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Poor battery life with CHDK?

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Offline julesd

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Re: Poor battery life with CHDK?
« Reply #10 on: 04 / February / 2009, 04:04:20 »
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Quote from: barret on 04 / February / 2009, 03:48:59
LCD takes quite a lot of power to operate: for example, someone measured A550: LCD on: 1A, LCD off: 0.5A of power. quite a difference ;)

Thats not quite the full story, from what I gather....

There is a script to measure the internal resistance of your batteries here :-
http://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php/topic,2622.0.html

Where I read this....

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Switching off only the LCD, by plugging a cable into the camera's AV-out terminal, merely reduces power consumption from 1300 to 1150 mW.
Switching off the whole bunch, either by pushing the DISP button or by running my script, reduces power consumption from 1300 to 350 mW.

By the whole bunch he means autofocus and all the other snazzy features.
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Offline barret

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Re: Poor battery life with CHDK?
« Reply #11 on: 04 / February / 2009, 07:08:44 »
when i was talking about 1A vs. 0.5A i was referring to external power source measurements, not internal (battery) current measurements, sorry.
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Offline peabody

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Re: Poor battery life with CHDK?
« Reply #12 on: 23 / February / 2009, 13:40:29 »
Fudgey, did you really mean to say that Eneloops don't work as well as other batteries?  I spent a couple hours looking up battery stuff yesterday, and everything I read strongly suggested the Eneloops last longer in A-series cameras than most higher-mAh standard types.  Lots of complaints about about A-series cameras shutting down early, and lots of solutions from switching to Eneloops (but NOT necessarily to other LSD brands).

One explanation was that Eneloops provide a higher discharge voltage than the others.  So even though they have lower mAh ratings, they deliver at a higher voltage during discharge, which keeps the camera on longer.   So a 2000 mAh Eneloop may discharge 85-90% of its energy before the camera shuts down, while a 2700 mAh regular nimh will reach the same shutoff voltage after only 50% discharge, or even less.

I was all set to order some, but just saw your comment:

"The a570is is known to shut down early e.g. when using batteries with high internal resistance (Eneloops and similar low self discharge NiMH cells, old batteries, batteries in cold temperatures). "

What I've read suggests that Eneloops have lower internal resistance, not higher.  Do I have it wrong?

By the way, the other major problem with these cameras appears to be poor battery contacts.  I don't know why, but I had this problem with my A590 right out of the box, with charged batteries.  Maybe there's a film of something that's left over from the manufacturing process that gets in the way.  I found lots of similar comments in various forums.


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Offline fudgey

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Re: Poor battery life with CHDK?
« Reply #13 on: 23 / February / 2009, 15:14:44 »
The discharge curves I've seen were pretty similar between Eneloops and regular NiMH, not enough to explain much of anything to either's benefit. I only have personal experience from Varta ready-to-use brand, and they are nearly useless in my a570 compared to regular NiMH. Any benefit from them would have to be from their lower self discharge in storage (which is important in camera use if the camera mostly sits in a drawer unused, in which case even alkalines could actually be a choice).

It was someone else's word elsewhere on these forums I took on eneloops & LSDs in general having higher ESR. I'm convinced they're fine batteries for most uses, but will avoid using them in my camera from the experience with them Vartas, especially until someone explicitely proves me they aren't OEM'd Eneloops...

Note that it's possible that many of the success reports you've found could be due to replacing bad batteries with good ones (stores sometimes carry utter crud and even quality brands go old in storage), instead of replacing good regular NiMHs with good Eneloops. Even a crappy charger may have been replaced in these cases, Eneloops are often marketed with a charger bundle.

Eneloops are still a fairly new product and they have long shelf life, so you're not likely to find a faulty pair at a store... this is in general speaks for purchasing Eneloops, of course!
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Offline dennisfox74

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Re: Poor battery life with CHDK?
« Reply #14 on: 24 / February / 2009, 05:12:24 »
My A550 seems to eat batteries a little faster since I started using CHDK as well, but then, i'm also using it to save raw on my camera, which is making it write twice to the memory card per each shot, and do other functions that the camera typically doesn't do, so I expect a little more power usage over the regular firmware. 

One thing I did notice though on the battery front, is that my 2500mAh NiMH batteries seemed to die faster than a pair of standard AA alkaline batteries.  I ended up switching over to Lithium batteries just so I don't have to carry several sets for just a couple hours of shooting.  One set of Lithium batteries last me all day, and then some. 

though, I'd really like to use rechargables in my cameras, as it's TONS more convenient to just charge my batteries than having to run to the store for an extra set, and a lot cheaper, Lithium batteries are pricey. 

I've seen up to 2700mAh NiMH batteries out there, and would love to try a set if they would run longer than say 15 minutes in my cameras.  Perhaps my SX10-IS would take to them a little better. 
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Offline barret

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Re: Poor battery life with CHDK?
« Reply #15 on: 24 / February / 2009, 06:07:12 »
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would love to try a set if they would run longer than say 15 minutes in my cameras.
what do you mean? why only 15 minutes? i have 2800 mAh rechargeable batteries in my s3 and they last for quite a long time... even with CHDK.
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Offline dennisfox74

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Re: Poor battery life with CHDK?
« Reply #16 on: 24 / February / 2009, 14:37:11 »
I get about 15 minutes on standard alkaline batteries.  I thought it was really short too, so I actually exchanged the camera when I first noticed that (about 2 hours after buying it), and the replacement camera did the same thing.  I put a set of 2500mAh rechargeables in the same camera, and got about the same result life wise give or take a few minutes.  But using Lithium batteries, I seem to get a MUCH longer life. I've shot for a number of days, all day on a single pair of Lithium (Energizer Ultimate Lithium batteries to be precise), where I'm firing off between 1 and 3 hundred shots a day. 
Now, the NiMH batteries I tried weren't brand new,  they had a month or two of use in a couple other devices I owned (wireless keyboard / mouse combo).  But they were fully charged when I used them, so unless I had defective batteries they should have still been pretty much functioning at their peak. 
I'd like to see if a higher power set of NiMH batteries might work better, but I don't really want to pump the money into a charger and a couple sets of batteries unless I know I'm going to get better results.  Even if a set of NiMH batteries would last half as long as the Lithium batteries I'm using, I'd be satisfied there. 

Is my experience here singular?  Or have other people on here noticed Lithium batteries vastly outperforming NiMH batteries? 
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Offline reyalp

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Re: Poor battery life with CHDK?
« Reply #17 on: 24 / February / 2009, 23:32:21 »
15 minutes ?!

Unless you are shooting the whole time with the flash, or the camera is very cold, that seems way to short.
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Offline dennisfox74

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Re: Poor battery life with CHDK?
« Reply #18 on: 25 / February / 2009, 00:57:44 »
Yeah, that's what I thought too.  Hense me returning the camera the first time because I thought something was shorting out in it.  But the one I got to replace it did the same thing.
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Offline reyalp

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Re: Poor battery life with CHDK?
« Reply #19 on: 25 / February / 2009, 01:45:30 »
Are you using flash ?
About how many exposures do you get ?

You should get hundreds of non-flash exposures out of any decent set of NiMH AAs. Canons claims a CIPA complaint 500. This isn't just marketing hype, people routinely take timelapses that take hundreds of exposures over several hours.
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