Battery charge percent

[marchyman]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Yesterday I put my stock M 262 battery in my charger -- The Nitecore USB charger for the M -- and let it charge.   When "full" I put the battery back in the camera.  I checked the battery charge by pressing the Info button on the M, something I'd never done before with a fully charged battery. I was surprised to see the camera say the battery was only 65% charged.   Thinking that there might be a Nitecore charger issue I broke out the Stock Leica charger and put the battery in it.   The charger immediately indicated a full battery with a solid green light in addition to the 80% light.

I'm curious.  Has anyone else checked the reported battery percentage immediately after inserting a fully charged battery?  What percentage do you see?

[jdlaing]

100%

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[Gibbo]

100% 

When my M240 was new I experienced a similar problem to yours. After contacting Leica they sent me a new charger under warranty. I have had no problem getting a full charge since then.

[jaeger]

I presume this question has answered.   I have an extra question... do you take the battery out when not using it?  I let the battery in most of the time unless I know I'm not using it for a week or more then I will take it out.

 

 

[jdlaing]

I never take the battery out.

[Gibbo]

I only take the battery out to charge it.

[marchyman]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

I, too, only remove the battery for charging.

I don't expect this to be a charger issue as both Nitecore and the supplied charger from Leica are telling me the battery is full.   It's also not a big issue as the M 262 is very stingy in its power use.   Especially with post views turned off.

[a.noctilux]

Once in a while, battery must be discharged "almost to zero" ( in my use, to about 5% or 10%  fear to deplete it completely ).

 

I repeat here some ideas or recommendations from the manual of M262 :

- in camera the battery can be completely discharged in few weeks of non-use

- if not use for long the battery must be charged twice a year for 15 minutes

- replace the battery every four years

[marchyman]

20 hours ago, a.noctilux said:

Once in a while, battery must be discharged "almost to zero" ( in my use, to about 5% or 10%  fear to deplete it completely ).

Ahhh, yes.  I'd forgotten about that.  It has been a very long while since I let the  battery completely discharge.   I'll try to wait until the battery is empty/near empty before recharging next time.  Thanks.

But I disagree with the manual where it says "in camera the battery can be completely discharged in few weeks of non-use".   Perhaps it is that way with other models, but my M 262 does not suffer from that issue.  I use the Q more than the M (28mm lens vs the 75mm lens that usually lives on my M).   It is not unusual for the M to sit unused for a month or two.   Never had an issue with the battery discharging.

I wish I could say the same thing about my Q.

[sblutter]

Batteries don't live forever - but draining the battery all the way down (put any picture on the screen and wait) does seem to condition the battery when fully charged

1 battery would only show at 85% in the camera when the Leica charger showed full

After a full drain and recharge, it showed 100% in the camera - and after several days of shooting was at 75%.  Not bad

And of course I always take a spare and a least 3 total during trips

[Steve Ricoh]

I was under the impression Li-Ion batteries don’t ‘like’ being fully discharged and that ‘intelligent’ load systems are programmed not to allow this to happen. Also thought the life is optimised if the batteries are cycled between 20% ~ 80%.

[adan]

Steve, your impression is correct.

It is usually best to keep today's dedicated lithiums topped up by tossing them in the charger whenever convenient, rather than wait for full discharge. I check mine (M10) once a day or so, and put them in to charge at any level below 60% if I am done shooting for the day. And rarely run them as low as 25%, so long as I have back-up in the bag.

However, it doesn't hurt significantly to run a full discharge on rare occasions, and see if that helps calibrate either the camera or charger power management firmware, if a mis-match occurs. Or clear some other problem.

it is not as though running a battery down to zero (or at least what the camera measures as zero) is going to cause one's face to melt, and/or worlds to collide. Maybe (maybe!) it'll knock 1% off the total battery life.

 

[sblutter]

To clarify, I rotate between 4 batteries and only do a full discharge when one tops out at 85% or less tho the charger says 100%

Maybe once every 18 months for the older 2.  They are numbered so I can track their performance - and when I can pick up a brand new battery at a good price (e.g. Ebay Germany) I'll grab it.

My goal is to keep the 240 going until used M10-R's are about 3yrs old - which I did transitioning from M9 to M240... which is still performing as new at 7yrs old - and I shoot a lot

[a.noctilux]

On 3/8/2020 at 4:55 PM, sblutter said:

To clarify, I rotate between 4 batteries and only do a full discharge when one tops out at 85% or less tho the charger says 100%

Maybe once every 18 months for the older 2.  They are numbered so I can track their performance - and when I can pick up a brand new battery at a good price (e.g. Ebay Germany) I'll grab it.

My goal is to keep the 240 going until used M10-R's are about 3yrs old - which I did transitioning from M9 to M240... which is still performing as new at 7yrs old - and I shoot a lot

I write numbering on batteries also, to rotate them.

In a notebook, I also write down date of purchase/date of manufacturing and their number to trace them, replaced when possible in FIFO.

In real use, the oldest batteries of M8/M9/Monochrom were not the less reliable.

In M240 family batteries, I've replaced none of them yet.

[dabrez]

On 2/29/2020 at 11:49 AM, sblutter said:

Batteries don't live forever - but draining the battery all the way down (put any picture on the screen and wait) does seem to condition the battery when fully charged

1 battery would only show at 85% in the camera when the Leica charger showed full

After a full drain and recharge, it showed 100% in the camera - and after several days of shooting was at 75%.  Not bad

And of course I always take a spare and a least 3 total during trips

I too had a battery that showed fully charged in the charger but only 85% charged when in the camera. Taking your advice, I discharged the battery down to 5% by leaving an image on screen. Changing the "Auto Review" menu feature to "Released Button Pressed" insured that the image stayed on the screen. After charging the battery to full capacity on the charger it once again showed 100% in camera!

Thanks for the advice, it worked great!

[Adam Bonn]

My m9 can occasionally do that thing when the charger says 100% charged then in the camera the battery gauge says 80%, the fix appears to be to run that battery down until all the camera is capable of doing is to tell me to replace the battery, then recharge it and after that the battery displays 100% (in camera)

I've had to do that maybe 3 or 4 times in about 2.5 years of M9 ownership

My M240 the battery gauge has always said 100% after inserting a freshly charged battery!

My only M240 battery observation has been that I bought the camera secondhand and it came with a battery (!!) after some use I was a little surprised at how quickly the battery depleted, not terrible... but not that many more shots than I was getting out of the M9... After all of the anecdotal the M240 battery lasts for weeks stuff I'd read online I was a little surprised...

....anyway I saw a secondhand battery on ebay... took a punt at £25 delivered (I assume you all know what they cost new..) 

It turned up literally as a lose battery inside of the type of envelope that you'd get a standard letter in, not a jiffy bag and no packing at all...

I sorted laughed it off, like Ha that'll teach me to me take a chance on ebay stuff, I'm amazing the envelope didn't rip and it got lost

Anyway... I've been using that battery for 3 months now and I've gotta say...

The M240 battery life is amazing, it lasts for weeks 🙂

 

 

[RachelR-UK]

I've just come across this discussion. I have a couple of batteries for my M9 and I've noticed recently that despite charging them fully, according to the charger, the displayed charge in the camera has always showed a less than 100% charge. In fact one battery always shows a very low charge, less than 50%. Going by the suggestions made earlier I have tried fully discharging the batteries in the camera and then recharging them. It has worked and now both batteries show 100% in the camera. So it's worked for me.