Power Hungry M11

[Keith (M)]

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Never a good thing when testing to change more than one variable, so I ran the second test with just the EVF enabled and I left the auto power-off setting at default.  Whilst beavering away on my laptop for the last ninety minutes I have also been clicking away on the shutter.   I let it randomly go into power-saving, other times clicked away keeping it active.  End result in the same time period and number of exposures as the earlier test resulted in the battery dropping from 80 to 45%, which would equate to circa 330 exposures of mixed usage (i.e. 50% rangefinder, 50% EVF).  In essence my camera/battery combination is likely to be achieving only 50% or so of the battery performance that others are experiencing.  Hmm.

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[elmars]

vor 59 Minuten schrieb jonoslack:

I agree that taking photos doesn't take much power . . . but I wonder whether going to Standby and then waking up might do

 

That would indeed be interesting, but probably difficult for us to measure.

[M11 for me]

Thank you @elmarsand @jonoslack. I will try it out. I must say that the long duration of that waking up process might be annoying. And if we want to avoid it then we can set the setting accordingly. Its now nearly 11 pm here and I have set the energy modes accordingly. As I often leave my camera "ON" permanently (with other settings though) I can report tomorrow if the battery is fully down or not. At the moment battery is at 95%.

Hope that that makes sense. Will tell tomorrow.

[M11 for me]

Well I have my M11 here and the battery shows 45% after 12 hours down from 95% last night. 

That little "test" shows that with camera stand-by "off" the battery goes down even though the camera is untouched and no photograph is taken.

A compromise might be to set camera stand-by to 10 mins and monitor stand-by to 30 seconds. Like this during the shooting of a sceene you can avoid the situation of weaking up your camera which some claim that they lost shots as that weaking up process is too slow.

[Keith (M)]

2 hours ago, M11 for me said:

Well I have my M11 here and the battery shows 45% after 12 hours down from 95% last night. 

That little "test" shows that with camera stand-by "off" the battery goes down even though the camera is untouched and no photograph is taken.

A compromise might be to set camera stand-by to 10 mins and monitor stand-by to 30 seconds. Like this during the shooting of a sceene you can avoid the situation of weaking up your camera which some claim that they lost shots as that weaking up process is too slow.

Thanks for your test result and suggestion - which coincidentally I have just tested with those settings (camera stand-by to 10 mins and monitor stand-by to 30 seconds).  Using the same ninety minute period and number of exposures (90) as per my earlier tests, again with LV/EVF active the battery dropped from 100% to 70% which pro-rata means just 300 exposures from a fully charged battery - not at all what I had expected.  

I am tempted to inform the dealer of such poor performance / high power consumption and if nothing improves in the next week or so to ask for a replacement battery, in the hope that this could rule out a camera problem.

[sdk]

I am happy with my Leica M11 + Visoflex 2 battery usage. I have set camera so auto review is off, hybrid shutter, my EVF turns on with the top function button, and the power saving timer for my camera is set to 2 min, display timer 30 sec, 5 min sleep time on FOTOS WiFi, which I have only used a little to test camera control. I have never gotten below 50% charge, even when shooting dozens of photos in a day, and I typically charge the battery only after several days. I do have a spare battery, as every owner probably should. 

[M11 for me]

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vor 11 Minuten schrieb sdk:

dozens of photos in a day

😁 Keith talks of hundreds of pictures 😇

[jdlaing]

Another problem solved.

https://leicacamerausa.com/leica-m11-lithium-ion-battery-bp-scl7-black.html

[Keith (M)]

54 minutes ago, M11 for me said:

😁 Keith talks of hundreds of pictures 😇

No, normal usage is an hour or so walking about and less than 100 exposures, sometimes just a few dozen, if that. 

[Keith (M)]

42 minutes ago, jdlaing said:

Another problem solved.

https://leicacamerausa.com/leica-m11-lithium-ion-battery-bp-scl7-black.html

Very amusing.

[jonoslack]

2 hours ago, Keith (M) said:

Thanks for your test result and suggestion - which coincidentally I have just tested with those settings (camera stand-by to 10 mins and monitor stand-by to 30 seconds).  Using the same ninety minute period and number of exposures (90) as per my earlier tests, again with LV/EVF active the battery dropped from 100% to 70% which pro-rata means just 300 exposures from a fully charged battery - not at all what I had expected.  

I am tempted to inform the dealer of such poor performance / high power consumption and if nothing improves in the next week or so to ask for a replacement battery, in the hope that this could rule out a camera problem.

But it also means 4.1/2 hour of use with it permanently on (because you're taking a picture every minute and it won't go to standby - so you can set it to no standby) and you could easily take over 1000 images in that time. As @elmars pointed out above, taking a picture doesn't use a lot of battery life, but leaving the camera on does.

I'd be interested in your results if you took 500 pictures in your 90 minutes (and see how the battery looked then)

Your test is fine and meaningful, but it doesn't imply that the camera will only take 300 images on a charge. . . . . unless you shoot 1 image a minute.

[jonoslack]

1 minute ago, Keith (M) said:

No, normal usage is an hour or so walking about and less than 100 exposures, sometimes just a few dozen, if that. 

Then it'll last about 4.1/2 hours  (do you often walk about for that long?)

 

[tom0511]

Am 4.10.2022 um 18:33 schrieb jonoslack:

Hard to find guidance from Leica because there are so many variables.

But I turn Standby OFF and monitor to 30 seconds - that way it starts instantly which is just right. I have a suspicion that starting and stopping might use quite a lot of energy, whilst leaving it on does less (the problem is when you put it in your bag overnight turned on). There was quite a move for Leica to introduce a 1 hour standby option, so hopefully that will happen.

best

 

You just must not forget to switch the camera off at the end when using such setting. !)

[tuna]

No problems here. Recently spent two weeks shooting every day, morning to night. No evf.  Power saving on where I have to bring the camera back to life after not shooting for a bit (which caused me to lose some shots because of the unusually long delay…). However, no charge needed until the end of the second day of shooting where the battery would drop to 20-35%. Pretty good by any previous camera standards for me.

[jakontil]

12 hours ago, jdlaing said:

Another problem solved.

https://leicacamerausa.com/leica-m11-lithium-ion-battery-bp-scl7-black.html

Arrghh thought an improved battery capacity

[mon10a]

On 10/5/2022 at 7:19 AM, Keith (M) said:

I am tempted to inform the dealer of such poor performance / high power consumption and if nothing improves in the next week or so to ask for a replacement battery, in the hope that this could rule out a camera problem.

Have you followed @PeterGA‘s advice in post #9?

It took a couple of weeks for my initial battery to settle down to the point that I get about the same performance that @jonoslack described above and in his excellent review of the M11.

I almost always turn power management off so that the camera is instantly ready take a shot. My battery drains a little more than 10% an hour, which equates to over 7 hours straight of walking around and shooting. I have set the camera to display the last shot taken only if I hold the shutter button down while taking the image.

[Keith (M)]

16 hours ago, mon10a said:

Have you followed @PeterGA‘s advice in post #9?

It took a couple of weeks for my initial battery to settle down to the point that I get about the same performance that @jonoslack described above and in his excellent review of the M11.

I almost always turn power management off so that the camera is instantly ready take a shot. My battery drains a little more than 10% an hour, which equates to over 7 hours straight of walking around and shooting. I have set the camera to display the last shot taken only if I hold the shutter button down while taking the image.

Thanks.  I have taken on board all recommendations etc but continue to find (even after six recharge cycles) that battery level does drop more quickly than I would have expected and a full charge comes nowhere near Leica's stated figure of "approx 700 shots (in accordance with CIPA Standard in rangefinder mode)".  

Reference battery drain, with the camera on, battery reading 70%  and with power management off I noticed the other evening that after four hours of the camera sitting untouched, the level had dropped to 10%, so dropping somewhat quicker that your 10% per hour.

Anyway, opportunities for any meaningful photo sorties this week look to be very limited, which is a bit of a shame as the M11 is such a delight to use and is everything I had hoped for in changing from my M240 (which even after nine years of use remained a portly and heavy beast in comparison with my M7 and latterly my M10M) - aside from the niggle with the underperforming battery which I will endeavour to ignore.

[sdk]

On 10/11/2022 at 8:51 AM, Keith (M) said:

Thanks.  I have taken on board all recommendations etc but continue to find (even after six recharge cycles) that battery level does drop more quickly than I would have expected and a full charge comes nowhere near Leica's stated figure of "approx 700 shots (in accordance with CIPA Standard in rangefinder mode)".  

Reference battery drain, with the camera on, battery reading 70%  and with power management off I noticed the other evening that after four hours of the camera sitting untouched, the level had dropped to 10%, so dropping somewhat quicker that your 10% per hour.

Anyway, opportunities for any meaningful photo sorties this week look to be very limited, which is a bit of a shame as the M11 is such a delight to use and is everything I had hoped for in changing from my M240 (which even after nine years of use remained a portly and heavy beast in comparison with my M7 and latterly my M10M) - aside from the niggle with the underperforming battery which I will endeavour to ignore.

It sounds like either the camera or battery has a fault then. There could be a short circuit that is draining power even when nothing is going on. Does the battery experience significant power loss when it's not left in the camera? Do you have a second battery to test the camera power loss? You may consider requesting an exchange based on a manufacturing defect. Don't delay.

Edited October 12, 2022 by sdk

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[FrankX]

vor 6 Stunden schrieb sdk:

It sounds like either the camera or battery has a fault then. There could be a short circuit that is draining power even when nothing is going on. Does the battery experience significant power loss when it's not left in the camera? Do you have a second battery to test the camera power loss? You may consider requesting an exchange based on a manufacturing defect. Don't delay.

Until today, I never tested it in the way described by Keith since my feeling is that the battery life using the M11 is way better than that of my SL2 (which is significantly better than my Fuji X-T3, btw). Thus, inspired by Keith's comments I just tested it. With power management off and live view / display off, the battery was going down from 90% to 75% in about 70 min. That would give something like 4 x 70 min = 4 h 40 min for the battery going from 70% to 10%! Thus, Keith's value of about 4 hours seems to be reasonable and in the normal range! It is definitely not indicating a defect.

I see it in a different way: When I am photographing a wedding for 8-10 hours (about 1500 images), I most probably only need two batteries which is fantastic compared to other mirrorless cameras and my former M10 (even assuming power management off and camera always on!). Taking pictures is not consuming that much energy, especially with the M11, as already mentioned above, e. g. by Jono.

Edited October 12, 2022 by FrankX

[Wandering Photographer]

On 10/3/2022 at 12:57 PM, Keith (M) said:

Prior to purchasing my M11 I read numerous test reports including the one by the esteemed Jono Slack, in which he wrote:-

"on the M11 I've not ever exhausted a battery in a day's shooting, even with the power saving switched off, and using the EVF full time."

Taking delivery last Friday (30th Oct), once the battery had been fully charged I of course set about exploring menus, taking test shots, trying out the Visoflex 2 - all the usual new camera activities.  I had to recharge the battery yesterday, took it out today with the battery showing 90%.  Camera is set to take dng & jpg. Returned home after taking seventy frames, mostly using LV/Visoflex2 and was very disappointed to see the level had dropped to 40%.  Transferred the 70 files to my MacBook using the USB lead and it lost another 5%.  

Yes, I am aware new batteries can take a some time to reach full performance but such power consumption is at complete variance with everything I had read.  Will now re-charge it again and monitor consumption over the next few days - hopefully resulting in performance as described by Jono.

I have and M10-R and an M11. The M11 is currently in for warranty repair. But prior to that I found the M11 gave me much longer battery life than the M10-R. On my 2 to 4 hour hikes I go through anywhere from 1 to 3 batteries on the M10-R and the battery on the M11 lasted the whole time and had plenty of power left. I have 4 batteries for the M10-R and 2 for the M11. I have never needed to switch batteries for the M11 during one of my hikes.  Both cameras are set up pretty much the same. Perhaps you got a bad battery?