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General discussion

Panasonic lumix dmc-fz20 battery life

Nov 9, 2004 12:46AM PST

Was wondering if anyone owns this camera, what there overall feelings of it is, and how long the battery lasts per use. I am considering purchasing it and any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Discussion is locked

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Re: Panasonic lumix dmc-fz20 battery life
Nov 9, 2004 1:27AM PST

While http://www.steves-digicams.com/2004_reviews/fz20.html is a review, the battery issue is not an easy question to answer. For instance my Kodak DX6490 went 8 days without a charge but I used the LCD sparingly and filled the 256MB SD memory 3 times and was taking a few last snaps (4th filling) and it finally complained of low battery.

If I had the LCD on during that time, my bet is I'd need to recharge on day 2.

All I can offer is this. Battery life seems to be an area they really have improved in the newer models.

Bob

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Re: Panasonic lumix dmc-fz20 battery life
Nov 9, 2004 4:28AM PST

Another review is here:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/panasonicfz20/

On the conclusion page their is a statement - "Good battery life".

I have not read the entire review yet but their must be some better detail about battery life somewhere in the review.

...

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FZ20 ? 12,420 pix on 1 charge!
Jan 1, 2005 6:38PM PST

You read that right. I just finished attempting to set the world record for the number of shots taken on a Panasonic DMC-FZ20 on a single charge of the factory-supplied battery. I took 12,420 shots in 2560 size and HI-RES mode. Don?t believe it? You can probably do even better. Here is what I did: Set the camera to AE. Used the EVF only. Turned off Auto Focus. Turned off Continuing Auto Focus. Turned off Image Stabilization. Turned ON Infinite Burst Mode. Inserted a 512MB high speed (66x) SD card. Aimed it at a bright light source. Held down the button ? for a couple of hours! Drain on the battery was limited to 1) shutter action 2) writing to the card 3) turning on and turning off the camera 47 times to remove the SD card and erase if when it filled up. Yup: I filled the 512MB card 47 times! One charge!

I?m sure that you can do even better! I started to try to beat the record but ran out of time and my finger got tired of holding down the button. To beat my record do this: Use all the above settings, except change the picture size and resolution to 640 and LOW RES. I quite after filling the 512MB SD card once with (are you ready for this?) 6.306 shots in ONE NON-STOP BURST! This took the battery indicator down to 2/3?s remaining. Assuming that I could get another two SD cards-worth of shots, that would be 18,913 shots!

And this is a new battery on its third charge cycle. I?ve read that after it has had a half dozen discharge/charge cycles, that it will be up to full capacity. Wow.

Obviously no body will take pictures with the FZ20 in this manner (although my 12,420 identical shots were sharp) , but it is interesting and amazing how many shots are possible.

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Battery Life
Apr 6, 2005 12:55AM PDT

The battery life is very good on this camera. The manual says that it can take 240 pictures at medium resolution on a full charge(which takes two hours). I spent an entire afternoon taking pictures with the fz20 using the large LCD monitor and reviewing each image several times after each picture was taken and all 3 bars for the battery readout was still there.