6D GPS Drains battery when idle

[heyjp]

Got my new EOS 6D for christmas (present to self... how else did Santa know what I need want).

Great camera.  Love the low light.  Love the WiFi.  ALMOST love the GPS.  The GPS tends to drain the battery about 25% per day.  On a 8-10 hour heavy shooting day, that's not a problem.  I can still shoot 500-600 shots and the GPS only drains 8-10% during that time.

However, when the camera is in the bag... you can shut off the camera and shut off the GPS logging, and it still drains 25% per day.  Leave the camera in the back for 4-5 days... and the battery is shot.

Only option is to take the battery out or use the menus and disable GPS and re-enable when you use camera again.

I think Canon needs a separate GPS timeout of about 3-6 hours.  If GPS logging is disabled, GPS should shutdown after a few hours of non-use.

It's a drag to take your camera out after leaving in the bag for a couple of days and battery is already 50% down or more.

Jim

[heyjp]

Amen, Brother Dave!

MagicLantern does exactly that, as SHOULD CANON!!!

ML gives you the option of auto GPS-sleep when the camera sleeps or off. Just an option though. You can still choose the Canon Auto-highDrain mode if you wish. 🙂

Jim in Boulder

[hsbn]

I'm using ML now. It gives you option but it is not perfect in a sense. If you turn on the power saving feature, it will take much longer to get signal once the camera awake from sleep. So during the day, I have to turn off the power-saving features. Then when I'm all done for a day, I turn it back on. So in a way, it's similar to enable/disable it with Canon stock firmware.

I wish they could make the GPS more responsive. 😞 ... I just want to clarify this so if anyone thinking about ML for this option need to consider their shooting habit. 🙂

For example, I shoot at location A, then move to location B. During the time, the camera goes to sleep. At location B, i take out the camera, shoot a bunch of photo, but these photo are wrongly tagged because there is no GPS signal. If the camera doesn't have GPS signal, it will tag your photo in some weird location. At home, i'll have to drag them into the right coordinate. 😞 ...

[HPL]

Yes, it would be nice if Canon would add the ability to choose how GPS is activated/deactivated, but all this seems to me like a lot of whining over a relatively minor problem.  One can turn the GPS off before shutting the camera down and that will cure the problem.  Personally, I wouldn't think of using my EOS cameras without the battery grip, and I almost always have at least 4 batteries with me AND the "AA" tray that goes with the battery grip, AND a dozen or so AA batteries. That is just standard practice for me.  I also carry a couple of extra batteries each for my light meter,  my remote tirgger transmitter, and for the reciever  (three different and rather esoteric batteries which can be hard to find at  the local quick stop).   I mean come on, you just dropped $1800.00 ish for the camera, the battery grip is only two or three hundred more and an extra battery another hundred or so.  the battery grip makes the camera so much more functional, and it comes with the "AA" tray.   The "AA" tray can be a real lifesaver as one can get "AA" batteries almost anywhere and they are "pre-charged" so to speak.

[heyjp]

HLP,

Funny! So rather than a small firmware change (that MagicLantern already implemented and i use, and allowed me to quit whining), I agree, I could double the weight and footprint of my camera and carry another pound of batteries.

But, with the third party solution, I just carry my single battery, GPS comes on and shuts off automatically, and I can shoot 400-500 shots no matter how long my camera was hibernating. And I can STILL carry extra batteries and use the handgrip if I want. A simple fix that Canon could have done themselves.

Jim in Boulder

[HPL]

400-500 frames would frequently be a light day for me, and I really (really) like the functionallity of the battery grip, so the extra weight of a coupel of extra batteries seems negligible to me.  The battery grip doesn't actually increase the footprint of the camera, and if you have almost any of the L series lenses, you won't even notice the slight increase in weight of one or even three extra batteries in your bag.  I also have made it a practice for many years to charge up my batteries the night before a shoot so that they are fresh and topped off before I leave the house.  The really easy, light way to solve your problem without any input from Canon is to carry a small notebook and take a few notes.  The 6D does so much that this really seems pretty nitpicky to me.  Yes, it would be nice if every camera had every possible feature, and yes, it seems like this might be a simple software fix, but, there is a pretty simple way to address this percieved problem already (aparently two ways if you include the aftermarket software fix) so ...  I am more dissapointed with the small number of focus points and the relatively small autofocus area in the camera 6D.  I also wonder why my new 7D MkII doesn't have WiFi.  On the other hand I have lived this long without either GPS or WiFi in my cameras, so  can probably muddle on now.  You are right though, if an aftermarket supplier can write a program that fixes the percieved problem, it does seem that Canon could do it too (and by the way, the 7D MkII has the same issue with GPS).

[RobertFrei]

I have to agree there is no excuse for Canon not implementing a widely needed firmware upgrade.  Not all of us can justify all the other measures as work-arounds - especially those of us who are hobbyists.

[hsbn]

Perfect solution would be giving us the option:
Turn Off GPS [x] min after camera power off.
[x] = 0, 10, 30, 60, 120.