battery draining when camera is off and only getting 70-80 shots per charge.

TLDR version. I only get 70-80 shots per battery charge and the camera drains the battery when off.

Long version below:

Hi Folks, about 9 months ago with the birth of my first child I decided I wanted a DSLR so had a great excuse for the wife for my spending the hard earned cash but my budget only allowed me to purchase a D5200 which I'm very happy with so far apart from it eating the batteries.

I've the battery that came with the camera and a spare both appear to be genuine Nikon EN-EL14 1030mAh after watching multiple articles and videos on the web on how to spot fakes.
But they both seem to be only lasting about 70-80 shots before the camera reports low battery and switches off.

Since I bought the camera:
my shutter count is only 1406 so not a lot for a 9 month old camera.
firmware is C:1.00 L1.006 (never updated)
I shoot in single shot mode, jpeg only L with fine setting, VR turned on, non live view and have a SB-700 flash when needed.

I tend to take a few shots, put the camera away for a few days and come back and take a few more shots. When I put the camera away the battery is IN and the camera is OFF fully.
I've noticed If I leave the battery in the camera after a week or two of no use sitting in the camera the battery appears to have been significantly drained.

I made note of when I fully charged the last battery which was Nov 9th 2013 reading the voltage on a multi-meter is was reading 8.3V fully charged. From the 9th Nov to the 19th Nov I only took about 70-80 shots and the battery appeared to be fully drained so much so the camera would not turn on. Measuring on the multi meter it could not get a reading at all, but the battery still charged taking 1hour 40 mins to charge with the standard Nikon Charger.

Has anyone else had this issue ? from what I've read I should be getting a heck of a lot more shots per battery charge!! Wondering if its the Camera or the Battery (or batteries considering I've more than just the one) ?

I'm aware there's a firmware update to improve battery performance but am half afraid to update as people have reported that 3rd party battery's no longer work (which I've not bought yet but would like to at some point in time)

You might need new batteries of course, it does not sound good. Their capacity does diminish in two or three years, but nine months is not a long time. Or perhaps there is a defect in the camera draining the battery? (I am making all that up, no clue here).

But the number of shots is normally about the least load on the battery. What really drains the battery is the LCD being on. If you spend long times browsing through all your images multiple times, I would certainly suspect that first. Use the computer for that. There is short timeout provided to turn the LCD off soon. Also extensive internal flash use is a load on the battery. If those uses do not apply to you, then something about the battery seems suspect.

This is very strange. I've had Nikons from D70,D300 and D800 and one thing I like about DSLRs is the fact that I rarely switch them off and the battery remains charged. The only funny I had was when I thought I had a battery drain issue but it turned I was sometimes leaving it plugged into the PC which does drain the battery.

I've had this issue with my D90. Shut the camera off and the green memory card access lamp is blinking non stop. Drained the battery and don't remember what the issue was. Thinking I reformatted the card. It's been a couple years and it hasn't done it since. ?? Just thought I would share.

Try re-formatting the card. Might be an issue with that. All else fails, try a new card/battery. Might save you a bit of hassle down the road.

Thanks all for the reply's I'm gonna take better notes of exactly how may shots I get and what I'm doing with the camera. 2 batts all charged up tonight measuring 8.3v and I'll reformat the memory card just in case. (the light only blinks during use) If still getting the same results I'll update the firmware to the version released earlier this month see if it makes a difference. memory card I'm using is a Sandisk 64GB 30MB/s class 10 SD XCI ~B

As mentioned by someone else earlier I was also sometimes leaving the plugged into the PC which does drain the battery very fast. Are you using the USB cable to download the photos? If so just be sure to unplug the camera as soon as it is done.

Maybe you should try a firmware update.

It's normally a setting that you've set in your menu that causes the camera to drain the battery at a faster rate if you leave the power switch to on. It will be less if the switch is "off".

same case happened with me when i used nikon D3200 but now i am trully happy with my nikon D5200. I dont know why this happened with you. You can read our (me and my husband) experince regarrding on this battery drain issue here.

So as advised I updated the firmware (which apparently was a fix for a different battery type/variant)
I also re-formatted the 64gig memory card. 8 days and about 50 shots later the battery is still showing up with all bars still full. Hopefully issue has been resolved. I'll edit my original post once I'm sure and more time has passed to see if the firmare & card format fixed the problem.

~B

Bullets Ie said:

So as advised I updated the firmware (which apparently was a fix for a different battery type/variant)
I also re-formatted the 64gig memory card. 8 days and about 50 shots later the battery is still showing up with all bars still full. Hopefully issue has been resolved. I'll edit my original post once I'm sure and more time has passed to see if the firmare & card format fixed the problem.

~B

Click to expand...

Are you using a third party grip with your genuine Nikon batteries?

Marcel said:

Are you using a third party grip with your genuine Nikon batteries?

Click to expand...

Hi m8,

Nope I've not bought grip yet for it. Everything's genuine Nikon.

I was going to order a grip and use 3rd party batteries that were decoded but never got around to doing it.
Plus with the newer firmware there were reports that the 3rd party batteries no longer being recognized after the firmware update.

~B

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Grrrrrr still issues.

From the 19th Nov I charged up the battery completely. Now on the 29th I've only managed to take 53 shots before the battery went down to 1 bar last night.
A day later without doing anything and camera fully off battery is drained completely. I only used the camera 3 times between 19th and tonight the 29th,
changed the lens once or twice and used an my SB700 flash for 10-15 of the shots. I had update the firmware to CL1.01 L 1.006 and reformatted the memory card.
All pics taken without the live view switched on. May need to drop Nikon a mail to see if they've suggestions Camera was only bought mid Jan.

~B