Battery reading on G3?

G3 arrived today (Woo-hoo!) and I am stoked.

Plugged it in to charge it up, the focus lock light started blinking.

Now the focus lock light stays on while the camera is plugged in (on, but doesn't blink), which must be how it lets you know it is fully charged.

However, I can't find any display on the camera flip-out LCD or LCD on top of the camera that shows battery level. How do you tell while you're shooting how much power you have left?

Dana

Dana,
To get full charge you need to wait until the light turns green and you will see an icon on the status panel (see http://www.dpreview.co​m/reviews/canong3/page​3.asp). Orange light (no blink) means 90% charged.

Thanks - interesting that I wasn't getting (or didn't see!) any battery reading on the LCD w/the partial (evidently 90%) charge that I had. I must have looked right at it and missed it. When the camera is plugged in there isn't any battery display status at all as far as I can see (I expected maybe a flashing battery icon, or something, in the little LCD).

I plugged it back in to finish charging, and I'll check again when it's fully charged...

Dana

Dana,

From orange to green light will take more than 2 hours. The battery charged rapidly up to 90% and slowing down for the last 10%. So you have more than 2 hours to browse the manual before you snap your first shot

That's the reason why I purchased the Mugen Rapid Smart charger. 1.5 hour....fully charged.

http://www.batteryvill​e.com …hargers/scbp511​detail.htm

G3guro.

C3guro:

That looks good. I'll have to see how much I recharge before I decide on what to get. I'm going to get a spare battery so I anticipate having one in the cam and another on the charger when at home, so speed shouldn't be a huge issue.

Did you see this one?

http://thomas-distributing.com/lm-msc1.htm

Claims 30 minutes to full charge, but over twice as much ($65) than the 1 1/2 one you referenced.

Dana

Dana,

Yeah, i saw that kinda of pricey though....plus looks bulky. I'm pretty happy with the Mugen.

G3guro.

Just a warning on the charge indicator icon; once it changes from the full indication, you do not have much power left to take many more pictures, particularly if you use the LCD.

ie. It is not a "half full" indicator, it is a "very low" indicator.

Bruce

Thanks for the important info - I wouldn't have known that if you hadn't mentioned it!

Dana

Bruce....thanks

That is a good tip to know since I have never normally run my battery that low, and it isn't documented that I am aware of. Thanks for the warning

To me that is the most annoying feature of this camera... the low battery warning that tells you: Oh by the way, I am shutting down now... Can't be very complicated to have a 100/75/50/25/empty display.
At least the battery life is excellent, and spare batteries are cheap.

My first weekend day w/the camera. My son's baseball game, beautiful sunny day, G3, Lensmate adapter and Canon 1.75x tele, and two 256 MB CF cards. I'm ready to rock and roll!!

20 or so minutes into the game, I notice that my battery level warning is showing only one bar. Just switched from full to "game over" w/out any warning, as noted here.

I could not believe it. I had charged the camera on Wednesday at about 1:00 PM and played w/it constantly since then. I should have thought of charging it up before the game, but I was busy and...

Oh well, lesson learned. Ordered a couple spare batteries today so I won't be left in the lurch in the future.

Luckily, there were a couple of power outlets at the park so I went home (2 minutes away) got the adapter and my trusty oly 2020z and used it while I charged the G3 until the 5th inning. C

Kind of funny - especially after I was forewarned here...you can take a G3 owner to knowledge, but you can't make him think.

Dana

Dana,

What do you think of the Canon tele so far?

Paul:

I haven't even looked at the pics yet. We came home from the game (3:00 - 5:20), I went to the store for some stuff for dinner, cooked dinner, played some board games w/the kids, watched "Galaxy Quest" w/the kids and they went to bed. . .

I'll have time tomorrow to go through them and see. I did forget to up exposure a bit (always did that on the Oly w/the zoom) so I'm expecting them to be a underexposed, but we'll see. I took some test shots in the back yard and they were nice.

I did discover that w/the Lensmate 58mm adapter and the Canon lens there is vignetting sooner than I would like when backing off from zoom - I can zoom back, but not as far as I hoped. Still, much better than w/my Oly 2020z/zoom setup.

Dana

I felt the same way at first when I got my Canon tele and hoped I could zoom out further before vignetting. Then I realized this situation would've been worse if I got the Kenko or Tiffen lenses. So no complaints here.

P.S. My real name's Peter not Paul