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Battery consumption

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Offline frolic_too

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Battery consumption
« on: 30 / November / 2010, 17:51:34 »
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Hi!  I'm running CHDK on a SX20is. It's powered by four AA Sony CycleEnergy 2000mA.  While running CHDK, after taking about 20 RAW shots (without flash), the batteries are depleted.  Is this normal while shooting RAW or am I missing some setting? Or are the batteries just dead?

Thanks
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Offline reyalp

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Re: Battery consumption
« Reply #1 on: 30 / November / 2010, 22:20:12 »
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Or are the batteries just dead?
The way to find out is to take a similar number of shots under similar conditions (e.g. use of flash, amount of time with the display on etc) without CHDK.

In general, CHDK should not take much additional power, AFAIK everyone who has done accurate measurements has found that it does not. Batteries running out after 20 shots would indicate something very seriously wrong, Canon claims the following CIPA* numbers
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Still Image: approx. 340 shots (AA-size Alkaline Battery), approx. 600 shots (AA-size NB-3AH Battery)
There's no way that saving raw increases the the power consumption 30x

* CIPA battery spec http://www.cipa.jp/english/hyoujunka/kikaku/pdf/DC-002_e.pdf
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Offline fudgey

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Re: Battery consumption
« Reply #2 on: 01 / December / 2010, 16:22:25 »
As reyalp says you'll probably find that your batteries don't work any better without CHDK and especially it shouldn't matter much at all whether you shoot RAW or not.

But...it has been suspected and experimentally more or less verified (but not checked by firmware analysis) that on some cameras Canon requires a more from the batteries during firmware upgrade than during normal everyday shooting, making it shut down earlier if CHDK is running (remember that CHDK is started by fooling Canon's firmware upgrade mechanism). So far this has only been experienced on some dual AA cell cameras, not lithium or 4xAA cell powered cameras, though.

You can probably think of easy ways to test this. One is to charge your batteries, shoot with CHDK enabled until the camera shuts down to low battery. Then try to boot the camera to REC mode. If it fails due to low bat, then quickly disable CHDK (swap in another SD card or unlock your only card) and try to boot it without CHDK. If it boots, enable CHDK again and boot... repeat until you're confident that either it always boots without CHDK but almost always not with CHDK or that enabling CHDK makes no difference.
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Offline frolic_too

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Re: Battery consumption
« Reply #3 on: 01 / December / 2010, 21:27:55 »
Thanks guys.  I'll do some testing.  I'll let you know if i come up with something important
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Offline reyalp

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Re: Battery consumption
« Reply #4 on: 01 / December / 2010, 22:24:59 »
Quote from: fudgey on 01 / December / 2010, 16:22:25
But...it has been suspected and experimentally more or less verified (but not checked by firmware analysis) that on some cameras Canon requires a more from the batteries during firmware upgrade than during normal everyday shooting, making it shut down earlier if CHDK is running (remember that CHDK is started by fooling Canon's firmware upgrade mechanism). So far this has only been experienced on some dual AA cell cameras, not lithium or 4xAA cell powered cameras, though.
I thought this only applied to FIR/FI2, not diskboot  ? SX20 afaik only supports diskboot. Of course SX20 could be different too.
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