Powershot A80: Change the Battery Pack

[Ian O'Rourke]

My Powershot A80 has worked fine until this week, it now keeps coming up with the following message when I turned it on:

Change the Battery Pack

It does not do it all the time, but it does it about 80% of the time. If I keep pressing the power button it will eventually turn on but the LCD screen is turned off and I have to press the DISP. button to get it on. It then seems to take photos fine.

I've tried discharging the batteries completely and charging them again but it is still doing it.

I've had the batteries and the camera since January, but it's only be used on about six trips - so it's not been heavily used.

Any ideas?

[Alnath]

Try some different batteries. Discharging batterys fully on a regular basis will kill them, only Ni-Cads can take such hammer and no one uses them anymore due to low capacity.

[Ian O'Rourke]

Hell, I've only used these batteries about five times, and I've only discharged them this once in response to this message on the camera (since I'd not used them for a couple of months, I thought they may need a clean out).

I'll investigate this route, but I can't believe they've gone already. I might as well have used non-rechargeable batteries :)

Oh the pains.

[Alnath]

But you are presuming the batteries were fighting fit to start with. It may well be the camera as fault but it makes sense to check out the cheapest bit before you start messing around trying to get the camera replaced.

If you are leaving them in the camera for months on end this will give the batteries a deep discharge, not only is this highly destructive to the batteries it also means they will need around 5 recharge cycles to get back to some sort of reasonable charge holding capacity. If you are not going to be using them within a couple of weeks take them out and give them a charge once a month even if they have not been used.

[Ian O'Rourke]

The batteries are only in the camera when they are being used, otherwise they are in a cupboard.

I'll have to hunt around for another set or buy some. The weird thing is, despite giving this message, the message would not always come up and it lasted five days with no total loss of power.

[Jon]

Rechargable batteries will "self-discharge" at a fairly rapid rate. That is, they can go dead sitting on the shelf for a month or so, without doing anything. If you only use the camera occasionally, see if you can find some Energizer Lithium throw-aways. Expensive ($8-10/4 pack) but they last forever it seems.

[cheewooi]

I have this kinda problem before and all I am sure is batteries problem! There's a possibilities that your batteries going to an end of it's life~! This is what i experienced it! :lol: