Digital Camera Battery Life“How to make it last longer.”

Digital camera battery life is one of the most important factors in your enjoyment of photography.

Neglect it and you run the risk of missing that important shot.

Like other portable consumer electronic devices, digital cameras use batteries as their power source. All batteries have one major

drawback: they only last for a limited time. In this article we will explain what camera features consume the most energy and how

you can squeeze more life time out of your digital camera battery.

There are many types of battery. Your digital camera might be using disposable batteries or maybe it uses rechargeable ones. Rechargeable batteries use a variety of technologies such as

nickel cadmium, lithium ion or lithium polymer. Battery technology has advanced in the last years but digital camera

battery life time is still considerably short. It is very frustrating to come across a great photo opportunity just to find out that you

have run out of batteries.

When it comes to power consumption not all digital camera features are equal. Some of the digital camera greatest features are high

energy consumers. By knowing which features consume the most energy you will be able to avoid or minimize using those features

save energy and get more life time from your batteries.

The other big energy consumers are the motors. Digital cameras have motors that move the lenses either to change the zoom or to focus. Motors consume relatively a lot of energy when moving the digital camera optical components. And finally the flash is a

big energy consumer too. Shooting photos using the flash consumes more energy that shooting photos without flash. So

what can you do in order to minimize power consumption and get more life time from your batteries?

Turn off the LCD and use the viewfinder: If your camera has one, use the optical viewfinder instead of the LCD for composing your

photos. Using the camera menus, disable the LCD by turning it off. Since the LCD consumes a lot of energy every time you are using it to take a photo or to look at your objects and compose a photo you are wasting energy. Only use the LCD when you must

for example when taking an overhead photo when the optical viewfinder is not usable.

Minimize photo previewing: The LCD consumes a lot of energy. When you preview photos on the LCD you are wasting digital

camera battery life.Digital Camera Battery Life 3

Only use the LCD to view photos when you need to do so for the benefit of the next photos shooting – for example to check if a

composition was right or if the lighting was good. Do not use the LCD to view photos for fun or to show photos to others. Wait until you are on your computer or in your office or home to do

that.

Do not use continuous focus when not necessary: Every time your camera focuses it consumers energy. The motors that move the optical

components in order to focus consume a lot of energy. You cannot avoid focusing of course but you can avoid focusing that is not necessary. For example, your digital camera can be set to continuous or single focus. For moving objects such as in sport events continuous focus is used so

your can stay focused on the object until you are ready to take the photo. In those cases as long as you press the shutter button half way down the camera will continue to focusing on the object. To save energy minimize that time to the minimum necessary. For example if you plan to shoot a photo of a runner at point A only press the shutter when he gets close to that point. Holding the shutter button down and following the runner for

a longer time than needed to capture him at point A wastes a lot of energy.