Z5 ii Battery Consumption

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stuck_shutter_blown_HLs

New member
Hi. New member here. My new Z5 ii gobbles up 25% of a fully charged battery (EN-EL15C) in just one hour.
Nikkor 50 F1.8 S or 24-120 F4 S attached, with lens cap off. LCD left on the photo shooting screen throughout, and with brightness set to MINUS 2. Airplane mode ON. Energy Saving (photo mode) ON.
The camera is new. The cell is new and with fewer than 10 recharge cycles on it and in perfect condition per the camera.
When I explore the menus, it seems like the camera runs down the battery even faster.
Is it, and other Nikon Z models for that matter, supposed to be this power hungry, or I have a faulty camera?

Thanks in advance for your assistance.
 
Last edited:
BF Hammer

BF Hammer

Senior Member
Mirrorless (all brands) consumes more power. For that matter, using Liveview on a DSLR consumes large amounts of power also.

It is why Nikon upgraded the EN-EL15 with more capacity to the C revision. It is recommended to buy a backup.
 
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Paliswe

Senior Member
New batteries has to go thru a number of charge - discharge cycles before they reach full capacity. Discharge the battery quite a bit, before charging it again.
As mentioned above, it is recommended to buy a backup. I have two batteries which I switch between.
 
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stuck_shutter_blown_HLs

New member
Paliswe said:
New batteries has to go thru a number of charge - discharge cycles before they reach full capacity. Discharge the battery quite a bit, before charging it again.
As mentioned above, it is recommended to buy a backup. I have two batteries which I switch between.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the tip. I didn't know li-ions behaved like that. Both cells have gone through only several cycles of FULL discharge (camera forced shutoff). Strange why the camera always recognizes both batteries as at 100% fresh off the charger, if they in fact haven't reached full capacity.
 
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Paliswe

Senior Member
Make sure that you have turned everything off in the network menu, so that they don't drain the battery. I have all those "wireless" functions turned off.
 
Clovishound

Clovishound

Senior Member
There are some menu options that can help with the battery drain. I got a little annoyed with the display going dormant after a short period of time and changed it to a couple minutes. Battery life went down the drain. I quickly changed it back. Counterintuitively, the EVF consumes more power than the backscreen. There are lots of different combinations of EVF, backscreen, sleep intervals to juggle between. Figure out your style of shooting and find a balance between battery life, and convenience when shooting. In the end the spare battery is likely your best friend. It might not be a bad idea to have a USBc cord handy so that you can plug your camera into your car and get a bit of charge in the field. I once pulled out my spare battery only to find I had forgotten to charge it. The other option would be a portable phone battery, those are cheap and can be used for other things than powering your camera. They also can be put in your pocket and power the camera via a USBc cord in a pinch.
 
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