A70 battery problem

[dsonn]

My 18-month-old Canon A70 is giving "change the battery pack" message and turning off constantly, even though I have fully charged three different sets of rechargeable batteries and rotate them as soon as the message comes on. Sometimes with this message I pull out one charged set and put the same back in, and it works fine for quite awhile, then repeats later. I imagine this is a problem in the camera battery power circuit or something. Never happens when plugged into the computer. Any suggestion what to do or where to go?

[Don Schaeffer]

I own the A70 too. I havent had any problems yet. How disheartening.

[snappychic]

Hello,

I am new to digital photography and I use an A75. But... I would have to ask how old are your battery packs that you're using. I have read that eventually, they will lose their ability to hold a charge. I guess nothing lasts forever. :confused:

[ukcommando]

The "problem" is that these cameras that use AA cells tend to be designed on the basis of conventional alkaline batteries which are 1.5v each giving a total of 6v.

Rechargeables have a standard voltage of 1.2V per cell (1.3v for a short time when they have just been charged) giving a total output of 4.8v.

So if you are unlucky (and it will vary slightly from camera to camera), you can find that the output voltage of your rechargeables is borderline as far as the camera circuitry goes.

You can easily test if this is the issue by trying the camera with a fresh set of suitable alkaline cells and see how it goes.

Assuming this confirms the problem, if you want to stick to rechargeables and your current rechargeables are Ni-Cad, then go out and get yourself a set of decent quality high capacity (more than 1600 mAH) Nickel Metal Hydride cells.

Ni-MH cells run (slightly) higher output voltage than Ni-Cad and don't suffer the dreaded memory effect from repeated charging.

I had a similar issue early on with my Powershot A20, but doing the above sorted it out fine!

Cheers

Dave
ukcommando