Digital Camera eats Batteries

The FW has a Canon PowerShot S200. It started draining the battery after only 5 or 6 pictures, so we bought a couple of replacement batteries. We get the same perfromance out of the new batteries that we did with the old ones, so that suggests the problem is with the camera. Anybody ever have this happen and if so what did you do to fix it?

Thanks!

Rootski

Buy rechargeable batteries and a battery charger for them. Its not very expensive and MUCH cheaper in the long run by a mile. Fleet farm or Walmart should have what you need pretty cheap. Get 2 sets of batteries so when the ones in the camera run down and and you aren’t done taking pics for the day you will have an extra set with you. I bought a small digital camera case at walmart that holds my battery charger in it and of course the extra charged baterries are in the charger so they don’t take up any extra room. Remember to charge BOTH sets of batteries before using them.
Thanks, Bill

We use litheum.. Not sure on the spelling..

ironhead

If your batteries are dying after only 5-6 pictures, something must be wrong with the camera.

CR

Bill,

The camera uses a battery pack, not standard batteries.

Tonight I measured the voltage on each battery pack I had and it looks like the charger is charging them all the way up. So then I tried to clean up the contacts inside the camera with a small piece of fingernail file. That might have helped…I took about 25 flash pictures in a row and the “low battery” icon didn’t show up. Previously the camera would start to shut down after 5 pictures so this is quite an improvement.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions!

Rootski

Rootski, I have a Panasonic that eats batteries also, maybe 10-12 pics and that’s it. I bought it cause I’ve had excellent luck with other products from them. Maybe I should check my contacts also but it did that from day one. It uses 2 AA batteeries. Maybe I got a lemon???

coopertop,
you didn’t say if the AA batts you are using are just regular AA’s, or Lithium AA, that are made for such devices.
If you are just regular AA, that is probably the reason they are not lasting too long.
check your camera manual, and it will give a recommendation on approved batteries. and it will NOT say regular AA’s.
good luck.
Jack

Im with Jack on the Lithium…I get several hundred pics with Lithium In my camera and with regular batteries imlucky to get 20…They are much more expensive but worth the price …Jay

The Lithium batteries are a little more expensive but well worth the money in my opinion. 5x longer performance than standard AA’s.

Not only that, but with the rechargeables, they don’t hold a charge, so if you have your camera sitting around for a while and go to use it, there’s a good chance your batteries are dead.

I go with the lithium. I’ve taken a ton of pictures this summer+video and only have burned through one set. Worth the price if you ask me.

OK, I think I might have fixed this thing.

Just to repeat what I had done earlier, I used a voltmeter to see that the charger was putting out the right voltage and that all the different batteries I had were charged up to the right voltage. That meant the camera had a problem.

I looked down inside the camera to see where the contacts were that would make the connection to the battery terminals. Then I took a finger nail file and polished the surfaces of those contacts and got them nice and shiny.

So far I’ve taken about 50 flash pictures and looked at a bunch of other pictures on the LCD screen and the battery is still going strong. Kind of like cleaning the battery terminal on your car, sometimes good things happen.

Now all I have to do is catch a fish that photo-worthy!

Rootski

Go get them fish Steve. Theres nothing stopping you now. We all look forward to seeing all those fish pics [hint hint] .
Thanks, Bill

if that thing eats batteries, I’d sure hate to see what would happen if you stuck a finger in there…