Wasia Hack Battery Life

[DNHayashida]

I have a Digital Rebel with the Wasia Hack installed. The reason I wanted to use the hack was for FEC and 3200 ISO. I take a lot of pictures of basketball, and a lot of the gyms aren't very well lit. I don't use flash and I wanted the high ISO to keep the shutter speeds up to eliminate motion blur as much as I could. My battery started going dead at around 160 pictures taken right after I installed the hack, but another factor was I started using 3200 ISO a lot.

So I tested it. Last weekend the battery went dead at 157 pictures at a basketball game, all of them taken at 3200 ISO. Last night I charged the same battery, set the camera at 100 ISO, all other settings the same (JPG - too many pictures to take them RAW), and started taking pictures of everything in my living room. I tried to simulate the same conditions as in the basketball game by firing off continuous bursts occasionally and changing the focus a lot - picture of the floor, the close wall, then the far wall, etc. No flash.

I gave up at 436 pictures. I viewed all the pictures on the LCD once and reformatted the CF card once. The battery was showing partially depleted - the last block still black, but clearly the high ISO setting uses the battery a lot quicker than low ISO.

I'm quite sure the Wasia hack does not use the battery quicker - but the high 3200 ISO does.

Darryl Hayashida

[alan sh]

If it is like the 10D, then 3200 is digitally pushing the light levels up (amplifying the signal). So, it will use more power. I'm not sure how linear it is, but possibly the things which use the battery the most are the sensor and writing to the card. Now, the sensor is workingmuch harder (twice as hard maybe ?) and 3200ISO produces bigger images (assuming jpeg) than does lower iso's.

So, you may have your answers just there !

Alan

[cmM]

well it does make sense
high ISO -> more sensitivity -> more "charge" on the sensor -> more electricity -> less batery life

[Jon]

Were you using the same lens as well? Different lenses need different amounts of power to focus and to adjust the diaphragm.

[Jon, The Elder]

Yer' partly right. Higher ISO = more info to process = larger file size = more work for the processor = more drain on the battery.

[DNHayashida]

Were you using the same lens as well? Different lenses need different amounts of power to focus and to adjust the diaphragm.

Everything was the same - except the ISO setting.
Darryl

[dhbailey]

But you didn't do a control batch of pictures with a freshly charged battery and ISO3200. Perhaps in your living room, even at 3200 you could still get 436 pictures or more. Or if you shot at the basketball game at ISO100 you'd only get 157 pictures.

I'd suggest you perform the same test in your living room with a freshly charged battery and see what picture count you get. Shooting at ISO100 at another basketball would be an enormous waste of time, but if you shoot at 3200 in your living room, with all else being equivalent to the test you did at 100 you'd be more certain about things.

[eastcoast909]

If you have the hack were you also using the AI AF feature?? Is your lens in constant movement trying to stay in focus at the Basketball game?

[DNHayashida]

If you have the hack were you also using the AI AF feature?? Is your lens in constant movement trying to stay in focus at the Basketball game?

Nope, I don't use that feature, it doesn't work very well. It will track with the button half pressed, but to take the picture you have to release the button momentarily and full press quickly. One little miss timing and the picture doesn't get taken. Too many missed pictures. AI servo hardly ever kicks in either, so it's always One Shot focus for me.
Darryl Hayashida