SX280 - battery life shooting video

[factoryguy]

UPDATED May 5:

I apologize to the forum for mixing two different problems.  They are unrelated.

Problem #1:  User error.  I thought I was using a class 6 SD card but I was wrong. The yellow "!" indicates a pathologically slow card.  Upgrading to a class 10 resolved this problem.

Problem #2: UNRESOLVED.  Red battery indicator comes on prematurely.  On a fresh charge, it'll turn red after recording for a couple of minutes.  On a partially drained battery, it turns red immediately upon entering movie mode or pressing the record button.  Turn the camera off and then right back on in "still" mode and it shows full charge and works fine ... until trying to shoot video.  I have not precisely measured recording times but it'll record for at least 20 (maybe 30?) minutes while flashing red.

[Balb0wa]

come on canon, please respond , why are you ignoring this thread?

[glisten]

@Iamgeorge,

You could buy one. But, there are numerous threads on several forums with thousands of posts AND silence from Canon on this issue. 

Buying an SX280 now sounds more like an exercise in frustration.

BTW, my SX280 just bricked. No amount of recharging will make it even turn on. Since I live outside the USA and have lost the receipt, there is no recourse for me. My fault there. But still it leaves a very bad taste in the mouth.

Some other camera would seem the better option. If Canon fixes these issues in a new camera, it will probably be fine. Others in the thread have mentioned additional aternatives. The latter will be my choice.

Glisten

[dmw]

OK, well I said I would report back after getting my camera back from Canon in HK. Readers will recall that they told us they would install a new firmware that was not yet online. The result is quite good, in the circumstances. I fully charged the battery, set it up in standard movie mode, and left it recording a boring video of my router. It recorded for 24 minutes before beeping and the recording size was 3.99GB. Then I turned it off and on, tried a bit of zooming, and left it running again. After about 6 minutes it stopped, and when I tried zooming, it shut down with the "recharge battery" warning. So that's a big improvement, 30 minutes total. Left it for a few minutes to cool off. Turning it back on in still mode, it still indicates full battery, which of course isn't true - it means the voltage isn't low enough to trigger it. A bit of zooming in still mode and it now shows 2 bars. Switch to video, and it is recording again, still showing the flashing red battery, but recording it is. A bit of zooming and it shuts down again. So overall, I get about 30 minutes of video recording, and it will still take stills after that. Not brilliant, but workable.

[bradmoss]

Thanks for the report, now can you do something for all the fellows that don't have acces to that firmware in order to get it some way?

Maybe you can ask Canon Hong Kong and upload it somwhere?

[dim]

This is standard behavior with FW 1.02.

1) You have to zoom in movie mode!

2) Shows in movie mode indicator: 2 bars, 1 bar and  in the end red bar? Or only red bars?

This is main problem!!

[bradmoss]

it just says "insert a new battery" and turns off

[iamgeorge]

@dmw

Is there any way of looking at the system settings to find the firmware version that was loaded in HK. Can you post if you find it.

Were you shooting the movie at 30fps? Can you try shooting movies at 60fps and post results on battery life / time.

Yeah, I can live with 30 minutes of battery life on a good $180 camera. $20 will get you 2 Wasabi 1300mah batteries and a car charger on Amazon.

[dswansonil]

The reported results aren't much different than what I found months ago.  You can get 25-30 minutes of video if you don't zoom and you don't mind the uncertainty of the flashing low battery indicator.  That just wasn't good enough for me.

[bradmoss]

I cant take 6 minutes zooming, it would quite an improvement for me

[dmw]

As far as I know, the camera does not have a setting which displays the current firmware version.