Quick and Easy Methods to Maximize Your Camera Battery Power

Have you ever experienced running low on battery life, or worse, the battery dying on you while you’re in the midst of capturing that elusive picture perfect moment? How about going on an outing and having the battery drain out and the day is not even half gone? Having your camera battery die on you at the most inconvenient time can be very frustrating, to say the least. One solution for this not to happen to you is to bring spare batteries. Yet, you can also make your current batteries last longer by following some conserving habits:

Use the viewfinder when composing, not the Live View – yes, Live View can be very convenient since it shows you what the lens sees, and allows you to compose the shot right before you click the shutter button. However, it eats up a whole lot of battery power and whenever possible, use the viewfinder instead. To avoid parallax error when using the viewfinder (where what you see in the viewfinder is not exactly what the lens sees) allow more of the area to be included so there is little chance of anything essential being inadvertently cut out of the frame.

Don’t review every single shot using the camera – wait until you get home and have uploaded your shots to the hard drive before you review and admire or delete your shots. A lot of battery life is eaten up whenever you access the memory card and the LCD, and unless you absolutely need to look at the shot you took or you need to delete some shots to add more space, be a little more patient and review your shots in your computer instead.

Avoid using the zoom feature – zooming in and out while composing the scene is another power guzzling factor. Make your camera mechanisms work as little as possible by refraining from constantly zooming.

In between shots, keep camera on standby - turning it off completely then on again every few minutes is one sure way your battery will quickly drain. It takes more power to shut down then restart the camera compared to simply leaving it on standby mode, especially if your next shot will just be within the next minute.

Avoid built-in flash – in low-light situations, instead of using the camera’s built-in flash, look for ambient or available light sources and use those instead. The flash takes a lot of battery power when used and the resulting image might not look that attractive with the flash anyway, since it has the tendency to make one appear like deer caught in the headlights of a car.

Avoid half-pressing the shutter button if you won’t be taking a picture – like the zoom, this is another habit that will reduce battery life quicker than usual. Try to make early preparations by composing the shot in your mind and deciding on the camera angle, distance from the subject and so on before half-pressing the shutter button.