5D mark II battery life?

bump...

the blinking warning finally got to me last night. I made it to 4% left and had 1026 shots on it. The amazing part for me is it was 3/14 the last time I'd changed batteries, so not only did it get 1k shots, but it stretched them over a month (with some shooting every day).

Is preview turned on in your camera?

I seems to have a problem with battery life on my 5D Mark II. I have two original Canon batteries and I seem to be getting no more than 300-400 shots per charge. The battery that came with the camera was charged two times and the one I bought separately has been fully charged only once.

I didn't do extensive chimping nor have I abused live view each I used one of the batteries.

Could it be that the batteries need some more charge/discharge cycles to deliver the expected 850 shots per charge ratio? Has anyone had the same experience?

Suedezu, The day I got nearly 2,000 shots the images were number 2336-4386, so I don't think I had to many charging cycles. I don't know how much the batteries vary from one to the other. If you are only getting 300-400 shots per charge that is not good, but I don't know why you aren't getting more. There are likely a lot of factors that affect how many shots can be taken per charge. The day I got so many shots on my only battery ( I did not have a spare then) it was about 80ºF. I have heard batteries work better when they are not too cold, but I don't know what the optimum temperature is or how much it really affects the battery. As I said before, having the image review turned off helps quite a bit, otherwise the time the screen is on everytime you take a photo adds up. I think the default time is 4 seconds?

I have a hunch, but do not know for certain, that you can get more photos per charge if you use the whole charge up in a short period of time versus a long period of time where days or even weeks pass and the camera is powered up and down many times.

I would also be curious if there is any difference when shooting RAW versus jpeg or even RAW+jpeg. I would guess that any addition in camera processing and writing to the card takes more battery power, but again I don't know any exact facts about the matter.

Sundays wedding, I was at 22% remaining on 1 batt, 1800 shots approx on the camera. Single batt lasted the whole day, minimal to no chimping.

Suedezu wrote in post #7867098
I seems to have a problem with battery life on my 5D Mark II. I have two original Canon batteries and I seem to be getting no more than 300-400 shots per charge. The battery that came with the camera was charged two times and the one I bought separately has been fully charged only once.

I didn't do extensive chimping nor have I abused live view each I used one of the batteries.

Could it be that the batteries need some more charge/discharge cycles to deliver the expected 850 shots per charge ratio? Has anyone had the same experience?

I have the same problem. The battery drains real fast like yours.