# Battery drain



## PioneerAmp1 (Dec 24, 2014)

Having real problems with my EOS1DS Mark 3 draining the battery. Charged it up and within 24 hours totally flat, tried using the LPE4 from my 1D Mark 3 but it drains that one too. Can anyone give any advice to or has anyone else had the same issue?

It only drains when it's in the camera. I have had no problems(touch wood) with my 1d Mark 3. I ve even sent the 1ds3 from repair and it's still the same. Can't trust it on a serious shoot as lucky to get 200 frames out of it. I have swapped the batteries over and makes no difference. Symptoms are that the battery indicator shows full capacity, 80% and dead, it seems that once the battery gets bellow 75%, power drops off a cliff and the battery is totally flat!

I don't make a habit of leaving the camera powered up in the bag, I always switch it off, I've even resorted to turning the battery lock key to a unlocked position to see if it makes any difference, but no, still bad. The annoying thing is that you don't get any warning and the camera locks up,due to no power!


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## tpatana (Dec 24, 2014)

Interesting. Do you have multi-meter handy?

If yes, charge the battery full and leave it outside the charger (and camera) for couple hours, and then measure the voltage. Depending the the reading, that could tell if the battery is faulty.

My rough estimate is that 90% of drained battery problems are just faulty (/old) batteries.


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## Valvebounce (Dec 24, 2014)

Hi PA1. 
This is a bit of a D'oh reply, I kept finding my 7D flat, first I never turn the power switch off, second i discovered it only happens in the bag, D'oh something is keeping it awake in the bag! Turn the power switch off and no more flat battery in the bag! I hope this sorts your problem, easier than a trip to Canon. 

Cheers, Graham.


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## PioneerAmp1 (Dec 24, 2014)

Tried various things with it, powered off in the bag, turning the battery lock key half way to power the camera off, but something in the camera is draining the battery at an alarming rate. The battery status shows, 100%, 80%, then drops off a cliff to nothing, with battery status indicator flashing, frustratingly is that it's been in for repair, but I can't trust it anymore.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Dec 24, 2014)

PioneerAmp1 said:


> Tried various things with it, powered off in the bag, turning the battery lock key half way to power the camera off, but something in the camera is draining the battery at an alarming rate. The battery status shows, 100%, 80%, then drops off a cliff to nothing, with battery status indicator flashing, frustratingly is that it's been in for repair, but I can't trust it anymore.


 
Sometimes lenses are the issue, so check it without a lens, flash, or any thing attached. The way you describe the issue it acts like old batteries. Set the charger to deep cycle both of your batteries, and see if it finds a issue.

There can be power supply issues that discharge the battery, but since you;ve sent the camera to Canon, that is probably not the issue. However, if you can't figure it out, send it back again.


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## tpatana (Dec 25, 2014)

Does the battery get noticeably hot when the charge drops? And how fast it drains? Hours? Minutes?

Pure physics, if you have e.g. 2000mAh battery which drains in say 30 minutes, it'll get very hot. If it doesn't, it didn't have charge to begin with. If it gets hot, then something is really drawing plenty current for some reason.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Dec 25, 2014)

tpatana said:


> Does the battery get noticeably hot when the charge drops? And how fast it drains? Hours? Minutes?
> 
> Pure physics, if you have e.g. 2000mAh battery which drains in say 30 minutes, it'll get very hot. If it doesn't, it didn't have charge to begin with. If it gets hot, then something is really drawing plenty current for some reason.


 
He said it drains in 24 hours, so it will not get hot at that rate. I do expect that its a battery issue though, since the body was already checked.


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## PioneerAmp1 (Dec 25, 2014)

No it doesn't get hot, the thing I have noticed though, is that the last 20% of the charging cycle takes longer than the 50% and 80% on the charger. Dead to 50% takes about 3 quarters of an hour, 50% to 80% takes about half an hour but the last 20% can take up to 2 hours to complete a charge and that's applicable to both my LP E4's. But I'm baffled to why I go days or even weeks with my 1d3 and hundreds of shots in the bag and no issues, but the 1ds3 only gives me a day at most. Is the 1ds3 more power hungry due to its resolving power. Seems I have little option to replace both batteries with the LP E4n, what do you guys out there think?


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Dec 25, 2014)

PioneerAmp1 said:


> No it doesn't get hot, the thing I have noticed though, is that the last 20% of the charging cycle takes longer than the 50% and 80% on the charger. Dead to 50% takes about 3 quarters of an hour, 50% to 80% takes about half an hour but the last 20% can take up to 2 hours to complete a charge and that's applicable to both my LP E4's. But I'm baffled to why I go days or even weeks with my 1d3 and hundreds of shots in the bag and no issues, but the 1ds3 only gives me a day at most. Is the 1ds3 more power hungry due to its resolving power. Seems I have little option to replace both batteries with the LP E4n, what do you guys out there think?


 
If the batteries last in the 1D3, then they should not be different in the 1Ds III. 

Do a complete camera reset, there was a recent post on FM where that fixed the issue.


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## privatebydesign (Dec 25, 2014)

PioneerAmp1 said:


> No it doesn't get hot, the thing I have noticed though, is that the last 20% of the charging cycle takes longer than the 50% and 80% on the charger. Dead to 50% takes about 3 quarters of an hour, 50% to 80% takes about half an hour but the last 20% can take up to 2 hours to complete a charge and that's applicable to both my LP E4's. But I'm baffled to why I go days or even weeks with my 1d3 and hundreds of shots in the bag and no issues, but the 1ds3 only gives me a day at most. Is the 1ds3 more power hungry due to its resolving power. Seems I have little option to replace both batteries with the LP E4n, what do you guys out there think?



No absolutely not, my 1DS MkIII's can be in the bag for weeks and not run down the batteries. If one body is behaving differently to another it is a problem with the body, in my experience the 1D MkIII and 1DS MkIII should both work the same with the same battery.


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## East Wind Photography (Dec 25, 2014)

PioneerAmp1 said:


> No it doesn't get hot, the thing I have noticed though, is that the last 20% of the charging cycle takes longer than the 50% and 80% on the charger. Dead to 50% takes about 3 quarters of an hour, 50% to 80% takes about half an hour but the last 20% can take up to 2 hours to complete a charge and that's applicable to both my LP E4's. But I'm baffled to why I go days or even weeks with my 1d3 and hundreds of shots in the bag and no issues, but the 1ds3 only gives me a day at most. Is the 1ds3 more power hungry due to its resolving power. Seems I have little option to replace both batteries with the LP E4n, what do you guys out there think?



Charging rates will change based on cell temperature. It does typically take longer to charge through the last half of the charge. However an old battery may also heat up more internally causing the charger to reduce the charge rate for safety reasons.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Dec 26, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> PioneerAmp1 said:
> 
> 
> > No it doesn't get hot, the thing I have noticed though, is that the last 20% of the charging cycle takes longer than the 50% and 80% on the charger. Dead to 50% takes about 3 quarters of an hour, 50% to 80% takes about half an hour but the last 20% can take up to 2 hours to complete a charge and that's applicable to both my LP E4's. But I'm baffled to why I go days or even weeks with my 1d3 and hundreds of shots in the bag and no issues, but the 1ds3 only gives me a day at most. Is the 1ds3 more power hungry due to its resolving power. Seems I have little option to replace both batteries with the LP E4n, what do you guys out there think?
> ...


 
+1


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## dgatwood (Dec 26, 2014)

PioneerAmp1 said:


> It only drains when it's in the camera. I have had no problems(touch wood) with my 1d Mark 3. I ve even sent the 1ds3 from repair and it's still the same. Can't trust it on a serious shoot as lucky to get 200 frames out of it. I have swapped the batteries over and makes no difference. Symptoms are that the battery indicator shows full capacity, 80% and dead, it seems that once the battery gets bellow 75%, power drops off a cliff and the battery is totally flat!



In my experience, unless the battery meter is simply lying to you (which indicates a calibration issue), that sort of sudden voltage collapse under load is invariably caused by a bad cell in the battery. And no, the fact that it works in another camera does not disprove that, so long as the camera that fails would normally drain the battery faster.

What happens, as I understand it, is that many cells fail by developing a high resistance across the cell. When this happens, the charge doesn't migrate easily across that cell, and under a load, the voltage of the pack as a whole falls. If you allow the battery a period of rest, the charge continues to migrate, balancing the charge across the cells, and the pack as a whole again shows full voltage.

When you have a high-resistance cell, the period of time before failure is dependent upon the load. Under a minimal load, the charge migrates sufficiently in spite of the high resistance. The higher the load, the greater the voltage drop.

So my suspicion is that both of your batteries are dubious. They're good enough to handle the load from the 1D Mk III, but not the load from the 1DS Mk III. With that said, if you try a new battery and it fails in the same way, then there's something wrong with the body, and Canon simply failed to properly repair it.


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## tpatana (Dec 26, 2014)

dgatwood said:


> PioneerAmp1 said:
> 
> 
> > It only drains when it's in the camera. I have had no problems(touch wood) with my 1d Mark 3. I ve even sent the 1ds3 from repair and it's still the same. Can't trust it on a serious shoot as lucky to get 200 frames out of it. I have swapped the batteries over and makes no difference. Symptoms are that the battery indicator shows full capacity, 80% and dead, it seems that once the battery gets bellow 75%, power drops off a cliff and the battery is totally flat!
> ...



Otherwise I like your reasoning, but on normal conditions, 1D and 1Ds draw close enough same that they don't make any difference to the battery. There could be some combination of battery/body problems, and that could cause strange behavior. I have bunch of equipment myself, and have access to more at office, so for my gear I can check both the battery condition and the current draw of the body. That would tell plenty about where to look for the problem.


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## PioneerAmp1 (Dec 27, 2014)

I have now tried every combination of things to get to bottom of this. Memory cards out, swapped batteries, reset the settings. But I have come to conclusion that the repair was not executed properly. Looking at various forums, I have come to point that it's more than likely a main circuit board issue. So another wait from my dealer, who on the first instance wanted to bin a rather expensive piece of hardware, but I don't want to give up.


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## East Wind Photography (Dec 27, 2014)

PioneerAmp1 said:


> I have now tried every combination of things to get to bottom of this. Memory cards out, swapped batteries, reset the settings. But I have come to conclusion that the repair was not executed properly. Looking at various forums, I have come to point that it's more than likely a main circuit board issue. So another wait from my dealer, who on the first instance wanted to bin a rather expensive piece of hardware, but I don't want to give up.



Forget the dealer. If you are serious about keeping it then it would be good to send it back to canon for repair. Possible they may not since it's an older model but they may be the best ones to evaluate what's wrong and do the repairs.

If it is a circuit board issue, I doubt anyone will repair it. The labor to diagnose and repair/replace suspect chips or components may cost more than buying another used one.


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## privatebydesign (Dec 27, 2014)

East Wind Photography said:


> PioneerAmp1 said:
> 
> 
> > I have now tried every combination of things to get to bottom of this. Memory cards out, swapped batteries, reset the settings. But I have come to conclusion that the repair was not executed properly. Looking at various forums, I have come to point that it's more than likely a main circuit board issue. So another wait from my dealer, who on the first instance wanted to bin a rather expensive piece of hardware, but I don't want to give up.
> ...



Canon absolutely do service and carry all parts for the 1Ds MkIII at this time, Dec 2014.


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## VinniWongo (Dec 27, 2014)

Have you tried the body without a lens attached?

I have just had an issue with my Tamron 24-70 f/2.8IS lens that was fine on my 5DmkII but when attached to my new 7DMkII it flattened the battery overnight. Tamron fixed the lens and all cured.


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## PioneerAmp1 (Dec 28, 2014)

Tried it without cards, lenses, everything, makes no difference. Can't afford a 1dx otherwise I would have got one due to the hassle. Going back to an authorised repairer as under their guarantee.


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