# keep camera on, or turn off between shots?



## pezj (Oct 18, 2010)

what conserves more battery power, to keep the camera on between shots or turn it off and on for each shot? does it take more power to keep turning the camera on and off, rather then just keeping it on the whole time. more specifically battery is dying and need to take more pictures, with a max of 5 min between each shot, and 1 min average between each shot


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## Garbz (Oct 18, 2010)

Turning the camera off conserves more power. But not enough to really make any difference. I accidentally left my D200 on once for about 3 weeks before I pulled it out of the cupboard and realised the battery was down to a whopping 70%.

So at 5min between shots you'll only wear out the switch on the camera.


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## Robin Usagani (Oct 18, 2010)

my camera has auto off if no activity for 1 minute. I just have to press the shutter half way and it will turn back on.


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## akeigher (Oct 18, 2010)

I only turn it off if its going to be a long period of time or go back in my bag - I am afraid of something pushing the wrong sequence of buttons.

But during a shoot I always leave it on.  If something happens I want to capture I dont want to have that one extra step of having to turn back on my camera.


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## inTempus (Oct 18, 2010)

There is absolutely no point to constantly turning a DSLR on and off.  Most models from the big makers will easily last several days with frequent shooting.  I turn mine on when I go out and turn it off later that day when I'm done.  The most I've seen my battery drop in a heavy day of shooting is around 20% with lots of chimping.

Turn it on and leave it on, I say.


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## ghache (Oct 18, 2010)

My D90 goes on standby after a couple minutes of inactivity. I am shooting on the same batteries for at least 3 weeks and i still have 1 battery at 100% and the other one is at about 30%. Seriously i cant beleive how long these batteries last. BTW they are 2 generic 11$ battery from hong kong.


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## bentcountershaft (Oct 18, 2010)

I used to turn mine on and off all the time but someone posted a thread like this about six months ago or so and the responses were the same as above.  Based on that I changed to leaving it on when it was in my hand and just letting it go to standby.  In six months I've seen no difference in my battery usage.


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## pezj (Oct 18, 2010)

sorry i did not realize this issue has been addressed already, but regardless thanks everyone for the input, this puts my mind at ease


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