5d Mark 2 Battery Life

[lol]

Just topping up my 5D2 battery for the first time. 600+ shots and ~38% indicated remaining capacity, so roughly speaking let's say 1000 shot life there. However the shooting for me was different than I'd do in the 7D, as I was chimping a lot as I tried out new stuff.

 

[handsomerob]

6 months old LP-E6 (must have been charged around 30-40 times) on a 7D (no grip) with 70-200 f/2.8 IS II (IS was turned off, 90% of the time). I would probably expect slightly more clicks on a 5DII since it uses only one Digic.

No flash and image review was turned off but I did check occasionally after some shots. I find it pretty impressive, didn't even have to use my spare battery.

I agree with others that IS and LCD drain a lot.

 

[awinphoto]

Thanks for all the responces... I'll check tonight what the dates are on the batteries and try shooting with the grip... maybe the grip is draining more battery than it should.. Do you know if Canon has a warranty on the batteries? Perhaps I could send the 5d in for a cleaning and check and have them check the batteries as well?

 

[awinphoto]

For those of you waiting on baited breath, the dates on the batteries are september 2010... so they are about a year old (even though I just got it a few months ago.... ) I will try them grip-less and see what performance I get that way...

 

[sb]

My experience is almost identical to what Tim Kaldas described. 600 images on 1 battery sounds way too low. I will shoot a full wedding day on a single battery (no grip) and only really have to change the battery towards the end of the evening if I'm staying late. My battery is from 2008 (when the camera was released).

Primes with no IS probably help tremendously, but also I don't check my screen all the time either. I rarely turn off the camera (instead I let it hibernate). I never use servo, I never fiddle with menu settings, and I never machine-gun it (single shot all the way).

I think shooting habits play a significant role as well.

 

[Loswr]

I think shooting habits play a significant role as well.

Agreed. Mt Spokane mentioned this, too. If you fire off a lot of shots fairly quickly, you get a lot more total shots. The 500-600 shots per fully charged battery is for my personal normal usage pattern - shooting 10 shots one day, 200 the next, none for a couple of days, sometimes shooting outside in sub-zero temperatures, chimping to show pics to wife and kids, charging when I feel like it (I almost never come close to exhausting a battery), etc.

However, some time back I tested SanDisk CF card speeds in the 7D and 5DII, taking about 1800 shots on the 7D and 750 shots on the 5DII, all as rapid-fire bursts with no focusing at all. I checked the battery stats afterwards, just for kicks - the 7D batteries were at around 70% with ~900 shots each, the 5DII's batteries were around 87% with ~375 shots each. Assuming a linear discharge rate, that translates to about 3000 shots per fully charged battery, the same batteries that with normal usage (normal for me, of course) give 500-600 shots on a charge - a 5-fold difference in number of shots for the exact same batteries, just based on usage pattern.

 

[Kernuak]

When I first got my 5D MkII, I noticed a similar problem compared to the 7D. It was a while before I realised that the settings were to never go into hibernation (or whatever Canon call it). Once I changed that, I now get similar life in both.

 

[gmrza]

I think shooting habits play a significant role as well.

Agreed. Mt Spokane mentioned this, too. If you fire off a lot of shots fairly quickly, you get a lot more total shots. The 500-600 shots per fully charged battery is for my personal normal usage pattern - shooting 10 shots one day, 200 the next, none for a couple of days, sometimes shooting outside in sub-zero temperatures, chimping to show pics to wife and kids, charging when I feel like it (I almost never come close to exhausting a battery), etc.

This mirrors my experience - I will typically get 500 to 600 frames, while my wife will come home from a day of shooting 1500 frames and have 48% charge left on her two batteries in 5DII (using a BG-E6). Subjectively, it also seems that the BG-E6 gives more than double the battery life, possibly due to demanding less current from each battery - I have not tested that with any rigour, however.

 

[RunAndGun]

I have two 5DmkII's, each with two batteries. I bought my first one in December 2008 and the original battery that came with the first camera is still going strong(the battery health is still two bars). I haven't really kept track of the shutter count on each charge, but the batteries seem to run almost forever. You probably have a "bad" battery, it happens.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

It does sound like AF is taking a toll. My use when taking stage photos does not require much in the way of AF, since the distance varies only a little.

I don't have any plans to run a experiment, since I don't want to put 10 K or 20K shutter actuations on my camera testing all the variations that might affect battery life.

 

[briansquibb]

It does sound like AF is taking a toll.

+1

I suspect SERVO bumps it quite a lot.

Certainly chimping a lot does