Batteries running down while camera stored

[stuartf287]

Lately both batteries in the BG-ED3 grip on my D60 have been running down while the camera sits in its bag overnight. I certainly turn the camera off before storing it, but I have been leaving the grip turned on as well as an IS lens mounted with IS turned on. I'm using all Canon batteries. Does anyone know whether the grip or an IS lens continues to draw power when the camera is turned off? If I have to turn off IS and the grip every time I'm finished using the camera I'm likely to forget to turn them back on the next time I take it out. Has anyone else noticed this happening?

[PacAce]

Looks like you might have a problem with your grip. I've been using the grip on my 10D for the last week or so and it has never drained overnight. And I leave the grip on all the time. As far as I now, the switch on the grip is only used to determine whether the shutter button on the grip can be used to release the shutter or not. It doesn't determine if power is going to the camera or not.

The only time I can see where leaving the grip switch on can be a problem is when you put the camera away with the main switch on on the camera. In that case, the grip release button could accidently be pressed when the camera is sitting in the bag.

Have you tried to see if the batteries still drain if you don't use the grip? Maybe it's the batteries. Maybe they just won't hold the charge any more and need to be replaced.

[billfranklin]

I read somewhere that the battery will drain if left in the camera even if everything is turned off. When I don't want my battery to drain, I take it out of the camera. I am using the D60. See page 23 in the D60 manual.

Bill F

[robertwgross]

I read somewhere that the battery will drain if left in the camera even if everything is turned off. When I don't want my battery to drain, I take it out of the camera. I am using the D60.

On my D60, I can leave a battery inside but with the main switch to OFF, and the battery does not drain in any significant way. Lots of rechargeable batteries can "self-drain" about 1% per day. If they are new and perfectly charged, then the self-drain might be less. If they are old or imperfectly charged, then the self-drain might be a lot more.

I have one oldest Canon battery, and I think it might self-drain as much as 10% per week. My newest battery doesn't seem to self-drain much at all.

Bill, get a new battery, charge it up and run it down a couple of times, and then repeat your experiment.

---Bob Gross---

[EoSD30fReAk]

I read somewhere that the battery will drain if left in the camera even if everything is turned off. When I don't want my battery to drain, I take it out of the camera. I am using the D60. See page 23 in the D60 manual.

Bill F

They will drain if you leave them in the camera but NOT completely overnight.

i'm with PacAce try storing them overnight outside the camera and see if they still drain completely :P

[JZaun]

My BG-Ed and 2 batteries took 28 days and 600 pic's using a 100-400mm with IS to drain down :D

JZ

[DaveG]

Lately both batteries in the BG-ED3 grip on my D60 have been running down while the camera sits in its bag overnight. I certainly turn the camera off before storing it, but I have been leaving the grip turned on as well as an IS lens mounted with IS turned on. I'm using all Canon batteries. Does anyone know whether the grip or an IS lens continues to draw power when the camera is turned off? If I have to turn off IS and the grip every time I'm finished using the camera I'm likely to forget to turn them back on the next time I take it out. Has anyone else noticed this happening?

I had this exact problem with my 10D and BG-ED3. I'd have fully charged batteries, everything would be turned off on the camera, and yet when I turned the camera on the next day the power levels would be on the half-power indication.

I sent it off to Canon Canada and they returned it, with "No problems we could find." Yet it's like a different camera. I can charge up the batteries and they are fine for days. Now it's pretty self evident that SOMETHING has been changed since the problem is solved. Maybe it was a circuit that stayed on. Maybe it was an "instrumentation" problem where there was plenty of power left but the power level indicator was malfunctioning.

I'm paranoid enough to wonder if Canon has said, "Oh look another 10D (D60, D30 ...) with that power level problem. Fix it but don't explain what the problem is so this doesn't turn into a recall situation."

So I don't know what happened but I'd love to find out. If anyone else has, or has had, this problem please write and tell us what the problem turned out to be.

[robertwgross]

I had this exact problem with my 10D and BG-ED3. I'd have fully charged batteries, everything would be turned off on the camera, and yet when I turned the camera on the next day the power levels would be on the half-power indication.

I sent it off to Canon Canada and they returned it, with "No problems we could find." Yet it's like a different camera. I can charge up the batteries and they are fine for days. Now it's pretty self evident that SOMETHING has been changed since the problem is solved. Maybe it was a circuit that stayed on. Maybe it was an "instrumentation" problem where there was plenty of power left but the power level indicator was malfunctioning.

I'm paranoid enough to wonder if Canon has said, "Oh look another 10D (D60, D30 ...) with that power level problem. Fix it but don't explain what the problem is so this doesn't turn into a recall situation."

So I don't know what happened but I'd love to find out. If anyone else has, or has had, this problem please write and tell us what the problem turned out to be.

OK. There is a problem that can occur on just about every type of electronic circuit known to man, and we'll call it "strange power loss" for lack of a better term. We had it thirty years ago, and often it would occur when there were electrical conductors on a fiberglas circuit board... and humidity was present. The humidity would leave a thin sheet of impure water on the circuit board surface, and this was worsened when other chemicals had been left there previously (like acid from a bad board wash). So, if you have that "electrolyte path" from one conductor to another with DC present, then copper starts to migrate across the gap. If you look at it with a microscope, you can see little green copper salt crystals forming little dendrites across the gap. This makes the circuit "lossy," but to a degree that is completely and totally unpredictable. If it gets bad enough, then you don't even need the microscope to see it. That might manifest itself as a camera that drains its battery overnight, even when main switches are off. Now, it does not have to be inside the camera. It could be inside the battery pack or in a grip. But it will be where DC is across a narrow gap, and humidity is present.

Now, you might ask the question, "What do I do about it?"

Well, there isn't much. You can try to isolate it to one area, like one old battery pack, then "retire" that battery pack. You can try to go in there with a microscope, but that can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. If there is some way to isolate the sensitive parts of a camera from the rugged parts, then you can "zap" a high voltage across the gap, and this will burn out the copper growth. Of course, if you get the high voltage into the sensitive parts of the camera, then the camera is toast. So, I might be tempted to do this to a battery pack or a grip, but not to the main camera itself. We used to have technicians armed with X-Acto knives and Dremel tools, and they would slice and burr into the channels where they suspected the problem was hiding.

One last thing. After years of chasing this in the electronics industry, we had a nickname for the problem. "The green growies."

---Bob Gross---

[vvizard]

Another thing to check out.. How old is your D60? Or more importantly, how old are the batteries? Theese Lithium-based batteries used in new cameras/cellphones and other gadgets needing lots of power, are "close to perfect" in that they take small space, but most importantly, it survives "charge-abuse", meaning you dont need to be carefull with draining them before charging, then charging back up full again. Need to make sure your cam is 100% next time you shoot, but it's still got 80% left? Sure, no problem, pop it into the charger.. Need your battery (which is charging now) right away? Sure, take it out, even though it's maybe only 20% complete from charging.. No problem at all (except less capacity of course).. The downside of this extreme "pleasure" is that a Lithium-Ion based battery have an estimated lifetime of ~ 3years.. No matter how it's used/charged in the meantime.. Store it unused for three years, or "charge-abuse" it all the time. The average lifetime is still three roughly three years.

[DaveG]

I had this exact problem with my 10D and BG-ED3. I'd have fully charged batteries, everything would be turned off on the camera, and yet when I turned the camera on the next day the power levels would be on the half-power indication.

I sent it off to Canon Canada and they returned it, with "No problems we could find." Yet it's like a different camera. I can charge up the batteries and they are fine for days. Now it's pretty self evident that SOMETHING has been changed since the problem is solved. Maybe it was a circuit that stayed on. Maybe it was an "instrumentation" problem where there was plenty of power left but the power level indicator was malfunctioning.

I'm paranoid enough to wonder if Canon has said, "Oh look another 10D (D60, D30 ...) with that power level problem. Fix it but don't explain what the problem is so this doesn't turn into a recall situation."

So I don't know what happened but I'd love to find out. If anyone else has, or has had, this problem please write and tell us what the problem turned out to be.

OK. There is a problem that can occur on just about every type of electronic circuit known to man, and we'll call it "strange power loss" for lack of a better term. We had it thirty years ago, and often it would occur when there were electrical conductors on a fiberglas circuit board... and humidity was present. The humidity would leave a thin sheet of impure water on the circuit board surface, and this was worsened when other chemicals had been left there previously (like acid from a bad board wash). So, if you have that "electrolyte path" from one conductor to another with DC present, then copper starts to migrate across the gap. If you look at it with a microscope, you can see little green copper salt crystals forming little dendrites across the gap. This makes the circuit "lossy," but to a degree that is completely and totally unpredictable. If it gets bad enough, then you don't even need the microscope to see it. That might manifest itself as a camera that drains its battery overnight, even when main switches are off. Now, it does not have to be inside the camera. It could be inside the battery pack or in a grip. But it will be where DC is across a narrow gap, and humidity is present.

Now, you might ask the question, "What do I do about it?"

Well, there isn't much. You can try to isolate it to one area, like one old battery pack, then "retire" that battery pack. You can try to go in there with a microscope, but that can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. If there is some way to isolate the sensitive parts of a camera from the rugged parts, then you can "zap" a high voltage across the gap, and this will burn out the copper growth. Of course, if you get the high voltage into the sensitive parts of the camera, then the camera is toast. So, I might be tempted to do this to a battery pack or a grip, but not to the main camera itself. We used to have technicians armed with X-Acto knives and Dremel tools, and they would slice and burr into the channels where they suspected the problem was hiding.

One last thing. After years of chasing this in the electronics industry, we had a nickname for the problem. "The green growies."

---Bob Gross---

But do you think that this explains the problem with a relatively new camera and battery? And the fact that the fix was a trip from Nova Scotia to Ontario? The air isn't that salty around here!

At the same time this was going on I was getting a lot of false indications when I tried to charge the batteries. I'd put the battery in the charge and it'd blink twice a few times, then three times and then would go solid red. All of this took place in say ten seconds, yet with a battery that I figured needed a charge.

With that in mind I'd take the battery out of the charger and would put it back in. Then the charger would go back to two blinks, but this time for a much longer - as expected - time. Gradually as it charged it would change to the three blinks and then solid red. A couple of times before I figured out this little problem I thought that I had charged batteries when I really didn't.

Once again I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced the same problem? Perhaps it was just a little accidental crud induced insulation on the batteries. After Canon Canada's "no problem, but we fixed it anyway." trip I haven't noticed this false "fully charged" indication anymore. Perhaps they didn't fix that either. :D

[robertwgross]

The downside of this extreme "pleasure" is that a Lithium-Ion based battery have an estimated lifetime of ~ 3years.. No matter how it's used/charged in the meantime.. Store it unused for three years, or "charge-abuse" it all the time. The average lifetime is still three roughly three years.

I can't support this opinion, but I have read elsewhere that the typical lithium ion battery is good for only 300-500 charge cycles. Then it gets funky.

---Bob Gross---

[robertwgross]

But do you think that this explains the problem with a relatively new camera and battery? And the fact that the fix was a trip from Nova Scotia to Ontario? The air isn't that salty around here!


I don't think that anybody stated anything at all about salt air.

Salt air makes it worse, and makes it happen faster, but it does not require salt air to happen.

---Bob Gross---

[vvizard]

I'm only passing on what I've read. Akamera.no which had the story (norwegian photo-page) comparing the three major battery-technologies, and they stated that the "only" problem with li-ion based batteries was the estimated three year survive-time. They also wrote it was not prone to get killed by n charges. Although the "other" Lithium technology was. Not Lithium-Ion but Lithium-Polymer or whatever it's named.. Can't recall from memory..

[DaveG]

But do you think that this explains the problem with a relatively new camera and battery? And the fact that the fix was a trip from Nova Scotia to Ontario? The air isn't that salty around here!


I don't think that anybody stated anything at all about salt air.

Salt air makes it worse, and makes it happen faster, but it does not require salt air to happen.

---Bob Gross---

Uh, I was being funny. Hmm, I guess not.

[robertwgross]

Uh, I was being funny. Hmm, I guess not.

International standards for humor vary greatly. Use a smiley face when in doubt.

---Bob Gross---

[Roger_Salmon]

Are you using the 28-135 IS lens with your D60? There is a known problem with this lens. If you mount the lens with the camera turned off you get higher than normal battery drain. Cycle the camera power and the problem goes away. I learned this from bitter experience.

[DaveG]

Uh, I was being funny. Hmm, I guess not.

International standards for humor vary greatly. Use a smiley face when in doubt.

---Bob Gross---

I will, if you will. :D

[robertwgross]

I will, if you will. :D

I am seldom in doubt about anything.

If I am not sure, then I use words like "I think" or "I believe".

---Bob Gross---

[theoldmoose]

I will, if you will. :D

I am seldom in doubt about anything.

If I am not sure, then I use words like "I think" or "I believe".

---Bob Gross---

Hm. Do we have a smiley for 'ironic'? :roll:

[theoldmoose]

I have a Canon camcorder (a ZR series) that will discharge the battery over a several day period if the battery is left on the camcorder.

I've learned to unplug the battery, if I expect to have a working battery after the camcorder has been stored a couple of weeks.

It would seem that a number of current electronic circuits don't really turn off completely, but instead go into a supposedly really low-power sleep or suspend mode. Most PDA's operate that way, and I suspect that we will be seeing this more and more in camera electronics. I suspect that the Nikon D70 with it's 'instant on' is wired that way.

Even though the 10D, 300D (and my camcorder) exhibit some startup delay, there may be active circuits, even when the unit is switched off. If something hiccups in the power management of those circuits, you end up with a drained battery. A 'cold reset' of the unit (which may have been done at the factory, if the unit was disassembled, and may be forced by removing the date/time battery for some number of minutes), may solve the problem.