R5 Battery Life Poll for birders and other telephoto lens users

How many shots per charge do you get


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    16

Aussie shooter

https://brettguyphotography.picfair.com/
Dec 6, 2016
1,183
1,817
brettguyphotography.picfair.com
R6 and not an R5 shooter but I would assume similar performance. And if i am shooting in mech or EFC and doing short bursts then i am probably getting anywhere from 3-500 shots. If i am going with Eshutter and trying to nail a perfect BIF shot at 20fps then I could easily get one or two thousand shots as there is basically no chimping and insane frame rates
 
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With a full charge I can get 1000 shots and end up with about 10-15% battery remaining on a LP-E6NH.
R5 + EF-RF Adapter + 2X Extender + 70-200 F4L. IBIS on, toggle between viewfinder and LCD, no high FPS display, but H or H+ drive mode, with a mixture of electronic first curtain + electronic only, CRAW+JPG, and shooting about a 2-4 hour session.
 
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YuengLinger

Print the ones you love.
CR Pro
Dec 20, 2012
3,751
2,269
USA
Paid close attention yesterday at a wildlife sanctuary. Fresh battery, 1 hour and 40 minutes of handheld, mostly Mode 2 IS (which was a mistake, I see!), one card only, a ProGrade 128GB CFE. Near the end, maybe after 1 hour and 20 minutes, I heard the ECFS sound change, get clunkier, a bit louder. Checked my battery and I was down to 54%. When I left I was at 48%.

How many shots? 1012! Quite a few bursts, mostly birds-in-flight, but also some on the ground or wading.

I think my battery usage is more related to how long I'm using the camera more than how many shots. So if I only take bursts of 2-3 shots, maybe 4-5, during a 90 minute hike, I get about 400 shots before being down to 50-60%. (Sorry, AlanF, for using such imprecise language as "several hundred," but I haven't paid much attention to the usage. I did buy two extra Canon batteries after a week with the R5.)

Does CFE use significantly more power than SD?

Oh--I have my Sensor Cleaning set to manual only, and I engage it only after changing a lens.

I can put a new battery in, 100%, do a sensor cleaning, a format, a few things in the menu. And, whoa, suddenly I'm down to 94%? Strange.

One other thing, I am seeing that the newest batteries drain faster just sitting in a drawer. (And this makes me think back to the days of the 5DIII, how I could go two months without using it, having left the power switch on, and I'd still have well over 80% battery charge. The 5DIV was never like that. On or off when stowed, batteries drained in it steadily.)

As for testing, I'm not seeing any real inconvenience or unexpected behavior. I keep an extra battery in a little pouch in my pocket. I charge as soon as home...So I don't want to put in the time or wear and tear on the R5 for a test. And I am too busy to try to figure out how to set something controlled using an Android phone to just fire away...

I did map the Movie Record button to switch between EVF and Display, but I only use that when walking for exrecise/pleasure with a smaller lens, and the rig is slung over my shoulder so that the EVF gets constantly activated by my shirt. Carrying the 100-500mm in my hand by my side doesn't cause this.

I do believe that with IS on all the time when the body is active, it makes sense that we'd see a range of drainage patterns here. But where is the "in spec" threshold? I'll leave that to others for now!

Good luck, AlanF! I do wonder if a particular battery could be part of the equation--even if it is showing as normal?
 
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AlanF

Desperately seeking birds
CR Pro
Aug 16, 2012
12,356
22,534
Depends. Can get well over 500 shots from the NH battery but that number goes down if I do a lot of 12 FPS or more chimping. I use eco mode and turn the camera off when not planning to shoot (power up pretty quick).
This morning I went crazy on my first excting bird outing for ages, filming my first kingfisher for a year and she spent the best part of 15 minutes bashing a fish to death, and there were more exciting episodes to follow: using the 100-500 and 20fps in electronic shutter and long bursts, I clocked up 1900 shots with 15% of charge, and ended up the morning with 3472 using 80%. This compares with my usual 600 or so. Now, culling at the rate of 1 fps, I should get through in under an hour, or will it be 0.1 fps?
 
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koenkooi

CR Pro
Feb 25, 2015
3,575
4,111
The Netherlands
This morning I went crazy on my first excting bird outing for ages, filming my first kingfisher for a year and she spent the best part of 15 minutes bashing a fish to death, and there were more exciting episodes to follow: using the 100-500 and 20fps in electronic shutter and long bursts, I clocked up 1900 shots with 15% of charge, and ended up the morning with 3472 using 80%. This compares with my usual 600 or so. Now, culling at the rate of 1 fps, I should get through in under an hour, or will it be 0.1 fps?
Which mode did you use for filming? I quite like the oversampled 4k you get in crop mode, although I only have footage of herons standing still in a downpour :)
 
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I don't do any burst shooting. I take approx. 5-30 images totally per session (halv or whole day)
I have the battery grip what ever it's namned, don't remember. An been shooting for a couple of days now, perhaps 100 images taken with my R5 and the battery is around 80% and battery no 2 around 95%. Don't know if it's good or bad.
Oh, I have all the bells and whistles on. Shooting mainly with the RF 100-500, hand held.
 
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About 200 for me, but quite often less and only occasionally a little more, because I am not one of those people who holds their finger down on 20fps for every crow and pigeon that flies past.

I have long maintained that the number of shots is irrelevant; it's the time the battery lasts that matters. Rating by number of shots originates from analogue SLRs (and a small number of rangefinders) where the battery was only drained when a shot was taken and the shutter had to be controlled. It made sense to rate by the shot count back then. But then we added in auto exposure, then autofocus, then digital came along and brought with it auto white balance and image review, and now we've got mirrorless where the camera has to constantly generate a video feed and keep a high-refresh EVF rolling. Now the power used to capture a shot is essentially nothing in comparison to the power the camera is using just to stay on.

When I'm out in the field, my camera has to stay on all the time. It doesn't get turned off, it doesn't go to standby, and the EVF proximity detector is disabled; the viewfinder is rolling at all times. We don't get to chase down our animals here, you've just got to set up and wait, hope they run or fly past. With the skittish behaviour of most of our wildlife, those moments are over faster than the camera can start up. We're talking one second to actually spot the animal, another second and a half to bring the camera up, frame and hit the shutter, and then it's gone. If it's a peregrine hunting then you often don't even have time for autofocus, you've just got to pre-focus and hope for the best. So the camera stays fully on at all times. With mirrorless, that means a battery lasts about an hour and a half. In colder weather, which is more common here than heat, the battery has sometimes run dead before 60 minutes have passed.

This is why I'm still keeping hold of my 7D2. The 7D2 can last on one battery for two days of shooting. (In fact there was one time I accidentally left it on in the cupboard all week and it still had 40% of the battery remaining.) With the R5 and R6 I'm burning through at least three batteries every time I go out; in one instance I got through six in the R5 and finished the day with the 7D2 on my sole remaining battery. When being quick on the draw is more important than sustained fire there's no substitute for the readiness of the optical viewfinder, and mirrorless has many, many generations to go before it's going to compete in that regard. I prefer the R5 if I know I'm only going to be shooting for an hour or so, but for long days out, the power drain is simply too much.

If I was turning the camera off all the time or if I just plonked it on a table and held the shutter down, I expect I could get many thousands of shots out of a single battery. But that's simply not how shooting in the cold and dark here is.
 
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