1Dx single-shot power consumption

For the 1Dx owners, what is your average Single-Shot AF shot count vs battery usage? I know that there are stories of people who are using Servo with high speed drive getting 2000+ shots per battery, but it's odd that my 1Dx has used 10% on 51 shots. Doesn't matter what lens, 35/1.4 - 24-70/2.8L - 70-200/2.8L II IS - Zeiss 21 ZE. Doesn't matter if IS is used or not. Tried three different batteries so far with three different vintages, one battery with 2 years on it and a few hundred cycles all the way to a new battery (3 months old) with about a dozen charge cycles. Even gets the same using some old LP-E4s from my 1Ds3. Of course, Canon CPS has no clue about what the expected battery life should be ("it'll vary with usage").

My shakedown test pattern is using auto focus "normally" as in a typical studio environment: half-tap shutter to wake camera, lining up the center AF point, pressing back AF button until it beeps and firing. No extended AF tracking/holding, no AE locking to keep the meter on. Image review of 2 seconds and then a half-tap of shutter to turn off screen. Continue shooting about 10 frames with about 5 seconds in between shots, then letting it turn off on its own. The auto-power off of 1 minute was then allowed to kick in. All of my 51 test shots were low ISO 100, studio lit shots. Same batteries and lenses on my 1Ds3 are only moving about 2% for 51 shots in the same sequence.

Shooting in a full studio environment, about 76F air temp. Tried 3 different 1000x cards, Transcend/Lexar/Sandis​k 32GB UDMA7 (new gen) cards. Camera wasn't tethered, LAN was disabled, no GPS or other external accessory attached. Just a PW Max on the hotshoe for studio light triggering.

Yeah, the 1Dx has more processors, etc. But with that kind of draw, that would only make about 500 shots per battery in single-shot mode. With the 1Ds3, I was averaging 1500-1800 shots per battery in studio with the same usage pattern. The camera had just come back from CPS with a new shutter and new FP PCB, and I just resolved a weird sleep mode power drain caused by the 2.0.7 firmware.

Are any of you other 1Dx users getting the same battery trend for one-shot/single frame usage (about 500 shots average)?

Here's the 4th test attempt (newest battery):

Can you post a photo with full EXIF attached? Maybe we can find some reason in the EXIF.

Not sure what the EXIF data has anything to do with power consumption, but sure...here's one straight out of camera:

The only thing that I see in the EXIF that could draw extra power(not much) is that AELock is on. Beyond that, your 2 second image review on every image is going to draw some power too. Try turning these things off and retesting.

Do you own a 1Dx? AE Lock won't draw any more power than any other exposure, the meter is on, no matter what. AE Lock is always on when the shutter is half-down on this configuration. And on my 1D3, 1Ds3, 1D4 as well. And, reviewing an image, whether for 2 seconds or 10 draws power, yes. Not that much.

Anybody else who actually owns a 1Dx that could give me actual data on what their levels are percentage vs shot count?

docholliday_sc001 wrote in post #17615528
Do you own a 1Dx? AE Lock won't draw any more power than any other exposure, the meter is on, no matter what. AE Lock is always on when the shutter is half-down on this configuration. And on my 1D3, 1Ds3, 1D4 as well. And, reviewing an image, whether for 2 seconds or 10 draws power, yes. Not that much.

Anybody else who actually owns a 1Dx that could give me actual data on what their levels are percentage vs shot count?

No I don't. Sorry just trying to help. Hope you get it sorted.

I suspect it's more to do with how the 1DX measures/estimates the remaining battery capacity. Lithium Ion batteries tend to drop in voltage very quickly at first before levelling out. Just keep on shooting. How many shots do you get between 90% and 80%?

I leave mine in servo AF and easily get 24 hours running and a 1000+ shots before the battery drops to 1 bar.

No, it's not the way it estimates battery usage. When it hits low, it shuts down like it should. Like I said, servo doesn't chew much battery, but single shot does, especially if you let it timeout between shots.

Anyways, I think I've resolved the issue. I flashed the firmware down to 2.0.3 (yes, despite the 2.0.7 warning), cleared the settings (as much as possible), formatted the card. Same consumption. Then, I re-flashed 2.0.7, cleared settings, formatted the card. As of the last test, I got 130 shots from a fresh-off-charge battery and got to 96%. Let the camera sit for about 2 hours - was still at 96%. Went and shot another 100 frames, 92%. Much better and inline with what is expected (and the CIPA rating). That was about an hour ago. Right now, the battery is holding at 92%.

Looks like it was a massive firmware fail on Canon's part (not the firmware itself, but the flash/clear process bootstrapper). I still find it funny and odd that Canon shows both the 2.0.3 and 2.0.7 firmware on their page (when they only show the newest on other cameras) and that there are two banners on the page that say "Firmware 2.0.3 now available!" (even though the 2.0.7's been up for 6 months. Almost seems like they know that 2.0.7 will have problems and don't want to admit it.

I don't know how many images you take a year with your 1DX but here's my theory.

The 1DX is not a studio camera. OK, this won't help explain anything but bear with me. My view is the 1DX is a machine that needs work. Hundreds of images per day or even thousands and the battery and the camera will support that. Show it a tiny fraction of it's capacity and the readout will be incorrect.

I do have a 1DX and to be quite honest shooting 100,000 images per year is a walk in the park for it. 5,000 images on a weekend every weekend is more like it's intended market. These are pieces of kit designed to be thrashed and the batteries will last and last.

For instance I had an error warning saying a considerable power loss was experienced whilst stored and I must speak to CAnon servicing immediately about it. Sod that, I just recharged it and went out and shot 2500 frames of a National Cycling Road Race. Damn battery didn't complain after that ...

Scott_online wrote in post #17616133
I suspect it's more to do with how the 1DX measures/estimates the remaining battery capacity. Lithium Ion batteries tend to drop in voltage very quickly at first before levelling out. Just keep on shooting. How many shots do you get between 90% and 80%?

I leave mine in servo AF and easily get 24 hours running and a 1000+ shots before the battery drops to 1 bar.

By the way, lithiums don't tend to drop quickly and level out. The percentage algorithm should compensate even if it did. My 1D3 and 1Ds3 were both very linear in drain, as well as the batteries on my phones and laptops.

Originally, before I started suspecting firmware, I had cut up one of the AC adapter slugs for the 1D3 and made a diagnostic tap for the 1Dx so that I could monitor current draw and voltage level of the battery via graphing DVM. I wanted to be sure that the drain was legit and scientifically show the level of drain was higher than normal to Canon should I have to send it in and to prevent their techs from returning the camera as "in-spec" arbitrarily. The drain was very linear, just steep (when shooting) and (originally) excessive (when the camera was sleeping). That test stayed with the battery and camera until the battery reached 40% - the drain was actually very, very linear.

It's not a studio camera, but since the issue is about how the battery is "draining", the same battery in a 1Ds3 (which "is" a studio camera) doesn't have the issue. Just because a device was designed for high usage doesn't mean that it will require such usage to operate correctly. I actually don't shoot high number of frames for anything, coming from a LF and Hasselblad background, I'm very conservative on frame usage.

With that said, I do shoot long sequences at 12fps when I shoot dancers and other rapid movement items. The 1Dx becomes a studio camera quickly when you have a set of Brons cross-firing at full frame rate capturing dancers doing rapid sequences. When I shot weddings (which I refuse to do anymore), I only needed about 300 frames to tell the story. And, I would use about 280 of those frames in the final album buildout.

Anyways, as you can see from my post above, it's resolved - bad firmware bootstrapper and/or firmware. Multiple flashes of the same firmware/previous firmware resolved it. My diagnostic slug I built confirms that the sleeping current of the camera is now about 1/10 of what it was before all the flashing.

docholliday_sc001 wrote in post #17616157
It's not a studio camera, but since the issue is about how the battery is "draining", the same battery in a 1Ds3 (which "is" a studio camera) doesn't have the issue. Just because a device was designed for high usage doesn't mean that it will require such usage to operate correctly. I actually don't shoot high number of frames for anything, coming from a LF and Hasselblad background, I'm very conservative on frame usage.

With that said, I do shoot long sequences at 12fps when I shoot dancers and other rapid movement items. The 1Dx becomes a studio camera quickly when you have a set of Brons cross-firing at full frame rate capturing dancers doing rapid sequences. When I shot weddings (which I refuse to do anymore), I only needed about 300 frames to tell the story. And, I would use about 280 of those frames in the final album buildout.

Anyways, as you can see from my post above, it's resolved - bad firmware bootstrapper and/or firmware. Multiple flashes of the same firmware/previous firmware resolved it. My diagnostic slug I built confirms that the sleeping current of the camera is now about 1/10 of what it was before all the flashing.

DOC,
Do you have any suggestions for us 7d ii owners who have pretty identical behavior as you described with your1dx using our 1.0.4 firmware? My issue however, is that my camera was shipped with latest firmware so i would guess no upgrade process uses.

gschlact wrote in post #17618716
DOC,
Do you have any suggestions for us 7d ii owners who have pretty identical behavior as you described with your1dx using our 1.0.4 firmware? My issue however, is that my camera was shipped with latest firmware so i would guess no upgrade process uses.

Since my experience was extrapolated from 2 weeks of testing, hacking, and the thought that if it was going back to Canon again, it was going back dead, I can't really give a solid procedure that worked. My results were based on knowledge from working on high-end electronics and large computers (workstation/servers) where it seems that firmware upgrades don't take the first time recently. In those devices, it's usually best to reset CMOS/clear settings before flashing, then again after the flash completes. It's also known that some cars have the same issue updating firmware in the ECU - multiple flashes of the same thing required to get it "right". There are also other cameras where that is a known issue (Leica, Sony).

However, Canon's don't have a true reset. The whole "Clear all settings", "clear custom settings", "remove both batteries" doesn't actually clear the settings in the camera 100%. In the case of the 1Dx, that was easy to see as doing all of that still resulted in the copyright and owner info showing in camera. That means that some data is in flash ROM, others in volatile. Their bootstrapper/flash utility that's built-in camera should do a full factory reset as the last step in a flash process, which would likely solve this issue.

It seemed that multiple passes of doing this somehow cleared some internal settings that we cannot see - Canon service must have an app that does it from the built-in firmware flash bootstrapper and/or some hardware point on the motherboard to do such (such as a JTAG like tap).

The other problem is that it seems the newer cameras are really sensitive to card type. Despite having a fast UDMA6 600x card in at first, the camera would show the busy light for 3 seconds when powering up from sleep. The new UDMA7 1066x Lexar that's in now only shows that busy light for < .5 seconds. A "slow" card might keep the card controller from sleeping, as the firmware settings may timeout waiting for the card to finish writes (that would be a firmware bug) and not shut it down appropriately ("orphaning"). I had both a power-consumption and sleep/idle drain issue. The different card possibly resolved only one of the issues, as the single-shot consumption was still high afterwards.

I'm not familiar with the 7D2 (I've always had 1-series bodies), but the hardware must have similarities - the transmissive LCD and menu structure means that some general components are probably shared; maybe even some firmware code as well.

I would say to check your card light write time (to see if your card is "slow"), then try to clear your settings/custom settings multiple times - do not configure your camera back yet (just leave at default), and reflash the 1.0.4 that appears on Canon's support site. Be sure to remove all batteries for a bit and try again. I don't think the 7D2 has a user-serviceable clock battery; not sure how long it would take to discharge. Also, I don't know if the 7D2 has the same feature that 1's have where you can save your whole config to the card and reload - if you do, don't reload the previous set. Be sure to also format your card in camera after you power back up.

Then, let it sit until it sleeps and see if your card light on time changes when waking up from sleep (mine was noticeably different in duration and pattern once I got it working)! Remember that I had to do this procedure a total of 6 times, with the 4th time down a version in firmware (which the 7D2 doesn't have listed).

My fix did work, as the camera has been sitting here for the last 2 days with me occasionally taking it out for 1-2 shots, then letting it go back to sleep. The battery has not drained but 1% in 3 days total with 25 shots taken. Good luck, this new world of SoC and firmware driven electronics (with a bunch of arduino educated "programmers" designing controllers) makes for some buggy, user-beta-tested devices. Notice that most electronics repair places have disappeared - nobody knows how to actually fix a TV anymore, they're just a bunch of board-swapping tech school half-wits!

Hope that might give you some ideas to try!

docholliday_sc001 wrote in post #17618844
Since my experience was extrapolated from 2 weeks of testing, hacking, and the thought that if it was going back to Canon again, it was going back dead, I can't really give a solid procedure that worked. My results were based on knowledge from working on high-end electronics and large computers (workstation/servers) where it seems that firmware upgrades don't take the first time recently. In those devices, it's usually best to reset CMOS/clear settings before flashing, then again after the flash completes. It's also known that some cars have the same issue updating firmware in the ECU - multiple flashes of the same thing required to get it "right". There are also other cameras where that is a known issue (Leica, Sony).

However, Canon's don't have a true reset. The whole "Clear all settings", "clear custom settings", "remove both batteries" doesn't actually clear the settings in the camera 100%. In the case of the 1Dx, that was easy to see as doing all of that still resulted in the copyright and owner info showing in camera. That means that some data is in flash ROM, others in volatile. Their bootstrapper/flash utility that's built-in camera should do a full factory reset as the last step in a flash process, which would likely solve this issue.

It seemed that multiple passes of doing this somehow cleared some internal settings that we cannot see - Canon service must have an app that does it from the built-in firmware flash bootstrapper and/or some hardware point on the motherboard to do such (such as a JTAG like tap).

The other problem is that it seems the newer cameras are really sensitive to card type. Despite having a fast UDMA6 600x card in at first, the camera would show the busy light for 3 seconds when powering up from sleep. The new UDMA7 1066x Lexar that's in now only shows that busy light for < .5 seconds. A "slow" card might keep the card controller from sleeping, as the firmware settings may timeout waiting for the card to finish writes (that would be a firmware bug) and not shut it down appropriately ("orphaning"). I had both a power-consumption and sleep/idle drain issue. The different card possibly resolved only one of the issues, as the single-shot consumption was still high afterwards.

I'm not familiar with the 7D2 (I've always had 1-series bodies), but the hardware must have similarities - the transmissive LCD and menu structure means that some general components are probably shared; maybe even some firmware code as well.

I would say to check your card light write time (to see if your card is "slow"), then try to clear your settings/custom settings multiple times - do not configure your camera back yet (just leave at default), and reflash the 1.0.4 that appears on Canon's support site. Be sure to remove all batteries for a bit and try again. I don't think the 7D2 has a user-serviceable clock battery; not sure how long it would take to discharge. Also, I don't know if the 7D2 has the same feature that 1's have where you can save your whole config to the card and reload - if you do, don't reload the previous set. Be sure to also format your card in camera after you power back up.

Then, let it sit until it sleeps and see if your card light on time changes when waking up from sleep (mine was noticeably different in duration and pattern once I got it working)! Remember that I had to do this procedure a total of 6 times, with the 4th time down a version in firmware (which the 7D2 doesn't have listed).

My fix did work, as the camera has been sitting here for the last 2 days with me occasionally taking it out for 1-2 shots, then letting it go back to sleep. The battery has not drained but 1% in 3 days total with 25 shots taken. Good luck, this new world of SoC and firmware driven electronics (with a bunch of arduino educated "programmers" designing controllers) makes for some buggy, user-beta-tested devices. Notice that most electronics repair places have disappeared - nobody knows how to actually fix a TV anymore, they're just a bunch of board-swapping tech school half-wits!

Hope that might give you some ideas to try!

Doc,
Great ideas. I use a Snadisk 95MB sdcard. I think i am on the order of 2 secomds red light flashing on power up, amd my sleep modemcomsumes 2-3% per day with no wakups or shots taken.

I will check it out and share results. Unfortumately, there is no way to save a config file on 7dii. (to me this is mind boggling that it is not an included capability given how easy it would be.)

I would love to get my one shot battery performance to what it "should" be instead of at 500. The sleep mode savings would be ocing on the cake.

By the way, when you say single shot in your earlier posts, do you literally mean oneshot and single shot, or are you still in ai servo and high speed but taking only one shot at a time?

gschlact wrote in post #17619816
Doc,
Great ideas. I use a Snadisk 95MB sdcard. I think i am on the order of 2 secomds red light flashing on power up, amd my sleep modemcomsumes 2-3% per day with no wakups or shots taken.

I will check it out and share results. Unfortumately, there is no way to save a config file on 7dii. (to me this is mind boggling that it is not an included capability given how easy it would be.)

I would love to get my one shot battery performance to what it "should" be instead of at 500. The sleep mode savings would be ocing on the cake.

By the way, when you say single shot in your earlier posts, do you literally mean oneshot and single shot, or are you still in ai servo and high speed but taking only one shot at a time?

That power consumption is the exact same as what my 1Dx was doing...and I'll bet the same cause. Just sitting asleep, draining battery on it's own.

The reason that configs can't be saved on the 7D2 is the dial on top. With the 1Dx, loading a config changes everything, and can copy settings between cameras.

Single shot is One-Shot AF, Single Drive.