Conserving battery while in wilderness

[waggles]

I am going on a 4 day trek in Peru next month. I have 6 batteries for my x-t1. I would like to know the best ways to conserve power. What comes to mind is switch off high performance, change OIS mode, evf brightness, use evf instead of lcd, manual focus instead of auto focus. Does anyone have ideas on how impact these choices would make?

 

If negligible, I may leave things the way they are and hope for the best.

 

Thanks

[quincy]

Just keep the camera turned off when you don't take a picture, uptime alone eats most of your battery. If you're not after wildlife, turning off high performance should be fine. Manual focus won't help much because fujinon x-mount is focus by wire. 3rd party manual focus lenses help with that. The rest of your measures should be fine too.

Food for thought: if you turn down the brightness, your Evf or screen might be harder to see, so taking a picture takes longer, which means more uptime and more battery usage. What i'm trying to say is, don't make your life too hard and enjoy your trip.

[milandro]

Spent 3 weeks in hot and humid Cuba, had no problems, so, I think that, provided that you have temperature and humidity not wildly exceeding the norms (as in the very rainy forest in the rainy season) you are all right, however if you have absolutely no chance to reload them in case you need to, because you will have no electricity socket, a back up solar charger might be a good idea.

 

For normal trips other than deep in the rain forest , don’t worry, you’ll be ok.

Edited July 17, 2016 by milandro

[waggles]

Thanks to you both for the advice. I will be at high altitude, so the weather will be cold -5 to 20 C. I will keep spare battery next to my body. I was worried because I used up a battery for one hockey game, but the camera was on and auto focusing for about 20 minutes out of the hour. In Peru it will be mainly scenery, so the camera will be on much more intermittently. I may take some astro photos, so I can see that consuming more power. As long as I have 2 batteries left for the last day, I will be happy.

[Sluw]

I can confirm that turning the camera off saves a lot of battery, such a big difference with an OVF/DSLR. And keep in mind that astrophotography consumes a lot of battery indeed.

[waggles]

Thanks Sluw. Maybe I'll keep one battery for astrophotography and once it's drained I will end my astrophotography for the trek.

[addicted2light]

You could always carry one USB charger (they go for 7/8$ on ebay or amazon) plus one of those USB batteries made to recharge laptops and cellphones. There are models that will let you charge a camera battery 4 to 10 times (depending on how much power they hold to begin with).

 

They are fairly small and light, they hold the charge very well (so you can charge them at home before even leaving for Peru), and they do not depend on the presence of the sun.

Edited July 19, 2016 by addicted2light