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SX280 - battery life shooting video

factoryguy
Apprentice

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.

 

 

 

1,334 REPLIES 1,334

If pointing out the obvious - that a lot of people are still having problems with this camera - makes me a troll, then so be it.. A handful of users (4 now) seem to be happy, but there are many complaints that suggest Canon hasn't addressed the flaw(s) with the sx280. If you don't like my comments, click on my user name and click the button that ignores my remarks - which are aimed at people who are looking for a little balance in this conversation. This is a user forum, not a fan club. Canon tried to fix the sx280, and failed yet again, as far as a lot of people here are concerned. 

 

 

Exactly. USER forum. Which means for people who actually possess the camera and want to make it work, not simply cast aspersions about the company that so horribly wronged you. This "scorekeeping" is abject nonsense. People generally only log onto forums like this when they have a problem, not to report that something is working properly. Fact is, in spite of all your earlier predictions (Canon will never do anything. The fix won't be able to be applied through firmware by users. It made no difference. Yada Yada Yada), it appears that the camera is working for a lot of people now. Whatever "balance" some former user can bring to that conversation is mostly white noise. 
@UnionStation wrote:

If pointing out the obvious - that a lot of people are still having problems with this camera - makes me a troll, then so be it.. A handful of users (4 now) seem to be happy, but there are many complaints that suggest Canon hasn't addressed the flaw(s) with the sx280. If you don't like my comments, click on my user name and click the button that ignores my remarks - which are aimed at people who are looking for a little balance in this conversation. This is a user forum, not a fan club. Canon tried to fix the sx280, and failed yet again, as far as a lot of people here are concerned. 

 

 


 

Keeping in mind that Canon is probably monitoring this thread, how many people here:

 

A) Are happy with Canon's firmware fix and believe all the issues have been resolved?

 

B) Believe the camera is still flawed and want Canon to get to work on making this camera work as advertised?

 

Scorekeeping, RCJ, is the only way to let Canon know there is still a problem, let fellow users with the problem know they're not alone, and let potential purchasers out there know they may want to think twice before plunking down $269-$350 on a camera that may not meet their needs.

 

The camera is NOT "working for a lot of people now." It seems to be working acceptably for a couple of people who purchased larger capacity batteries or avoid shooting video, or don't mind the flashing low-battery symbol and just hope the camera will keep on shooting.

 

 

 

UnionStation, I would hope that no one thinks the firmware update has completely resolved all low battery level indicator issues, but some (and it seems the number is growing) think it resolved enough to make the camera usable for them. And some, but I am sure not all, have reached the conclusion because they reached a point where they could not return the camera and the firmware update did improve functionality for them. Even RCJ, when giving advice about purchasing an SX280, said if he had it to do over again, he would probably not purchase the SX280. That isn't exactly an endorsement for the camera. And I think he is right in that whining, and I have been guilty of some of that, really doesn't help the situation and probably very little posted here, postive or negative, is going to convince Canon to do the right thing. What may help is posting honest reviews at vendor sites and hopefully that will impact sales. Also, honest reviewers pointing out issues with the camera will certainly impact sales but consumers have little control over that apsect.

 

I think very few people come to a forum like this and certainly not potential buyers. I found it after purchase and because I physically was dealing with the low battery level issue. I also think there are very few people who are reading this thread. Registered members logged on is always in the single digits, and I am always listed because I fail to log out most of the time. They have no "guest" stats here as with other Lithium powered forums so who knows about that. There are certainly Canon reps that monitor the forum but it is basically consumers helping consumers. You see how little help has been given by Canon reps for this thread.

 

With the knowledge I have now, and from what I have read from 280SX owners at other sites who have updated frimware from 1.0.0.0 to 1.0.2.0, a lot have seen an improvement in functionality. My camera came with version 1.0.1.0. I feel that my camera lost functionality with the update to 1.0.2.0. With version 1.0.1.0, when you switched from any still mode to movie mode after some battery drain, the battery level indicator switched from full to the flashing red low battery warning. If you really believed the indication was correct, you needed to swap/recharge the battery. With 1.0.2.0, after more battery drain, the battery indicator seemed to always stay at full indication in movie mode if it started at full in still mode. As long as movie capture was not in progress at that point you could zoom the lens in and out 1-2 times and the battery stayed a full indication. Once capture started it became a crap shoot: sometimes just touching the zoom ring would take the indicator from full to low, and a couple of zooms would shut the camera down with a "recharge the battery" indication. I could not live with that and returned the camera. With what I know now, either by reading other users experiences or my own experiences, if I bought an SX280 today, I would pray to the camera gods it came with firmware version 1.0.1.0 and I would not update it. I would rather have a low battery warning happen too early than it happen too late when I am in the middle of a video. The problem with the SX280 as I see it is not that it has below average battery life. The SX260 had that and I wasn't expecting the SX280 to be any better. In fact the specs for stills and movies are lower for the SX280. The problem is the battery level indicator. Once that is crippled, then knowing when to change batteries is a guessng game.



UnionStation wrote:

Keeping in mind that Canon is probably monitoring this thread, how many people here:

 

A) Are happy with Canon's firmware fix and believe all the issues have been resolved?

 

B) Believe the camera is still flawed and want Canon to get to work on making this camera work as advertised?

 

Scorekeeping, RCJ, is the only way to let Canon know there is still a problem, let fellow users with the problem know they're not alone, and let potential purchasers out there know they may want to think twice before plunking down $269-$350 on a camera that may not meet their needs.

 

The camera is NOT "working for a lot of people now." It seems to be working acceptably for a couple of people who purchased larger capacity batteries or avoid shooting video, or don't mind the flashing low-battery symbol and just hope the camera will keep on shooting.

 

 

 





videophan wrote:...
In fact the specs for stills and movies are lower for the SX280.

videophan, could you point me to this info online?

 

I love the low light ability of the 280 (twice that of the 260).

 

Look at the Snapsort comparison—while the 260 wins over the 280, it's easy to understand that this because of Snapsort's flawed and subjective scoring (they give the camera a zero when they don't know the answer, and they score for a camera's popularity). It's not clear (from that website, anyway) how the 260 specs best those of the 280.

 

Pawl, these are screen shots from the manuals/user guides. Please note when comparing movie times that you are comparing 24 fps to 30/60 fps. That makes a big difference.

 

SX260:

SX260_specs.jpg

 

SX280:

 

SX280_Specs.jpg

 


@pawl wrote:

videophan wrote:...
In fact the specs for stills and movies are lower for the SX280.

videophan, could you point me to this info online?

 

I love the low light ability of the 280 (twice that of the 260).

 

Look at the Snapsort comparison—while the 260 wins over the 280, it's easy to understand that this because of Snapsort's flawed and subjective scoring (they give the camera a zero when they don't know the answer, and they score for a camera's popularity). It's not clear (from that website, anyway) how the 260 specs best those of the 280.

 




For me the 1.0.2.0 gives me a battery warning when about 2/3 of the battery is drained, so about one bar left, as it should be, right?  So I can trust normally to still take some 10m of video (not too much zooming) before you really get into the danger zone.  If I can trust that, I don't think I will have much unpleasant surprise.

 

And when I am done with video, I can always power cycle to get the actual battery indication for still mode ...

 

This is the hypothesis I will be operating on the next 10 days, before final decision to return or not ...

filipb, I don't know how many different ways to say this. I turned the camera on, went to video mode, and battery level indicated a full battery. I shot about ten seconds of video, zoomed in and the red low battery light came on. I  zoomed out and continued shooting another 10-20 seconds of video with the red flashing low battery light.  When I zoomed in again (video still in progress) the video stopped, "recharge the battery" appeared, and camera shut itself off. The battery level sequence: full battery at start of video; one zoom low battery level flashing red; second zoom camera automatically stopped my video in progress. Exactly where was I supposed to know to replace/swap batteries before I started what appeared to be my last video for this battery?

 


@filipb wrote:

For me the 1.0.2.0 gives me a battery warning when about 2/3 of the battery is drained, so about one bar left, as it should be, right?  So I can trust normally to still take some 10m of video (not too much zooming) before you really get into the danger zone.  If I can trust that, I don't think I will have much unpleasant surprise.

 

And when I am done with video, I can always power cycle to get the actual battery indication for still mode ...

 

This is the hypothesis I will be operating on the next 10 days, before final decision to return or not ...




videophan, what do you mean with "full"  the indicator giving three bars?

 

But that's not full by any means.  It is full for current mode of usage: doing nothing! 😉

 

So, yes you need your memory to keep a bit of scoring ... I guess ...

It would be nice to have a battery indication like for room left on the card:

 

2 separate figures giving you approx. time or shots left.

 

And, did you notice, when you are nearing the end of the room on the card while shooting a movie that the timer is turning red?  Fantastic feature!  Should be in my all improved battery indicator as well! 🙂

 

Setting all joking aside, I really wonder how other camera's track a unified battery indicator which is true for all modes of operation?

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