Sony A6000 - Life at last - I hope...!!!

[AlSony]

Well, I bought my A6000 just shy of a year ago and I was quite amazed at its capabilities. I also had a Nikon D600 at the time (actually I still have it but it's in the cupboard - 'somewhere'), I've had it for a few years now, so the A6000 had to be very good to get anywhere near that sort of competition.. I couldn't quite believe that the A6000 could actually keep the D600 so honest.. Small, light, nicely made etc etc etc but capable of so much,, the virtues just go on and on... However, the one thing that seemed to spoil it all was the absolutely p*ss poor battery life - and I really mean "P*SS POOR"... On Average I would, from 100% charge, go into the menus and change a few settings and if I spent more than about 5 minutes doing so, the charge might go down to about 85%, just like that.. From here, again on average, you'd lose about 1% per each photo taken.. Does that sound like a slight exaggeration..?? Well you'd better believe it because it was true.. I virtually put the A6000 in the same cupboard as the D600 and sort of forgot all about it after about 4 months of worried use because I got sick of charging its batteries all the damned time...

Well, just two days ago I was surfing around and happened across the Sony Support site, for something else all together, but I thought I just check and see if there were any updates/help on A6000's poor battery life.. Nothing..!! But, I did see a firmware update of v3.10 and I know mine was v1.21, so I thought " what the heck, why not.?" I downloaded it and installed it.. After that, I toyed with the camera for a while then put in a fully charged battery to take a few pics but didn't get around to it, so I turned it off and put it away. I left the battery in the camera and that's something which I would never usually do as that also used to drain the life out of it in about a week from 100% to virtually 0%. Once again, I kid you NOT.. Even over just one night it would take more than 10% of life away (switched off of course) then once it hit about 50% it just fell away,, but today I took the camera around to my mothers place today to get a few shots of her on her birthday, and when I powered it up this afternoon I noticed it was still on 100%. I was expecting to see only about 70 - 80% left but I was a little bit surprised to see 100% - Huhhh, Strange...!!! I got around there and fitted a flash and messed around for a while testing etc then too about 6 or 7 photos and each time I clicked the shutter, I looked and the percentage left and it still remained on 100% until the very last shot when it went to 99%...

I am astounded. What happened in that firmware update..?? Something did...!!! Maybe, just maybe it did some good...

I am going to click away this weekend to "test it out"...

Al

[Obelix]

I never seen that bad battery life on my A6000.
I did see drop in battery % when turned off with 16-50 kit lens and Sigma 30 mm, looks like these lenses never turned off.
Another problem is EVF proximity switch, camera will not go to "sleep" is proximity sensor detects anything, this is not case on Sony A-mount cameras.

[Jay]

I really don't know, but it sounds like the firmware update certainly fixed something for you!

Thanks for sharing,

Jay

[OldNoob]

A lot of people don't realize that the lithium batteries actually DO suffer from "memory" effect if there is more than one cell, despite claims that they do not. This imbalance or lack of "Cell Equalization" can progressively shorten the charge life of multiple cell lithium batteries. Due to this, often battery life can differ between the same type and brand of battery depending on it's age or how many times it has been "cycled". So it's hard to draw exact matches in peoples experience with battery life, among other factors.
Sony's (and other brands) fast battery chargers are not true "balance" chargers. Charging the battery in the camera, on the other hand, while taking longer, actually gives a more balanced charge of the multiple cells.
Having a true external dedicated balance charger for the NP-FW50 would be nice thing to have.

[Steve]

Batteries as have been said especially lithium ION have memory.


They MUST be fully discharged and then re charged before using in Production.

Many factories do this now as they got many returns initially.

But I would say while you still when buying batteries 90% of the time they will be fine I would always discharge and then recharge.

I have 4 batteries for my a6000 I have done this on all///and they last a long time.

recent holiday I fully charged 2 batteries and over 2 weeks I did not re charge them....I took 750 shots with 2 batteries.....

They were pretty run done but have recharged...

So battery maintenance is important.

Batteries that are fully charged will bleed charge over time so make sure you check them.

JUST make sure you fully discharge and then re charge.....dont hope that all went well at factory when they did this.