Judy,
Sorry to hear of your frustrations. I use a G3 (nearly identical to the
G5, except 4 Mp) as a second to my 10-D DSLR, and my results are very
different from yours. The batteries I have (three, all Canon brand -- one
came with each camera, and I bought a spare when I first got the 10-D) seem
to last forever in either camera, though not as long in the DSLR as the G3.
I had to pull the G3 out right now to find out where the battery indicator
is -- I never look at it in real life.
I can fill several 256 Mb cards on a charge, and I delete over half of the
shots I take. When I recharge, I usually find (based on recharge time)
that the battery still had 1/4 to 1/2 charge remaining. I shoot
exclusively RAW format, and like you, do most of my framing with the LCD
monitor. I use the built-in flash only occasionally (I have several of
Canon's nifty 550-EX strobes that work full auto with both digicams, so if
I'm serious about flash I use those).
So -- what draws battery power? Predominantly, the LCD and the flash.
Writing to the card takes some, too, but this shouldn't be a significant
drain if you're using solid state memory (that is, unless you're using the
little IBM disk drive cards -- what do they call them -- MicroDrives?).
The auto-focus and zoom motors.
You mentioned that the flash was going off sometimes -- is it possible it's
going off way more than you are aware? (In some operating modes, the
camera likes to use fill flash on almost every shot.) Do you take a long
time to compose shots with the monitor? Are you in continuous-focus mode,
so the motor is running a lot? How about reviewing shots? I think the
factory default post-shot monitor time is 2 seconds -- have you reset this
to a longer time? Or maybe you just have bum batteries. There have been
some reports of very low capacity from some Chinese batteries, but your
Canon battery should be OK. Possibly, the G5 is, for some reason, much
more of a current hog than the G3, but I've not heard this from other G5
users.
Best regards,
etienne
Received on Sat Jun 12 19:47:12 2004
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