What is the battery life expectancy?

[Kiernan]

How long can you expect a battery to live? I have two Canon 511A batteries that are giving up the ghost after about a year. Is this normal? Both will say fully charged on the charger, but the camera says they're less than half and I only get 20 or so photos out of them. One year just seems kinda short to me.

Thoughts?

[John_T]

On what camera?

[Cadwell]

I believe 511s are rated for somewhere in the order of 500 cycles.

[thomascanty]

How long can you expect a battery to live? I have two Canon 511A batteries that are giving up the ghost after about a year. Is this normal?

It depends on how much use they get, but it could be normal. I have four 511's (non-A) that are pretty much dead. Two are a little over a year old and the other two are only five or six months old. They behave the same way you described.

[robertwgross]

How long can you expect a battery to live? I have two Canon 511A batteries that are giving up the ghost after about a year. Is this normal? Both will say fully charged on the charger, but the camera says they're less than half and I only get 20 or so photos out of them. One year just seems kinda short to me.

Thoughts?

I'm not sure which camera this is on, but most of the cameras will have a rating of 300 shots per power charge. If you are getting substantially less (like, 20), then that is a bad sign. It is possible, but unlikely, that your camera has a power fault, so it is either draining good batteries too fast, or it is displaying battery power remaining incorrectly. I would not bet on that. That leaves the charger and the battery pack itself. Chargers can go funky. If one little internal component goes bad, then the charger will cut off too early, so your good battery gets only 50% or less of its normal charge. Then, there are lots of bad batteries out there in the world. Sometimes the battery was bad to begin with. Sometimes it was overcharged early in its life, and that dramatically shortened its life. Sometimes the battery just gets funky with age. Most of them that I've seen have a rated lifetime of 300 or so charge cycles.

---Bob Gross---

[alan sh]

I thought the 511A was a new one. Less than a year old......

Anyway, they should last around 1000 charge cycles. So, assuming 500+ photos per charge, that is loads....

[Longwatcher]

The batteries should have a life expectany of about 2 years given normal useage, however this means a percentage will fail before then and most will last a bit longer (like 5-8 years)

Out of the four BP511s I have one of the two 3rd party BP511s has failed so far, although if I just pulled it off the charger it is fine. Let it sit around for a day or two and the charge is gone, my other batteries don't do that, so it is not the camera.

You might try leaving the battery on the charger for a couple of days, sometimes (but less then half the time) the battery will recover (this is based on my experience with similar batteries. If it does, then whenever that battery gets charged leave it on the charger overnight at a minimum.

If you fully charge it and leave it over night and it still doesn't work then time to get a new battery, this is why I always have two, just in case one decides to fail.

After flash cards, the battery is the next most likely failure point of the camera system.

Just my experience and opinion,

[tim]

With LiIon batteries it's all amount the number of times you charge them. Unless you're doing a heck of a lot of shooting with a small number of batteries, i'd have thought a year was a bit short. My solution is to buy a bunch of cheaper batteries and if they last less than a year, oh well. I've had my $12 ones for a couple of months, they work better than the canon. http:/www.sterlingtek.com

[Kiernan]

Sorry for the lack of and misinformation. They are 511, not 511As as I had thought. And they're being utilized on a Digital Rebel.

I don't think I overly abuse my batteries...they get used just like a normal consumer would use them. In a year, I've taken a tick under 4000 photos. Each battery generally gets recharged after 60 photos or so. That means between the two, they were recharged roughly 33 times each before showing signs of demise. Now that they've been failing, they're getting recharged a heck of a lot more often than before.

One of my batteries is by far worse than the other. The charger says 100% even if it's completely drained in the camera. I'd rather spend $12 on batteries that last a year than $50+ for the same time frame.

[iof]

I think that is far too short a battery life, and since it is happening to both batteries, I wonder whether the fault is with the charger. Could it be over-charging and getting the batteries too hot? That shortens battery life considerably. I think it is worth considering.

[tim]

60 photos per battery is very low - I do hundreds of shots on a charge. I think the manual says 400-600.