Well, regardless of the actual or perceived functionality of the battery, I just saw several auctions on eBay with high prices, including a "Buy It Now" of $170.
I quite honestly hope that Nikon opens the gates on the supplies for this battery quickly, including accelerating manufacture rates, or it's likely to turn into a public relations nightmare.
Just to show the near-perfect linear relationship between battery capacity (% estimated by built-in microchip of EN-EL3e) and number of exposures under controlled identical conditions (20C, camera in Manual mode, 1/20 sec, 2 sec interval between exposures, Image Preview On, camera operated by MT-2 Intervalometer, freshly charged* EN-EL3e). There is an initial plateau where the camera reports 100% capacity left, so the first stage of the curve is slightly non-linear.
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I think it's only fair to conclude that this validates Nikon's claim for the EN-EL3e capacity as such. However, these are not the numbers most shooters will get, and the exact figure will as I've said previously, depend on an array of variables many of which are specific for a given person.
------------------------------------------------------ * battery cooled down to ambient temperature 20C before recharging, as recommended by manufacturer
Probably something similar. However, the test conditions Nikon describe in the D2X Manual (p. 261) are difficult to reproduce for me and honestly I find them a bit unrealistic, plus the setup involves other factors not under direct control.
I typically get around 400 exposures with EN-EL4 on D2X (ranging from a low of 200 to a high of 700), but two of my batteries already have gone to stage 1 on their life scale and one of them now is definitively performing poorer than the others. So I guess battery history is an important factor here as well.
The D200 manual gives TWO examples of battery life. The 1800 every is quoting refers to Mediun JPEG Basic, monitor turned on for 5 sec every six shots, no flash. I don't know about you, but I don't shoot that way.
The second example is 340 shots - which sounds more in line with what folks are seeing. This is with a VR lens, Large JPEG Normal, lots of built-in speedlight use with AF-assist, etc, etc.
It looks like there is LOTS of variability possible.
I'm familiar- very familiar- with both situations in both the D70 and The D200's cases.
My shooting style is more like the first than the second- I never use built-in for anything more than commander mode, no AF assist on camera, meter off delay 16 seconds, usually AF-S and my VR lens stayed in the bag 99% of the time. In fact, plenty of shooting with manual focus lenses this trip!
With my D70, i've found that I typically would get well over 2000 shots per charge until my battery started to get to what would be the replace phase on a battery meter camera. Then when I replaced it with the EN-EL3A, it was right back up there again.
Although I'm using the monitor a bit more right now, the quick zoom to 100% on the center button and the recent settings list, plus a monitor at -2 brightness are speeding up the time i'd usually spend and conserving battery life.
Anyways, it's good to see the good doctor R. has confirmed Nikon's testing and then some, just like my D70 performed. I don't understand why my D200 is acting like this- maybe a bad battery...only time will tell. I fully discharged it last night- left the camera with meter off set to infinity and the top LCD backlight set to on as long as the meter was on, plus I ran 2 slideshows at full brightness with 120 shots each, 10 second delay for each. it is now fully recharging.
Hopefully i'll see an improvement....but it had better be a good one. Or else it'll be time for torture testing when I get spare.
My search today for the battery showed prices from $37 - $45, but I none of the places I called had them in, but they expect some within days.
Reminds me of the story about the lady wanting to buy some fish. She brow-beats the store keeper about his prices being $1/pound MORE than the store across the street. So he asks her why she doesn't buy at the other store, and she replies, "They don't have any".
Darn, my D200 is showing same battery issues - 140 shots on a charge last night, with heavy use of VR and monitor. D2H performance for me varies; I've had ~500-600 shots in cold weather, to ~10k + at a fashion show with effectively zero monitor use and firing on CH 8fps all the time.
Completed yet another test sequence, this time to evaluate whether data movement, shutter actuations, or LCD use, was the main sink for battery drain. This time run with jpg(Normal,Large)+NEF) at 20C manual mode (1/20 sec) as before, Image Preview ON and shooting interval dT=10 secs. The two earlier series had dT=1 (for jpg only) and dT=2 (jpg+NEF), in both cases the LCD just flickered briefly betwen exposures but even though Image Preview was set to ON, the interval was to short to allow the camera to actually perform a preview (the LCD goes blank when the shutter is released). For this new series, I set the interval to 10 sec so a full preview would be displayed for 8.5 secs (+1.5 sec blank for exposure and writing data to the CF card).
Result as depicted on the graph below, 804 exposures before the battery went dead
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Analysis:
We can rule out shutter actuation as the main source of battery drain, as witnessed by the jpg(N) run at 4385 clicks where image previews never showed on the LCD. When data to be moved increased 20 times, battery drain increased about 2 times so "only" 1986 shots were completed. This shows that moving and processing the data internally plus writing to the CF card does add a drain but again, compared to the huge increase in the volume of data processed, this reduction of capacity is quite reasonable. Again, image previews actually never materialised except when the card was filled and had to be formatted, so LCD drain would be minimal. In the third sequence, however, LCD drain could be expected because now the image preview screened for 8.5 sec in each cycle. As the number of shots this time fell to 804 or less than 50% of the number attained in experiment #2, while all other factors were identical, points conclusively to the LCD as the main source of battery drain.
Tentative conclusions (I haven't done the cold torture tests yet, but they will be conducted tonight since the temperature now has dropped below -5 C again):
Avoid setting Image Preview to ON. Restrict the use of menus and chimping to the very minimum you need. These measures will enhance battery longevity dramatically.
Low temperatures will reduce battery capacity, but unfortunately, try as we might we cannot control the weather.
Thanks Bjørn, it doesn't seem that we need to worry about the battery unless we use the LCD. I'm one of those that likes to see a quick view of the shot, but knowing how it depletes the battery in the D200 is good to know and plan for.
Nice test Bjorn.
What brightness level was the LCD set at?
I keep mine at -2, and I do the minimum of settings changing, and when I do I do it quickly- I know what i'm setting and i've already locked my recent settings list how I want it.
Worst case for me is around what your 804 shot case would be.
I still haven't gotten more than 250 exposures on a charge though. And for my personal examples, they were mostly at 20 C or higher.
I'll try and reduce the time I spend reviewing each image. It'll just be a quick check of focus with the center button to high zoom. Hopefully that will help some.... :frown:
WOW!
The only thing I haven't figured out about the D200's weathersealing is the CF door- It seems to me that it is a sort of felt-ish material instead of rubber there, though the battery compartment has a rubber seal.
I just hope it makes it through that :smile:
The meter is down to 78% @ 509 shots, the curve in fact virtually identical to the one at +20C. I'm a little puzzled by this. In the earlier series the camera did get quite hot, now it's obviously cooled down :wink:
I noticed that by a slip the shutter ran at 1/40 instead of 1/20, that small irregularity was quickly rectified (the illustration shot was taken at the start of the test and since the camera was deployed in total darkness, I didn't observe this before I had taken a flash shot with D2X and looked closer).
Thanks for the research, Bjorn - I'm surprised this new monitor is so power hungry...
I know I probably shouldn't say this, but my Fuji F10 with similar size monitor, always on, will give around 600 shots on a battery half the size with half the capacity...
well Bjorn, the outside shooting I did in Ohio was infrequent and for short times, and was rarely included in any of the figures I posted, but it did get a fair amount below the -2C you're experiencing now :smile:
Of course, I only used the D200 outside in the snow for maybe 50 shots tops, on 2-3 occasions...on the other hand, I dug out my D70 and clicked away plenty with it with no effect on the battery that I could see. And that was with a battery that hadn't seen a charger in a week.
I've ended the cold torture at 1800 exposures, still 6% left. The resulting curve of battery capacity vs exposures is virtually identical to that acquired at +20C, and I'm more than a little puzzled about the outcome. Have to think about some control experiments to understand what's really going on here.
But that has to be another day, now is in middle of the night, and I've been busy doing camera testing and house cleaning for the better part of 24 hours.
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