Leica SL2-S terrible battery life?

[oka]

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I’ve shot about 1000 pictures on single charge.

I took hundreds of photos and videos about 2 hours in -20c, it showed about 20% battery charge. When battery and camera warmed up, battery charge was in about half.

I don’t have any complaints about the battery life.

[LocalHero1953]

I'm not sure I've ever shot towards 1000 shots on a full charge in the SL, let alone the SL2-S!

I think this highlights though, that battery life is determined not just by number of shots or time since switching on, but but by these and a whole lot of other things already mentioned - focusing settings, LCD settings, power save settings etc. On top of that it does seem that the SL2, at least, behaves differently with non-L lenses and adapters. This may be a glitch in the L-mount alliance specs which don't say enough about power consumption and signalling of power matters.

[Tom B]

vor 5 Stunden schrieb panoreserve:

Really??!!

yep - my (no technical) explanation is, that the camera don't have to start every time with the whole procedure. No proof, just a observation by myself...

[bherman01545]

The CIPA rating on the SL2-S is 510, which is quite a bit higher than the SL2 (CIPA 370)

 I don't shoot video, and really haven't counted, but I easily get a few hundred shots

I turned Pre-Focus off

Tw-min power saving =on

EVF=Extended

No LCD Review

and if not shooting for several minutes at a time, I turn off the camera

[AZN]

8 hours ago, oka said:

I’ve shot about 1000 pictures on single charge

Separate photos separated by a few seconds/ minutes, or motorised sequences?

FWIW the best I have ever been able to get out of any mirrorless camera, Sony or Leica, is approx. 400 shots.  No motorised sequences, individual frames.  No AF though…

[frame-it]

ive got a little over 800 shots on one charge walking around Tokyo, with my SL601 M lenses only. the battery still had one bar left.

no preview, no chimping, shooting DNG only, i switch off the camera on the train/escalator/crossings etc 

[if that makes a difference]

[oka]

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44 minutes ago, AZN said:

Separate photos separated by a few seconds/ minutes, or motorised sequences?

FWIW the best I have ever been able to get out of any mirrorless camera, Sony or Leica, is approx. 400 shots.  No motorised sequences, individual frames.  No AF though…

I took in two days. So no long sequences.

 

[oka]

21 hours ago, LocalHero1953 said:

I'm not sure I've ever shot towards 1000 shots on a full charge in the SL, let alone the SL2-S!

I think this highlights though, that battery life is determined not just by number of shots or time since switching on, but but by these and a whole lot of other things already mentioned - focusing settings, LCD settings, power save settings etc. On top of that it does seem that the SL2, at least, behaves differently with non-L lenses and adapters. This may be a glitch in the L-mount alliance specs which don't say enough about power consumption and signalling of power matters.

Yes, if you don’t use power savings - you drain the battery in few hours.

But if you use power savings, EVF extended, prefocus off, M lenses, no previews and so on, the battery life is good on my opinion (in mirrorless world)

Not same as on DSLR’s where I could shoot 2k+ easily but that’s not comparable to mirrorless and probably never going to reach to that level on same capacity / size batteries unless the chemistry is improved a lot in future.

[SrMi]

17 hours ago, bherman01545 said:

The CIPA rating on the SL2-S is 510, which is quite a bit higher than the SL2 (CIPA 370)

<snip>

I am not sure if those numbers are comparable because of caveats:

SL2: based on CIPA standard, without EVF

SL2-S: according to CIPA standard, with auto power-off 10s

SL2-S has also a second "CIPA" rating: 1430 shots (according to CIPA standard, adjusted shooting cycle*, with auto power-off 5s) 

[oka]

3 minutes ago, SrMi said:

I am not sure if those numbers are comparable because of caveats:

SL2: based on CIPA standard, without EVF

SL2-S: according to CIPA standard, with auto power-off 10s

SL2-S has also a second "CIPA" rating: 1430 shots (according to CIPA standard, adjusted shooting cycle*, with auto power-off 5s) 

1430 sounds plausible, it’s interesting to see battery in real life / work.

Single SL2 is bit painful on full day gigs, it can eat 3-4 batteries on one wedding even that I use multiple bodies.

[caissa]

These numbers are not too interesting. It is as it is. Try to get used to it.

The SL2 is worse, still I have no problem with it. Buy spares and set your expectations accordingly. You know now how it is. You can write hundreds of pages, it will not make the slightest difference. 

For some the glass is half empty, then maybe better buy another camera (a DSLR). For others half full and they simply keep on photographing and enjoying the camera.  😷😁

Edited January 5, 2021 by caissa

[MediaFotografie]

has anyone been able to compare the power consumption of SL2 and SL2-S in real terms?

[2M6TTLs]

"It is as it is" ???

What it is, is a Pro quality camera at a Pro quality price.

If it's an electronic product and IF indeed the battery performance is that poor then Leica are not doing their job.

It should at least have reasonable battery life with Ibis and AF turned off and the benefits of 21st century technology!

A battery that can't go more than a couple of hours would be pretty disappointing to me.

You can watch movies continuously drawing power on an iPad for much, much longer than that.

[scott kirkpatrick]

Power goes into AF (lenses are the same, but firmware may have improved), viewing on LCD and eye display, IBIS, and taking/extracting/conditioning each image and perhaps also making a JPEG to go with it.  WiFi  and menu reviews drain a lot of power but are optional.  The CIPA standards are a mix of all of these in a scenario that multiple manufacturers have agreed to simulate in order to have something that can be compared and advertised.  Just like the "stops of stabilization," they are meaningless compared with your own experience. 

My inclination, as an experimental scientist, is to isolate each factor by creating artificial scenarios.  For example, put the camera on a tripod, start with a freshly charged battery, take 1000 exposures of the same scene using continuous medium speed  with mechanical shutter.  Measure the battery open circuit voltage at the end.  Start again with a fresh battery and take 1000 exposures at high speed (electronic shutter).  The battery voltage (after some further lab work) tells you how much energy you have used up, and the two scenarios let you distinguish between the cost of cocking the shutter and the cost of processing all those identical images.  Do it on each camera and you will see what has changed.  I'm not going to.  I do note that WiFi on any current Leica camera is too expensive to use much outside a studio or lab.  I use it to quickly get the battery down to where I can check to see if a non-Leica lens will work in video. But this is reverse-engineering, not planning how to get the most use out of your camera.

Long ago, with my first serious digital camera, an Olympus E-1, I could replace the battery with an external power adapter, which I then replaced with a computer-enabled power supply and could monitor various actions.  Leica certainly can do that in their development labs, but without an external power adapter I'm not going to go there.

(if the link doesn't work, try www.cs.huji.ac.il/~kirk/Estimating_Power_Consumption.ppt )

Edited January 5, 2021 by scott kirkpatrick

[criogenics]

I'm totally fine with non-DSLR battery life - that ship has long sailed. However, this new SL2-s battery life is even worse than my Fuji X-H1, which is an energy guzzler albeit on a much smaller battery.

I emailed Leica and they said it might have to do with the non-official lens adapter. We'll see if I have issues with the native SL lens that I'm about to receive. I guess this is the risk we take as early buyers/adopters...

[caissa]

There are no early birds. The SL2 is available since 12 months. A lot has been written, many tests or videos can be found online. Power consumption has been discussed in many threads (nothing new under the sun).

The SL2-S is the “same camera in green”.   The SL2-S is probably using less power than the SL2.  Guess why they offer replacement batteries ?

 

 

Edited January 5, 2021 by caissa

[Daniel C.1975]

Hi, 

in principle I think that's a non-issue, just add spare batteries. 

However and just for the record, I've checked on the power consumption today. A 2.5 hour walk at -4 degree C. I took 240 pictures with the camera mainly in my hand and mainly with EVF and Leica-m lenses. I took a few pictures with the screen and checked taken pictures every now and then at the screen or showed a taken picture with my family. 

Just at the end of the tour the battery symbol jumped to the 50-75%(according to the manual) battery indicator. So I assume it's closer to the 75%. 

I think that's not too bad. 

 

Cheers

Daniel

[SrMi]

2 hours ago, criogenics said:

I'm totally fine with non-DSLR battery life - that ship has long sailed. However, this new SL2-s battery life is even worse than my Fuji X-H1, which is an energy guzzler albeit on a much smaller battery.

I emailed Leica and they said it might have to do with the non-official lens adapter. We'll see if I have issues with the native SL lens that I'm about to receive. I guess this is the risk we take as early buyers/adopters...

Have you tried using EVF extended mode, or is that not an option for your workflow?

[oka]

13 hours ago, caissa said:

The SL2 is worse, still I have no problem with it. Buy spares and set your expectations accordingly. You know now how it is. You can write hundreds of pages, it will not make the slightest difference.

I have no troubles to pay extra for the spare batteries.

BUT high battery consumption rate is a extra hassle which I like to avoid. I need to take 8 spares for full day assignment, it's a burden. Hassle with battery changes, after gig I have to charge all the batteries with multiple chargers to cut some time. Then from some time, batteries start to degrade so you have to label them and keep track of the batteries and their life during the assignments.

Now if I go to gig, I have 10+ batteries. As due to current situation I haven't done any full day assignments yet with the SL2S but as it seems, the battery life is almost two times longer than in SL2 - I might need to carry significantly less batteries and all save the burden which comes with it.

...which also makes SL2S pricing even more attractive if you count the extra batteries which you need to buy less compared to SL2.

Edited January 5, 2021 by oka

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[criogenics]

25 minutes ago, oka said:

I have no troubles to pay extra for the spare batteries.

BUT high battery consumption rate is a extra hassle which I like to avoid. I need to take 8 spares for full day assignment, it's a burden. Hassle with battery changes, after gig I have to charge all the batteries with multiple chargers to cut some time. Then from some time, batteries start to degrade so you have to label them and keep track of the batteries and their life during the assignments.

Now if I go to gig, I have 10+ batteries. As due to current situation I haven't done any full day assignments yet with the SL2S but as it seems, the battery life is almost two times longer than in SL2 - I might need to carry significantly less batteries and all save the burden which comes with it.

...which also makes SL2S pricing even more attractive if you count the extra batteries which you need to buy less compared to SL2.

I agree with you oka, as a working professional that needs to take 2000 photos each event, it would be crazy to have to take 10 battery packs and having to worry about power all the time. That's one reason I wanted the SL2-s to replace my X-H1 - the much better battery as I saw on my Q2.

However, the SL2-s that I got simply doesn't seem up to par. Maybe it's just a dud. Going from 100-0 in less than 2 hours and less than 200 shots is unacceptably bad.