K-5 battery life

950 shots.

3 full charges (two on a Pentax battery, one on a 7dayShop knock-off).

Maybe 5 minutes total of video, lots of messing around in the menus for the first charge, not much at all since then.

Maybe 50 shots with flash.

Anyhow I look at it, it doesn't seem anything like what page 52 in the manual would suggest, by a factor of at least two, possibly even three.

Any ideas?

Yes haven't managed to get more than 800 pics with the battery either. Might be the SR that eats a lot of battery!

I certainly wouldn't complain if I'd got 800 shots off a charge.

To clarify, that's 950 shots total, in three charges.

Not much more than 300 per charge.

Ouch that is very low... I got something like 450 on the first charge but has been creeping upwards since. Nothing like the D7k... I got 1400 pics on the first charge....

I only got 150 on the first charge. From what everyone seems to be saying, this is *much* lower than what it should be.

What could I be doing that drains the battery? I've got the LCD set to -3, btw.

I would suggest that the first thing to do is reset everything to factory defaults, and start from there.

Alternatively, go through each of the menus and make sure nothing is turned on for longer than it needs. Metering time for instance.

Do you have it set so it automatically shows every photo you take? That can drain the battery pretty fast. It is the first thing I turn off.

Ok, let's see...

Instant review: 3s (default = 1s)
All beeps: Off
Guide display: 3s (=default)
Status screen: Off
LCD brightness: -3 (default 0)
Auto power off: 3 mins (default 1 min)
Meter operating time: 10s (=default)
SR: On (=default)

I've highlighted the ones that are more than default.

Edit:

With Gwyn's comment in mind I've reset the instant review to 1s (the default), and returned the auto power off to 1min. I'll see what the next charge is like. Fortunately I've only just replaced the battery since the last charge died, so it'll be a fair test.

Does it seem likely that those settings would make so much difference that the battery life is more than halved??

One other thing I've noticed is that when the battery is close to empty, the level indicator on the LCD indicates 1 bar for quite some time - 50+ exposures on the last charge.

This is different from K10D battery behaviour, where it would indicate full forever, and then when it displayed as almost empty, I had about two shots left.

I'm not complaining - much better to get a bit of warning.

Just trying to establish whether this is normal. Have others noticed this difference?

Battery life appears to be very good on my K5, I cant give any image count or run time, as I have not kept a check, but just keep looking at the battery indicator, wondering when it will go down. Had the camera since the end of August, and only recharged once in that time.

Take care.

In case it helps, you don't need to keep a check - just use PhotoMe to check the shutter count for one of your recent images.

1 more question do you have it to do any lens correction on the photos you take?

Good thought - but no. Both off.

I'm not sure yet how the battery life on the K-5 is going compared to the K20D - it can be very difficult to judge as it depends so much on how much focusing we do, how much reviewing, how much messing in menus....

Having said that in a week's holiday shooting maybe 200-300 images per day only one battery change was required. The second battery was still going strong at the end of the week. That doesn't seem too shabby.

Yes, indeed. I did a lot of all of those for the first charge, and got just over 150 out of it. Then much less of the messing with the subsequent two charges - no more than I would do with the K10D.

Yes, that would be more what I'd expect.

Wouldn't you have been concerned if you'd had to change it every other day?