A300 battery life or no battery life ??

[arde]

Hi all,

Yesterday my wife received her Canon A300.
So, she does not have to borrow my 10D anymore.
That's the good news.

After 5 minutes of playing with it, she rang me at the office saying thet the fresh Alkaline batteries that came with the camera were already gone.

No big deal, since I had 4 AA Powerex 1850 MaH rechargables ready to use. After maximum 30 minutes, the first set was empty, the second set also too half an our....

I have used these very same batteries in my previously owned Canon powershot G5 and I could take picture the whole day and then there was still power in the batteries!

The G5 has a bigger LCD and an optical zoom, which both drain more power I would say.

Is this very short battery life 'normal' for the A300?

Thanks,
Armand

[JohnnyE]

How could you possibly use AA batteries in your G5? Regardless, the A300 should give you about 75 images when using the LCD display and 210 images if not using the LCD display using those batteries. If you always use the flash it could be considerably less.

[VPX]

Hi Folks.
I got my 300D for some time now.
I can at LEAST take 150 pictures with flash and several hundered without flash. Means I can work for at least 4 hours with the camera on one battery pack.
There must be something wrong with the battery you are using.
Kind regards.

[athomas917]

Use rechargeable Nimh batteries. Any others and your cam will just eat through them. Better yet, just use an ac adaptor if using one is practical.

[Johnra]

It's likely that the batteries are not to blame. I have been using 1850mAh NiMH batteries in my A300, and according to the spec. the camera wants a nominal 1.2V from each. This morning my batteries measured at 1.29V open-circuit, 1.27V under 120mA load, and yet the camera still refused to perform.

From this I deduce there is a fault with the voltage measurement system in this camera (mine and obviously others too), but it would be useful to talk to a technical expert at Canon to confirm what the camera requires from the power source. Does anyone have a useable contact?