Erratic behaviour of BP-511

[psychedelic_never]

Hi all,
Yesterday i had been to 1000 Islands and had my DRebel along. The battery was fully charged the night before but the next day after 100 snaps the low battery indication started flashing and the camera went dead :x. Turned it off and back on but no change. Then i removed the battery and put it back again now it showed 50% charge again after 25 snaps with 20% flash the same happened. Had to do the same to get it running. After that there were no issues with the battery while reviewing the images for around 1 hour. Now i'm wondering if i've got a bad battery or is this normal. :?

Thanks

[robertwgross]

It isn't normal.

Your symptoms could have been caused by anything. It could be the fault of the battery, the battery charger, the camera itself, the CF card, or even the lens. Your best bet is to take each of those five items and start swapping one at a time until you find the culprit. The CF card and battery charger are the least likely. Operator error could be at work also.

Battery life on one charge is affected by many things, including the number of shots, the time spent with the rear display lit up, the use of internal flash, the use of IS lenses, air temperature, age of the battery, and minor other things.

---Bob Gross---

[Ogrt48]

Do you have the hack installed? I've heard about many people having this trouble and it's always in the cases I know of only started after they installed the hack. Same with my rebel too, it does it rarely anymore though.

[DReb-MO]

Do you have the hack installed? I've heard about many people having this trouble and it's always in the cases I know of only started after they installed the hack. Same with my rebel too, it does it rarely anymore though.

Never read that anywhere. I've had the hack installed for months and never experienced anything remotely like this. Strange indeed.

[psychedelic_never]

Thanks guys. No i don't have the hack installed. Also i know that lower tempertures do decrease the battery life, but it was not that cold around 11o C. Hmm i guess i'll have to do it the hard way. Or better still get a spare one, just in case...

[robertwgross]

When I first bought my Canon digital, a spare battery was the first extra thing that I bought. Now, I never go anywhere with the camera without at least one spare battery. Last weekend, I kept two spares handy, since the air temperature was below 0 C. The camera and first battery held up fine even with the temperature down to about -10 C. At that point, the photographer's fingers become the weak link of the chain.

---Bob Gross---

[samdring]

At that point, the photographer's fingers become the weak link of the chain.---Bob Gross---

Another reason why film is better than digital :?:

[DaveG]

Hi all,
Yesterday i had been to 1000 Islands and had my DRebel along. The battery was fully charged the night before but the next day after 100 snaps the low battery indication started flashing and the camera went dead :x. Turned it off and back on but no change. Then i removed the battery and put it back again now it showed 50% charge again after 25 snaps with 20% flash the same happened. Had to do the same to get it running. After that there were no issues with the battery while reviewing the images for around 1 hour. Now i'm wondering if i've got a bad battery or is this normal. :?

Thanks

I had battery issues with my 10D as well. I'd charge the two batteries (BG-ED3 vertical grip) - fully I thought - and the next day it'd show a half charge.

Sometimes I'd put a battery (which I thought was no better than half charged) into the charger. The charger's red indicator light would glow continuously like the battery required no additional charging at all. Yet, if I removed the same battery and reinstalled it in the charger it'd give me the steady one or two blinks indicating less than half power.

One day after the camera was fully charged at 10:00 at night, and then completely dead at 9:00 in the morning without a shot being taken, the whole mess was sent to Canon Canada, where "nothing" was done. Yet the camera came back working as it should have. No funny battery charge problems and the fully charged batteries last all day now.

As I wrote here a few days ago, I think that this was a serious problem with the 10D that Canon fixed under warantee; but didn't make particularly public out of fear of the "recall" word. Your problem seems remarkably similar to mine so I'd shoot the thing off to Canon and see what they can make of it.

[robertwgross]

DaveG, from your posting, I can't tell whether you suspected the camera, the batteries, or the charger.

---Bob Gross---

[DaveG]

DaveG, from your posting, I can't tell whether you suspected the camera, the batteries, or the charger.

---Bob Gross---

I suspect that it may have been the charger AND the camera, but mostly the camera. The batteries were virtually new at the time, I have the same ones now and I doubt if much repair can be done to a battery in any case.

What I think happened was that Canon fixed the power consumption problem. Something was draining the batteries even when everything was switched off. Things like the clock and date and so forth are powered by the CR2016 battery so there is no slow leak from the BP-511's to explain the drain. Perhaps this funny drain affected the batteries and that caused the "full charge" indication, or maybe the contacts to the batteries needed to be cleaned.

But I don't get this false "Fully Charged" indication out of the charger since the camera came back; and I don't remember the last time the battery consumption indicator indicated half power, even with two full 512 cards full of images. As I say Canon fixed whatever the problem was, they just didn't explain it to me.

[robertwgross]

When we get into a situation where batteries seem to drain unpredictably fast, we hardly know whether to chase a battery problem, a charger problem, a camera body problem, a lens problem, or a user problem.

I've heard of very few cases where a camera body develops a logic fault. This would show up by the camera not going into sleep mode when the switch is on. Or, it might show up by a drain even with the switch off. There aren't many parts of a camera body that remain powered even after the switch is off. One, however, is the interface to the CF card. On mine, and probably others, the CF card can be written to and the switch turned off, and the write session continues until it finishes.

When the main switch is off, then I believe that kills all power to the lens, so I wouldn't worry about that.

A very strange fault can occur in just about any electronic device that uses battery power. An electrolytic deposit of conductive green copper salt forms between two circuit board traces. Normally it only happens when the circuit board had been improperly cleaned and rinsed during its fabrication. After DC power is on those traces, the deposit forms unpredictably. Sometimes it shows symptoms of a slow power drain if it hits the right part of the power circuit. This could be measured with a digital voltmeter, if you suspected it. Put the meter between the battery power (from the DC cord on the charger?) to the camera inside the battery case. With the main power switch off, there should be zero drain if it is normal.

It is possible for this weird deposit to be inside the plastic battery holder. So it would look like the battery is self-draining just sitting on the table. I don't know how you would find that one without tearing the battery holder apart.

At a repair facility, if a really good troubleshooter thinks that he has this weird copper deposit problem going on, he runs a sharp knife blade in the empty space between the two traces he suspects. Sometimes a rough pencil eraser will do it. A burr bit on a Dremel tool is for extreme cases.

---Bob Gross---