I'm also getting about the same battery lifespan in an OM-4 as you are. I
use *only* "357" silver oxide watch cells in it.
I also religiously follow the advice given by James N. McBride about
rotating the shutter speed ring into the mechanical "red 60" position. It
completely shuts off the viewfinder display *and* the viewfinder
illuminator. Neither can be activated with shutter speed set to either of
the two mechanical shutter speeds (red 60 and B).
One of the other engineers at work was complaining about his battery
consuming OM-4 to me. I asked him to bring in the batteries and we
measured their voltages. One of the cells was almost completely dead; the
other was low, too low for operating an OM-4 properly. I also noted they
were mismatched. One was an alkaline and the other was an MS-76 which has
does not have the desirable voltage curve of a "357" cell. The MS-76 also
has a falloff over its life; it's not as severe as an alkaline though. Not
surprising he's been having problems. Told him to start using "357" cells,
to always replace *both* of them, and I would bet he starts seeing an
improvement.
I took a glance at his socks afterward and it disproved a rapidly
formulated theory; they were the same color.
-- John
At 01:46 3/4/02, Thomas Clausen wrote:
I thought, that it was only unfortunate OM4's (non-Ti) that suffered a
battery drain?
I've got an OM4 with *old* circuitry, which doesn't suffer from battery
drain (I get about 1 year of intensive usage of that body). Someone asked
about the s/n a while back on thatone (forgot whom). The no. is
1082xxx. Were some s/n's more or less likely to suffer battery drain than
others?
--thomas
On Sun, 3 Mar 2002, James N. McBride wrote:
> Set the shutter speed dial to B or 1/60 when not in use. "The red ones..."
> /jim
>
> -----Original Message-----
> [mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Norm Nadel
> Sent: Sunday, March 03, 2002 6:11 PM
> Subject: Re: [OM] OMT4i battery drain
>
>
> I am a newbie to this list. In the early 1980s I produced a set of 35mm
> slides in my specialty (Urology) consisting of photos of my surgical
> specimens, photomicrocrographs and X-rays. I used an Olympus OM 1 and 2.
> The set ended up with a total of 1200 slides. I no longer have those
cameras
> but they were great.
>
> I recently bought a OM4Ti and have figured out everything except how to
> prevent the batteries from draining when not in use (other than removing
> them).
>
> Any advice??
>
> Thanks.
>
> Norm
>
-------------------------------------------
Thomas Heide Clausen
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