On Sat, 03 Feb 2007 20:23:18 -0500, J. Clarke wrote:
> The battery life depends more on the design of the camera than on the
> battery technology. My 30D will easily fill a couple of 4 gig cards
> on a single charge of it's lithium ion battery. My Coolpix 990 is
> hard-pressed to fill a 256 meg card on a charge of its NiMH AAs.
A more ludicrous comparison would be hard to make. You're aware,
aren't you, that the 30D is *not* a compact camera? It, along with
most other DSLRs has several attributes that make comparisons
difficult because their design is totally different and they're
typically used differently. For instance, while some DSLRs have
popup flashes, knowledgeable photographers will usually work with an
external flash, which prolongs the DSLR's battery life by a good
deal. Even so, the 30D's battery life while good, isn't stellar.
Some of Canon's own P&S cameras can take more shots per charge using
AA batteries.
And speaking of taking shots, that's how cameras and batteries are
compared. Not as you did, by comparing how much memory can be
filled. Using its lowest compression, the CP990's files are 1.2MB,
compared with the 30D's file size of just under 3MB. Per dpreview's
tests of the CP990:
> Battery life on the 990 was about the same as the 950, it's possible
> to shoot for about two hours with the LCD on and a good set of NiMH
> rechargeable. My current favorites are a set of Sanyo 1500mAh NiMH's
> which just last and last.
> . . .
> UPDATE 24/Apr/2000: Just been out shooting for 4 hours (120 shots)
> on one set of 1450mAh (Olympus) batteries. Camera was switched on
> the whole time I simply used the MONITOR button to turn the LCD on
> and off to save battery power when I wasn't shooting... This performance
> is defintely an improvement over the 950.
Note here that the CP990 was tested nearly 7 years ago, with NiMH
cells 1/2 the capacity of today's batteries. It's certainly NOT
representative of today's cameras. The review didn't say that after
4 hours the batteries were dead, either, so they may have been able
to take a good number of additional shots. But even if not, using
today's 2,700 mAh batteries, the CP990 would probably be able to
take almost twice the number of shots while being used for during an
8 hour session. Nearly 240 shots is decent, but far less than the
1,600 or 1,800 shots some of today's P&S compacts can take.
As for your 30D, dpreview says that its battery is good for 750
shots (CIPA, 50% flash) or 1,100 shots (no flash). Using its
large/fine JPG setting (2.9MB file size) this adds up to 2.175GB and
3.190GB, not enough to fill a single 4GB card. How'd you manage to
fill a couple of 4GB cards "on a single charge of it's lithium ion
battery"? Exaggeration to make a plausible, convincing argument
that few would see through?
If you wanted to make a slightly fairer comparison, you'd have
chosen Canon's D30 instead. Slightly more recent than the CP990 but
not by much. Both are nearly 7 year old models. It did a little
worse than the 30D, 540 shots (CIPA, 50% flash) and 680 shots (no
flash). Its smaller sensor produces "fine" JPGs that are 1/2 the
size of the 30D's JPG files, 1.4MB/image. This would allow the D30
to create enough files to use up 756MB and 952MB of card space. In
other words, no need for a pair of 4GB cards to store what the
camera could shoot on a single battery charge, as a single 1GB card
would be sufficient to hold all of the shots. In the end, the
difference between the CP990 and a DSLR from the same era is far
less than what you implied. If you chose one of Canon's modern
compacts to go up against the 30D, it would have produced the
opposite of what you tried to show.
In the end, Li-Ion batteries in today's compacts are often too
small because of "styling" considerations to be able to take a large
number of shots. But it varies, with some Li-Ion using compacts
getting decent battery life and a few others doing even better.
Cameras that use AA batteries also vary, but if you want to
demonstrate how bad they can get, please, *don't* choose as your
example one that was introduced 7 years ago, has long been
discontinued, and is *not* representative of today's cameras.
Last but not least, you didn't even provide a candidate that might
have answered the OP's question:
> I've been looking for a compact camera with very long battery life
mentioning only an outdated compact camera that had decent, but
not very long battery life. The camera that you represented as
having very long battery life (but which apparently is not nearly as
good as you made it out to be) is most definitely NOT a compact
camera, and it sells for a good deal more than the "low-middle price
range" that the OP is looking for. I guess your intention wasn't to
assist the OP in making a purchasing decision, but to try to
discredit "editor"'s claims that AA batteries have advantages
compared to proprietary batteries. And there you also failed.
>> Stay informed about: compact camera with best battery life 
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