alpha 55 battery issue

[wbhstlouis]

I purchased an alpha 55 with a Zeiss 24/2 just after Christmas. When I started using the camera I noticed that the indicated "remaining battery time" decreased approximately 1% each time I took a shot. At this rate I would only get 100 pictures per battery charge. Is this normal for an alpha 55? The specs I find state a battery should last three times that long. I was concerned so I called Sony Styles and explained the problem. What happened next was unbelievable. Lets just say I will never purchase anything from Sony Styles again. However, Sony is standing behind their product. Sony hasn't told me what reasonable battery life should be but they did send me a couple of new batteries. I will do rigorous testing this weekend. Before I accept their offer to buy back the camera, I want to make sure that I didn't have unreasonable expectations. I won’t hesitate sending the camera back - not so the Zeiss 24/2.

Bill

 

[BackToSlr]

I purchased an alpha 55 with a Zeiss 24/2 just after Christmas. When I started using the camera I noticed that the indicated "remaining battery time" decreased approximately 1% each time I took a shot. At this rate I would only get 100 pictures per battery charge. Is this normal for an alpha 55? The specs I find state a battery should last three times that long. I was concerned so I called Sony Styles and explained the problem. What happened next was unbelievable. Lets just say I will never purchase anything from Sony Styles again. However, Sony is standing behind their product. Sony hasn't told me what reasonable battery life should be but they did send me a couple of new batteries. I will do rigorous testing this weekend. Before I accept their offer to buy back the camera, I want to make sure that I didn't have unreasonable expectations. I won’t hesitate sending the camera back - not so the Zeiss 24/2.

Bill

Bill,

For what its worth, my NEX-5 (same battery as A55) seemed to get better with every charge. A full charge does take time (about 3-4 hours), it seemed to take a few charges before it reached its peak operating capacity.
Unless you have "Sunlight" mode on, you should be able to take 300-400 shots on a single charge. People have claimed as many as 2000 shots on birding (many continuous shots). YMMV.

Also the charge drain indicated may not be linear in nature, try and use the full battery instead of extrapolating.

Cheers,

N

 

[mathomas]

I've found my battery life to be quite variable, but mostly disappointing. Unfortunately, I don't have any hard data -- just impressions. The camera is known to have pretty bad battery life, relatively speaking, and I bought it knowing that, so I don't have very high expectations (I keep two extra non-Sony batteries in the bag).

I guess we can hope for some improvements as they improve the firmware (?).

I hope you get satisfaction. It's a pretty fun camera, I think.

 

[hot]

I've three batteries - two original SONYs (NEX5/A55) and one very cheap noname from China (€8 instead €99/SonyGermany) and cannot find any differences between them. All work okay.