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General discussion

Camera with long battery life?

Sep 6, 2004 8:13AM PDT

I'm looking for a compact/ultra compact camera and my main criteria is having a battery that lasts a long time. Ideally, it would seem nice to have a cradle to put the camera on (like a pDA) that will keep it charged for when I want it.

I want a camera for basic family stuff and I'm assuming that picture quality and all the bells and whistles are generic and similar enough across cameras. I have an HP camera that is about 6 years old, that takes 4 AA batteries and can't seem to last 3 hours without the batteries draining. Thus, whenever I want to take a picture, it's not ready.

Any suggestions?

Discussion is locked

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Re: Camera with long battery life?
Sep 6, 2004 8:37AM PDT

3 hours on a set of batteries is great. Most camera use is just a few minutes out of each hour so it appears you are using the camera in a nontypical way. You may want to see if you can rig up a belt battery pack to make it through the day. You see them often on TV camera crews.

Bob

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Re: Camera with long battery life?
Sep 6, 2004 9:11AM PDT

Let me clarify -

After about 3 hours, the batteries seem to be wiped out, whether I'm using the camera or not. I'd say that if I had the camera on continuosly, it'd be dead in 10-15 minutes. If the camera is off, the rechargeable batteries still drain (and my kids always seem to use the extra batteries I have charging). If I buy the disposable batteries, I may get a bit longer use, but they are too expensive and wasteful.

I'd like to know that my camera is always charged up.

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That's a different issue.
Sep 6, 2004 9:37AM PDT

In our family we have many cameras. The HP 812, Kodak 6490, Canon Digital Elph and some other Kodak. None exhibit that behaviour. If I put a new set of batteries in the HP 812, I can use it right away or in a month.

Just recently we added a camera dock to the HP 812 and it recharges in the dock, but it makes it to about 50 to 100 pictures before we put in a pair of AA's. The 6490 came with a dock and it charges in the dock. I'm not sure how many pictures it takes on a charge, but I did have it out of the dock for a week and took pictures just fine.

It appears that something is wrong with that camera.

Bob

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Re: Camera with long battery life?
Sep 6, 2004 9:43AM PDT

I don't know of a chart that lists all cameras, but there is one that shows a large group of digital cameras.

It is a comparison chart.
Be sure to read what conditions they used to conduct the tests.
Some show over 5 hours.

Link is here:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canonpro1/page10.asp

It is for the Canon Pro1, but you want to scroll almost to the bottom of the page to find the battery life comparison chart.

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