Battery life on the 550D rubbish for me.

I'm loving my new 550D but not the battery life (or lack of).

On my 400D I would get about 500 raw shots maybe 450 or so with an image stabilised lens (don't use it all the time).

But the 550D is a different story. I sometimes use live view. mainly when I'm using a tripod for precise focusing. I have shot a little video but I'm averaging 100 shot's per charge I've got a battery grip with 2 batteries coming in the next few days so I will try one of the new batteries in the camera first to see what the difference is.

What are people averaging per charge? I shoot raw, lowish ISO, maybe 20% with IS turned on, no flash, 30% in live view.

Thanks in advance.

Live View uses more power having the LCD on all the time. It will cause battery drain much quicker than without live view.

kdfederer wrote in post #11761873
Live View uses more power having the LCD on all the time. It will cause battery drain much quicker than without live view.

+1

With my grip, averaging 20-60 shots a day without live view it actually lasts me maximum 1 week

So for about 30% of the time I'm loosing that much. It seems like too much loss. I know the LCD uses more power but I'm surprised it's a significant jump when I don't use live view that much.

At this rate I'm gonna have to buy lot's of new batteries.

100 shots?... even with Live View I'd expect at least 4 times that amount.

vermaak wrote in post #11761797
What are people averaging per charge?

Far different luck here. Hundreds of images captured on a single battery, enough to fill an 8GB card. Since moving to a battery grip, the 550D/T2i works for an entire weekend's busy shooting on either two LP-E8 batteries or six NiMH AA batteries. Even use of Live View or occasional video shooting doesn't seem to strain the batteries. No unusual LCD playback or power-off settings used here.

The T2i's power management and battery life has been the best of the 14 digital cameras this writer has owned since 1996.

I have done a day of shooting where I ended up around 1500 clicks on two batteries. And it was still not giving me the low bat warning. During this winter I have shot as few as two hundred on dual batteries before it died. I managed a week long trip shooting JPG's and reviewing the screen frequently. All this was done on NEW batteries.

I would simply think that the OP needs to buy another set of batteries. And maybe turn off the review after each shot.

Strange

I never use live view, full range of iso, RAW + jpg, always IS and I get at least 500 shots per charge. Actually the other day I shot 200+ and I think I only used 25% of the charge.

It's the Live View + video. I once used Live View to do landscape photography, and it cut my battery life by 80%. In three hours of LV I got ~50 shots before a low battery warning, where normally I'd get 500+ on a single battery.

Are you judging this on just one battery, or do you have two or three batteries?

There IS the possibility that you have a defective battery, or even something wrong inside the camera.

I just got my 550d last wednesday charged the battery and have been shooting with it all the way up until monday night before the charge battery started to flash. I did some test video saturday (about 2 hours) without any problems. I only use live view for video only, everything else is through the view finder.

Now while LiveView is a battery killer, that does sound awfully low.

Maybe contact Canon? I'm just thinking... laptop batteries consist of several cells, digital camera ones too? If so, maybe 1 or 2 cells failed?

r31ncarnat3d wrote in post #11763104
It's the Live View + video. I once used Live View to do landscape photography, and it cut my battery life by 80%. In three hours of LV I got ~50 shots before a low battery warning, where normally I'd get 500+ on a single battery.

3 hours on Live View is actually quite a lot - I'm trying to remember how much my 5D MK II needed recording video... I think it was 10% out of two batteries for 20min of video, but could have been 15% too....

-> On that note though, was that LiveView without a break or every now and then.

Have about 250 would be about normal with liveview shooting all the time with IS. But you might have a bad battery. I would call canon about it.

DetlevCM wrote in post #11763246
3 hours on Live View is actually quite a lot - I'm trying to remember how much my 5D MK II needed recording video... I think it was 10% out of two batteries for 20min of video, but could have been 15% too....

-> On that note though, was that LiveView without a break or every now and then.

It was Live View for 45 mins, a 15 minute break with Live View off, then repeat two more times.

What happened was that I was doing landscape photography and after ~45 minutes I'd break down my gear, go somewhere else, then set up again ~15 minutes later, so in reality about 2:15 of LV on constantly with ~50 pictures taken before low warning.

Although disclaimer: I use the BP-511As, not LP-E5s.