50D Battery Life???

[Benjamin]

My personal experience is to have AA batteries instead of any other 3rd party BP511As. Since the BG-E2N comes with an AA magazine, I always load 6 fully charged AAs inside and carry it around. I also have back up AAs, for both my cameras and the flash units. Alkaline AAs are also easy & cheap to buy when there isn't any handy power for charging the BP511, though they don't last too long for digital cameras it's better than nothing when I'm out of power.


Since I have to carry AAs for my flash unit anyway, I'll just use AA for alternative camera power supply. I assume it makes sense.

[Keith B]

Were you using lenses with image stabilizers? I notice my battery runs down a lot quicker when I am.

[Benjamin]

Were you using lenses with image stabilizers? I notice my battery runs down a lot quicker when I am.
<div style="clear: both;"]</div>

I had my 70-200/4L IS with me for the trip, but barely put it on, so not much at all. I will have some opportunities to travel in very near future with possibly just the 24-70L, I'll keep LCD useage at minimum and see how long the battery will last. I'm hoping 1000 shots with 2 BP511As - that will bring the battery life close to my old 400D with two of its own small batteries.

[Benjamin]

Another thing I found is that two of my fully charged batteries delivered in total some 600 pictures may be due to a long time life span. I shot 600 pictures within a week not in a day. When I'm busy at school 600 shots will even take me 2 months to do - I guess that may be the reason why I get poor battery life.


Say, to the extreme, I just hold the shutter to let the camera do 6.3FPS on two fully charged batteries continuously until they run out, I can imagine to get close to or even surpass the rated life since all power will contribute to making pictures and nothing is wasted. I have not done it yet because I don't want to make such a judgement by using up 2000 shutter counts. But anyway, I'll pay attention to that.


Thanks for the inputs guys!