shutter release to ensure the camera was awake when I really would need it.
I think with cameras like the M11 series and many other current mirrorless models, the ability to USB charge greatly reduces the dependence on extra batteries. At least for me, when I'm out and about, traveling, etc., I'm probably carrying a PD capable USB power bank because at some point my phone will probably need a charge. So it's a trivial matter to also top up the camera between use, or even power the camera during use, if needed (true at least for my Canon mirrorless cameras - I'm not sure if the M11 series allows powering the camera from USB). While having a camera plugged in is slightly inconvenient, a USB power bank is a lot less expensive than additional camera batteries, and also more broadly useful due to the number of power hungry devices we tend to frequently use nowadays.
Lastly, in the spirit of the M11-D's minimalist approach, it would be nice if at least for this camera, Leica allowed an option to turn off light metering in full manual exposure so that the shutter could be closed between image capture. It would reduce power draw and also allow slightly more responsive image capture. Personally, I would like to see such a feature on every M11 and future models.
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