VR and battery life

HarveyMushman

I'm going to rent an AF-S 70-200/2.8 VR in the near future for my D70. I understand the VR feature consumes some juice. How much? On one of the days of the rental period I'll be away from power outlets so recharging won't be possible. On this day I anticipate heavy use of VR, and many hundreds of pictures. Should I buy another battery?

DoctorIt

I never noticed any considerable extra drain. D70 battery will still go for days, even with the big VR lens.

A spare battery never hurts, of course.

ballentphoto

DoctorIt wrote:

I never noticed any considerable extra drain. D70 battery will still go for days, even with the big VR lens.

A spare battery never hurts, of course.

It's not too bad, but as DoctorIt recommends, it never hurts to have at least one extra, if you are going to be shooting like mad, then 2 extras

HarveyMushman

Thanks, folks.

Deacon

Xtra Batteries
My wife and I just got back from shooting horse drives in Oregon, she was using her d70 and the 70-200 vr lens. She was using 4 gig cards, jpeg hi res large fine filling 3 cards. She was only down 40% on battery (per the guage). Seems like she had plenty of power left and had shot over 1600 frames.

Another alternative if you are near a car is a 12v to 110 v converter to charge the battery if you run low.

Good luck

Deacon

jww

HarveyMushman wrote:

I'm going to rent an AF-S 70-200/2.8 VR in the near future for my D70. I understand the VR feature consumes some juice. How much? On one of the days of the rental period I'll be away from power outlets so recharging won't be possible. On this day I anticipate heavy use of VR, and many hundreds of pictures. Should I buy another battery?

That is my favorite lens right now.. amazingly sharp.

I'd have a spare handy and it will consume more power than normal. However, starting with a full charge on a EN-EL4 in my D2Hs, (not sure what the D70 uses) I rarely have run a charge down to much under 36% from a days shooting. On average I think more like 44%. That can be anywhere from 2600 - 3600 shots in the span of some 8 hours. That is also from pretty steady use of the VR even while not taking a shot. I've been shooting mostly auto racing and autoX events where it seems I sometimes compose twice as many shots than I actually take...

I keep the spare charged just in case as I am not ever comfy without a spare (or the charger in my car), swap that evening and recharge.

good luck and have fun!!

DoctorIt

jww wrote:

That is my favorite lens right now.. amazingly sharp.

I'd have a spare handy and it will consume more power than normal. However, starting with a full charge on a EN-EL4 in my D2Hs, (not sure what the D70 uses) I rarely have run a charge down to much under 36% from a days shooting. On average I think more like 44%. That can be anywhere from 2600 - 3600 shots in the span of some 8 hours. That is also from pretty steady use of the VR even while not taking a shot. I've been shooting mostly auto racing and autoX events where it seems I sometimes compose twice as many shots than I actually take...

I keep the spare charged just in case as I am not ever comfy without a spare (or the charger in my car), swap that evening and recharge.

good luck and have fun!!

You can't compare a D2H/s (EN-EL4) to a D70 (EN-EL3), apples to oranges. The D2H is pretty near magical when it comes to battery life. Not that the D70 isn't thrifty in its power consumption, but the 2H may be the closest thing there is to a perpetual motion machine!

claudermilk

I'm a Canon guy now, so am not familiar with the VR, but I'll bet power consumption is similar to Canon's IS. In which case the difference is negligible. I really don't notice any difference, even shooting with it on all day.

But, with any digital camera, a spare charged battery is always a good idea.

jww

DoctorIt wrote:

You can't compare a D2H/s (EN-EL4) to a D70 (EN-EL3), apples to oranges. The D2H is pretty near magical when it comes to battery life. Not that the D70 isn't thrifty in its power consumption, but the 2H may be the closest thing there is to a perpetual motion machine!

Well ya know.. I thought those things lasted for a long time!!!

I guess that wasn't that helpful.. I guess I should have said that after getting the lens, I didn't notice as much of an extra drain as I thought I would... I might have had 50% to 60% left after a similar day of shooting.

..and always take a spare battery!!