# Samsung V4



## 036 (Feb 27, 2003)

I am having a problem with this camera - battery usage. This thing eats batteries to such an extent I am now glad I did not sell my 35mm because on holidays this V4 would be a disaster.

I am using rechargeable 2300mAh Uniross batteries with a fast charger of the same brand.

When trying to do pics of a few watches recently, I found that the fully charged batteries would last me for say, 15 shots of a watch, and their transfer to PC.

Literally 10 mins or so!

I also notice that when I put the batts in the charger tey seem to charge up abnormally quickly, in half an hour or so.

2300 mAh is pretty good and should surely last longer than that?

By the way in desperation I have used brand new duracells a few times - run down within 45 mins of watch photography. No flash by the way...


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## Garry (Feb 25, 2003)

This sort of thing really wound me up when i first started using digital cameras.

I've now got a Sony DSCP8 with a supplied re-chargeable li-lion battery which seems to last forever in ANY mode, with or without the screen, movie mode, or flash.

I cannot recommend this highly enough.


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## Stan (Aug 7, 2003)

This is a standard problem with digital cameras, high battery usage.

If you what to go on holiday for two weeks, take a 35mm as a back up at least.

Or buy a digital camera with a rechargeable Lithium Ion battery pack, their chargers are multi- voltage and can be used anywhere.

Or just take a shed load of NiMh batteries with you and a suitable charger for the country that you are going to.









Digital cameras do vary in their battery consumption though, but not by that much.

Sorry, no easy answer.


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## pg tips (May 16, 2003)

Sort of agree Si I do find I swap frm one set of batteries to the next fairly often but I certainly get more than 15 shots per charge. took the camera to a friend baby's 1st birthday and filled the 32mb card (about 60 pics) and still had battery power left and some were flash photo's as well.

One thing you can do to conserve battery power is put it on easy mode and then turn off the digital screen and just use the viewfinder.

My 2100 NiMH take about 1 hour to charge from flat.

btw normal alkaline last about 30 mins!


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## Silver Hawk (Dec 2, 2003)

Si said:


> and their transfer to PC.


Simon, the transfer of images from the camera to the PC is known to be a big battery eater for most cameras.

Much better to take the memory card out of the camera and into a card reader attached to the PC...

I'm using the same Uniross 2300 mAh plus their FastCharger with my Canon A70 --- these 2300 last ages for me, I can take over 200 high resolution pics before they need a recharge...but I never use camera to transfer images to PC.

Cheers

Paul


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## pauluspaolo (Feb 24, 2003)

I have two digital cameras (both a bit ancient but both very good). The newest takes normal AA batteries so in emergencies I could always use 4 of these (though they'd only last about 30 mins). I have 2 sets of rechargeable batteries so as soon as one set is exhausted another set is ready to go in. My other digital has a wierdly shaped battery - I have two of these now but neither lasts very long







. last year when I went camping I took both batteries along and used the duff one for editing the photos I'd taken that day and kept the good one for actually taking the photos. Still had to get it charged though - this wasn't a problem at any of the campsites I went to but obviously if you were camping out in the middle of nowhere!

I agree that a card reader is the way to go. I bought a multi-card reader from Amazon for about Â£10 and it's the dogs doo-dads


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## 036 (Feb 27, 2003)

Thanks for all the replies! I think it may be related to how often I plug the camera into the PC to see what I have got.

I suppose the first thing is to get a card reader. I will try and avoid downloading any images for a while to see how the batteries do.

They do seem to be recharging very fast though - I wonder is there a fault with the charger ie is it switching itself off too soon?

Simon


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## pg tips (May 16, 2003)

your charger may not be at fault Si, it may be the batteries are only half drained and have memory locked.

Try putting them in a torch and leaving it switched on until they are totally flat then re charge. It should then take an hour or more on those fast chargers.

See if you get better performance then.

You can get a mains adapter for the camera to use when hooked up to the pc for any length of time.


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## 036 (Feb 27, 2003)

I have been running the batteries down in a DAB radio - after a few cycles they are holding a lot more charge (and they take an hour or so to recharge). So the problem seems to be that the camera switches off too early, there is still power left in the battery, therefore when you recharge it it doesn't take long and the cycle continues...

Another thing, I just realised my printer has a card reader built in so that should do the job.

Thanks for the tips!

Si


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