Battery reading on G3?

[Dana]

G3 arrived today (Woo-hoo!) and I am stoked.

Plugged it in to charge it up, the focus lock light started blinking.

Now the focus lock light stays on while the camera is plugged in (on, but doesn't blink), which must be how it lets you know it is fully charged.

However, I can't find any display on the camera flip-out LCD or LCD on top of the camera that shows battery level. How do you tell while you're shooting how much power you have left?

Dana

[getg3]

dana wrote:
G3 arrived today (Woo-hoo!) and I am stoked.

Plugged it in to charge it up, the focus lock light started blinking.

Now the focus lock light stays on while the camera is plugged in (on, but doesn't blink), which must be how it lets you know it is fully charged.

However, I can't find any display on the camera flip-out LCD or LCD on top of the camera that shows battery level. How do you tell while you're shooting how much power you have left?

Dana
Dana,
To get full charge you need to wait until the light turns green and you will see an icon on the status panel (see http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canong3/page3.asp). Orange light (no blink) means 90% charged.

[Dana]

Thanks - interesting that I wasn't getting (or didn't see!) any battery reading on the LCD w/the partial (evidently 90%) charge that I had. I must have looked right at it and missed it. When the camera is plugged in there isn't any battery display status at all as far as I can see (I expected maybe a flashing battery icon, or something, in the little LCD).

I plugged it back in to finish charging, and I'll check again when it's fully charged...

Dana

[getg3]

Dana,

From orange to green light will take more than 2 hours. The battery charged rapidly up to 90% and slowing down for the last 10%. So you have more than 2 hours to browse the manual before you snap your first shot:D

[G3guro]

That's the reason why I purchased the Mugen Rapid Smart charger. 1.5 hour....fully charged.

http://www.batteryville.com/products/chargers/scbp511detail.htm

G3guro.

[Dana]

C3guro:

That looks good. I'll have to see how much I recharge before I decide on what to get. I'm going to get a spare battery so I anticipate having one in the cam and another on the charger when at home, so speed shouldn't be a huge issue.

Did you see this one?

http://thomas-distributing.com/lm-msc1.htm

Claims 30 minutes to full charge, but over twice as much ($65) than the 1 1/2 one you referenced.

Dana

[G3guro]

Dana,

Yeah, i saw that kinda of pricey though....plus looks bulky. I'm pretty happy with the Mugen.

G3guro.

[BruceW]

Just a warning on the charge indicator icon; once it changes from the full indication, you do not have much power left to take many more pictures, particularly if you use the LCD.

ie. It is not a "half full" indicator, it is a "very low" indicator.

Bruce

[Dana]

Thanks for the important info - I wouldn't have known that if you hadn't mentioned it!

Dana

[iesrick]

That is a good tip to know since I have never normally run my battery that low, and it isn't documented that I am aware of. Thanks for the warning

[ThomasL]

To me that is the most annoying feature of this camera... the low battery warning that tells you: Oh by the way, I am shutting down now... Can't be very complicated to have a 100/75/50/25/empty display.
At least the battery life is excellent, and spare batteries are cheap.

[Dana]

My first weekend day w/the camera. My son's baseball game, beautiful sunny day, G3, Lensmate adapter and Canon 1.75x tele, and two 256 MB CF cards. I'm ready to rock and roll!!

20 or so minutes into the game, I notice that my battery level warning is showing only one bar. Just switched from full to "game over" w/out any warning, as noted here.

I could not believe it. I had charged the camera on Wednesday at about 1:00 PM and played w/it constantly since then. I should have thought of charging it up before the game, but I was busy and... :-(

Oh well, lesson learned. Ordered a couple spare batteries today so I won't be left in the lurch in the future.

Luckily, there were a couple of power outlets at the park so I went home (2 minutes away) got the adapter and my trusty oly 2020z and used it while I charged the G3 until the 5th inning. :-) C

Kind of funny - especially after I was forewarned here...you can take a G3 owner to knowledge, but you can't make him think.

Dana

[PFlor]

Dana,

What do you think of the Canon tele so far?

[Dana]

Paul:

I haven't even looked at the pics yet. We came home from the game (3:00 - 5:20), I went to the store for some stuff for dinner, cooked dinner, played some board games w/the kids, watched "Galaxy Quest" w/the kids and they went to bed. . .

I'll have time tomorrow to go through them and see. I did forget to up exposure a bit (always did that on the Oly w/the zoom) so I'm expecting them to be a underexposed, but we'll see. I took some test shots in the back yard and they were nice.

I did discover that w/the Lensmate 58mm adapter and the Canon lens there is vignetting sooner than I would like when backing off from zoom - I can zoom back, but not as far as I hoped. Still, much better than w/my Oly 2020z/zoom setup.

Dana

[PFlor]

dana wrote:
I did discover that w/the Lensmate 58mm adapter and the Canon lens there is vignetting sooner than I would like when backing off from zoom - I can zoom back, but not as far as I hoped. Still, much better than w/my Oly 2020z/zoom setup.


I felt the same way at first when I got my Canon tele and hoped I could zoom out further before vignetting. Then I realized this situation would've been worse if I got the Kenko or Tiffen lenses. So no complaints here.

P.S. My real name's Peter not Paul :-)

[Dana]

Peter:

Sorry - typing while talking to my wife and watching TV...I shouldn't try to walk and chew gum at the same time. :-)

More tomorrow.

Dana

[Trumper]

Hello,ive been using my d30 for 18 months or so & had got used to the low battery warning,[normally plenty of shooting left yet] but was caught out with the G3 with the low warning then almost instant shut down.I'm glad ive got into the habit of having a spare battery & c/f card kept next to the camera waiting to go.
The c/f cards are also only half the capacity when used on super fine setting on the g3 compared to the large /fine settings on d30.
Only had the g3 a week so still learning,but great fun & complements the D30 well.

[Dana]

Trumper - glad you're enjoying the G3.

One suggestion - do some comparisons between the fine and super-fine settings to see if it matters for your purposes. This is a subjective area - ranges from folks saying they shoot most or all RAW to others (like me) who shoot all large/fine jpg.

I did several side-by-side 8X10 prints at super fine and fine and found that neither I nor my family could see any significant difference between. So I've opted for large/fine (220+ images on a 256 MB card). Saving storage space on CF cards isn't a critical priority for me, but I don't want to "waste" time writing, uploading, editing, and storing larger files than I need to for my purposes.

I am going to play w/RAW a bit just to see how much fun (or not) that is... :-)

As always, this is a YMMV situation.

Dana