Canon 5D and Battery Issue

There are a lot of people out there with a 5D, so I thought I would share a little about a mysterious problem you might have with it.  I do not experience this on my 10D or Digital Rebel, only the 5D.

If you get a low batter icon on the 5D’s LCD, immediately replace the battery.

Why?

It will record about 75% of the images once the low battery warning comes on.  I’ve tested this over, and over, and over.  The image record failure is a little lower with a faster card.  For example, a SansDisk Ultra III fails only about 80% of the time.

Part II of this issue…

If you are using the battery grip, it is MORE likely that this will affect your camera.  I noticed that with a low battery warning on the battery pack, if I take those same 2 batteries, and put them individually into the camera (i.e. shooting with a single battery and not the battery pack), the batteries each last a little longer before the failures start to happen.

Part III – How I tested

I took a BP-511 battery as soon as it showed a low battery (i.e. the 2nd stage of the battery LCD monitor), placed it in the camera with a newly formated CF card.  In motor drive mode, I fired of 10 shots in rapid succession.  I waited for it to complete its writing to the CF card.  I then reviewed the images.  I would end up with 6-8.  Or in other words, 2-4 of them never got recorded.

I would be curious to know if others can recreate this problem, or if you have experienced it with other Digital EOS cameras.

~ by beckwithmansion on October 23, 2009.