On 9/3/2016 6:53 AM, Chuck Norcutt wrote:
I agree with Wayne. Never trust batteries and never be without a
spare (or two).
Yup-yup. Green Batteries is still selling those great little battery
wallets. One with spare card in the interior pocket is no burden at all
in a pocket. My regular bag has three such, and if I leave it behind for
some reason, at least one goes in pants pocket. There's now a Sony
battery in one, which I need to label.
My regular practice when buying a new camera is to buy a set of two
additional, third party batteries with charger. I don't want any
surprises at awkward times and they are so inexpensive. I have an
additional reason over most folks. The chargers all come with an input
jack for 12v, and I can charge them directly, sans 12-110v converter, in
our Turtle. Some come with cable, some without, but I have plenty of
cables by now.
My new to me A7, with new DTSE battery, croaked after under 90 shots. I
popped another battery in and shot on, put the exhausted one in the
charger. The A7 battery seems a little small (?), but has the advantage
of powering many Sony models. I did use the camera with WiFi remote
control for some time and a fair number of shots, which I imagine uses
up the battery faster, perhaps quite a bit faster.
I don't know yet whether this is typical, the battery is not up to
snuff, it needs a couple of discharge cycles to reach full capacity,
WIFi and lots of menu use getting used to the camera and setting it up
for my use, or some combination, caused the short shot life. BUT, and
this is the point, I had a spare at hand, and was not inconvenienced.
That said, if you're still using the original Oly battery that came
with the camera (I assume that's what I sent you), since the camera
was purchased in January 2013 that battery is now approaching 4 years
old.
I have always considered the lifetime of lithium camera batteries to
be 3-4 years so it's probably just getting old and tired.
I've happily used batteries older than that. But I don't keep much track
of shot life in practice, so they could be getting lower in capacity,
and I might not notice.
I always shoot raw or raw+jpeg and, IIRC, the E-m5 battery was good
for about 300 shots.
I'm thinking that was the upper limit, and I often got less. But again,
I stopped paying much attention after getting a stable battery set, and
I use 3rd party batteries first.
The Canon 5D was good for about 400+ shots but had far less display
electronics to run.
Yup, sounds about right.
Follow Wayne's advice and buy a couple of spares from ebay. You can
find them on US ebay for about USD 10. I've had a couple of different
brands but have always preferred (and Moose too, I think) the "Progo"
brand for both battery and charger. This US seller
<http://www.ebay.com/itm/Progo-Battery-and-Charger-Kit-for-Olympus-BLN-1-Olympus-OM-D-EM-5-1600mAh-/152190193132?hash=item236f3e0dec:g:0qQAAOSwbsBXn9HC>
wants a lot more than I can remember paying but maybe you can find it
cheaper in NZ. Moose may want to chime in here too.
I've had good luck with other brands on other cameras, DTSE, Wasabi and
some other one. With the E-M5, I was getting odd results with the
Wasabis, with what seemed like good shot life one time, poor another.
After some research, I came to the tentative conclusion that no one had
fully decoded the OM-D battery interface. It seems that the camera
relies on info from the battery about remaining charge. Absent that
info, it just uses voltage, and may shut down when there's still plenty
of charge, to be on the safe side (and perhaps to punish users of non
Oly batteries?)
Progo claimed to have decoded the interface, and had good reviews, so I
now have three and have been happy with them. In the field, I run two
cameras in parallel, with three spare batteries at hand. I use the
Progos first, and they do seem to report charge correctly to the camera,
so the Olys are hardly used.
At least one reviewer of the Progos noted that the nominal voltage of
the Progos is higher than the Olys, and claimed that getting best shot
life from them required using the Progo charger. Conversely, he claimed
his testing showed that the Olys got best life from the Oly charger.
Here's where possibly incomplete interface decoding may come in, with
the Oly charger and battery communicating in a way it can't with the
Progo batteries?
It's largely speculation, with inadequate testing to know much for sure.
The bottom line for me is that I mostly charge with the same brand
together, but don't obsess, have been happy with my batteries, and now
continue to be so with the E-M5 IIs.
Conclusion - I would stick with Progos for OM-Ds.