A Journey of a Thousand Miles

Over the course of the last week I had been increasingly worried about the low battery life on my new 50D. I would charge the battery and by the end of a day of light shooting, it would be nearing the end of it’s life. I was starting to think that I had a bad battery, having bought an after market battery for the camera, but the problem would persist with the Canon battery that came with the camera as well.

It turns out that the camera comes with the default setting of having “Auto Power Off” set to never. This in turn drains the battery when the camera is not switched off manually. For someone like me who rarely or never turns the camera off while I am out shooting this can be a particularly troubling issue.

To change the default setting, enter the camera menu, under the first camera tools menu (the yellow one with the wrench) there is an option to change the auto power off settings. I have set mine to four minutes, the camera will power down and go into standby. It will come back to life on the first push of the shutter button. This ensures that you will not miss shots fiddling with the power on switch in the back and it has solved the battery life issues.

I still don’t know how much life I get out of a battery , after changing the auto power off setting, I have gone from a single day of light shooting to a week with the battery registering as fully charged.

I hope this helps with what I consider to be a major concern with this camera.