A problem that many people run into with their cameras is the length of their battery life. Most DSLRs has stellar battery life, but when it comes to little point-and-shoots some problems occur due to the smaller size and also general ways that consumers and users overall use their cameras. Here are some pointers and things to keep in mind when using your camera if you want to keep the battery life ticking.
First off, you need to realize that most of your battery power goes towards powering the lens and the LCD. Keep those in mind as we go through this list.
Don’t Turn it On and Off
Many people are prone to doing this. When you turn the camera on and off, it requires a jolt of energy to power the camera and extend the lens out. It’s a bad habit to turn your camera on, take a picture, turn it off and when you want to take another picture turn it back on again continuously. You may think that you’re saving battery power but you’re actually killing it. Just leave it on and let it go to sleep unless you don’t see yourself taking another picture for at least another half hour.
Try To Keep The Lens At One Position
Extending and retracting the lens requires lots of battery pull. In this case, keep the phrase, “Zoom with your feet” in mind. You’re going to need to move the camera back and forth from your subject to get the image you want. Use the zoom only when you absolutely have to. Using leg power is much better on your camera than using battery power.
Let it Go to Sleep
As mentioned earlier, this is important. I’ve seen lots of people that wake their camera up immediately after it’s gone to sleep. This is also known as powering down. It powers down to save battery life and offers you the convenience of just pressing a button to turn it back on again. So give your camera a rest.
Dim the Screen
All cameras have this option: no exceptions. It can be found in the menu or your manual. When you dim the screen, the camera pulls less battery life and therefore prolongs the usability of your camera on a single charge. This is one of the most effective ways to save battery life and everyone should do so.
Only Delete Images When You Need To
When you’re deleting images, you’re using battery life and processor power (more on this in a second). This is much more minor but people either don’t delete at all or go through and delete one by one. Only do the latter if you have to. Otherwise, just shoot at a smaller resolution to conserve space. The best thing to do is to get your image correctly in the first place and don’t machine gun shoot. Lots of people love taking the same picture of their dog over and over again only to show them off to friends who see the same image over and over again.
Use Less Processor Power
This means that you should do things like buy a faster memory card like an Eye-Fi Pro or a SanDisk and shoot at a lower resolution JPEG or RAW format. The processor in a camera works the same as the processor in a smartphone or your computer. When it’s doing too much it overheats.
Keep it Cool
As said above, don’t overheat your camera. Many people tend to leave their camera in their cars. When you do that, it’s the equivalent of putting it in an oven or if the outside is cold, a freezer. You need to keep your camera at its normal operating temperatures.
If You Can, Use an External Flash or No Flash
Using on-camera flash not only degrades image quality but also pulls a hefty amount of battery power. If your camera has a hot shoe for mounting a flash, do so. If not, turn off your flash unless you really need it. This also means you need to hold very still.
What other tips can you add to this?