L-MOUNT Forum

Register a free account now!

If you are registered, you get access to the members only section, can participate in the buy & sell second hand forum and last but not least you can reserve your preferred username before someone else takes it.

S5 battery drain?

WT21

New Member
Is anyone experiencing battery drain in the S5 (or panasonic bodies generally)? I had that issue with a G85 and GX8. Drove me crazy as I don't shoot every day. Is anyone seeing that in their Penny FF bodies?
 
It’s normal. If not used for awhile, my S5 will completely drain the battery. I’ve heard this from many over the years. We have two S5 cameras.
 
Just got a Keh quote for $600 for some m43 gear. Will move that along while I think about an L-mount kit. Maybe an S5 + 20-60 and 70-300 to start.
 
  • Like
Reactions: AZ1
It’s normal. If not used for awhile, my S5 will completely drain the battery. I’ve heard this from many over the years. We have two S5 cameras.
Thanks. I'm suspecting maybe Paul (pdk) never stops using his camera, lol, so that's why he's not seen it :)

Problem for me is, I don't shoot as often. I wonder why Penny is like that. My Oly's have never had that issue (though Sony's have).
 
I tested this a while back, battery left in for a 5 days without use. checked after 3 days and 5 days, no notable drain. But i did just check two batteries that have been stored out of camera all week, 1 had full charge, the other did not. Now I don’t actually remember if both had full charge when I stored them, but lets say they did… maybe some batteries have a faster self discharge rate than others? Lithium Ion batteries have very low self discharge normally, maybe some have issues?
 
I've not noticed any drain on my S5 batteries when the camera is not being used. They seem to hold a lot better charge than my Panasonic G95 batteries did. And my cameras are only used a few times each month at best. I wish it were more often but work and family commitments limit my free time.
 
It’s normal. If not used for awhile, my S5 will completely drain the battery. I’ve heard this from many over the years. We have two S5 cameras.
I haven't seen that with S5 nor S5ii. If I remember correctly, some settings (e.g. bluetooth) may affect to battery draining.
 
Is anyone experiencing battery drain in the S5 (or panasonic bodies generally)? I had that issue with a G85 and GX8. Drove me crazy as I don't shoot every day. Is anyone seeing that in their Penny FF bodies?

Original Panasonic batteries or third party? How old are the batteries already? For how long did you not use the camera?
 
Thanks. I'm suspecting maybe Paul (pdk) never stops using his camera, lol, so that's why he's not seen it :)
Ha, ha - well I guess it's true that I do tend to use my camera at least every other day or so. But I've noticed anything especially bad about battery usage. The S5 is quite frugal, the S1R less so (surprising since the battery is almost twice the size - but the camera's bigger so I guess it needs more energy to heat it up!).

I think to get a proper answer here, a structured test approach is necessary. If I get the time, I'll try to do that. It would also be great if perhaps someone could find an easy way of measuring the standby current draw. I suspect a dummy battery with some wires coming out of it to a meter and then a realy battery would be needed, so not the easiest of things to arrange.
 
[...]

I think to get a proper answer here, a structured test approach is necessary. If I get the time, I'll try to do that. It would also be great if perhaps someone could find an easy way of measuring the standby current draw. I suspect a dummy battery with some wires coming out of it to a meter and then a realy battery would be needed, so not the easiest of things to arrange.
You mean like this:

Wires.jpg

?

Nah. Why go to the trouble of measuring the problem, when it's more fun to just waffle on?
 
You mean like this:

View attachment 186
?

Nah. Why go to the trouble of measuring the problem, when it's more fun to just waffle on?
Ha ha - perfect. So the S1 draws 5mA on standby? But perhaps the DC Coupler uses some too? The battery is rated 3100 mAh - so that's 620 hours on standby and it's dead (about a month).

Anyone done this with an S5?
 
So the S1 draws 5mA on standby?
It's more complicated than that. I wrote about this at length on DPR. The PSU outputs about 9.0V at low load. If most of the current is going through a buck regulator (I guess in PFM mode), the power will be nearly constant (rather than the current). So that 5.2mA might need to be scaled up by about 9.0V/7.5V = 1.2 when the S1 is running off a battery.

But perhaps the DC Coupler uses some too?
No.

It's just wires in a box.

The battery is rated 3100 mAh - so that's 620 hours on standby and it's dead (about a month).
See above (and DPR posts).

As I posted before on DPR:
  • Bluetooth & LCD make no measureable difference on S1.
  • The S1 measurements are quite noisy - seems like the main SoC wakes up every (ballpark, can't remember) 15 minutes, drawing ballpark 50mA. Hence the "average" mode on the DMM.
Anyone done this with an S5?
The S5 is more complicated.

On the 9.0V dummy battery supply:
  • 2.5mA for the first 6 hours (ballpark, time not measured).
  • 0.50mA thereafter.
Which is not great, but not so much of a problem as S1. My Nikon DSLRs are far better.

As I also posted on DPR:
  • I estimated the charge loss for the Panasonic S1,batteries at 0.24%/day.
  • I estimated the charge loss for the Hähnel S1 batteries at 0.07%/day.
 
Last edited:
probably best not to leave batteries in the camera if it’s going unused for a week or more.

Back in the days of NiCd the self discharge was high anyway, but you were also likely to find they had leaked into the device. Particularly with cheaper brands. I still see this happen sometimes with NiMh.

The Lithium batteries in these cameras are probably not at very high risk of that as they tend to have some control circuitry built in to prevent over discharge. But if they’re getting drained by standby circuitry anyway makes sense to remove them for storage.

 
probably best not to leave batteries in the camera if it’s going unused for a week or more.

Problem is, most Lumix cameras have an internal rechargeable battery to power the clock.

Panasonic's typical design practice for Lumix cameras seems to be to use a very small Lithium Manganese Dioxide coin cell, soldered to the PCB. From the S1 service manual, this is the case for Panasonic S1.

The battery used is an ML421 (brief data sheet). General characteristics of Lithium Manganese Dioxide batteries are usefully described here. Have a look at the "Charge/Discharge Cycle Performance" graph. These batteries really do not like being deeply discharged. They don't much like being discharged at all.

By removing the main battery, you risk over-discharging the clock battery, and/or wearing it out (using up the cycle life).

A dilemma.

Simply removing the main battery from the camera does not seem a good option.

The best solution that I can see is storing the camera connected to a USB power supply. Which is clearly not ideal.
 
probably best not to leave batteries in the camera if it’s going unused for a week or more.

Continuing from my previous post, "Depth of Discharge" (DoD) also affects the cycle life of the main battery. For the same total discharge, a lot of shallow discharge cycles cause less wear than a few deep discharge cycles.

Against this, main battery capacity reduces faster if the battery is stored in a high state of charge, particularly in a high state of charge at elevated temperatures (above 25°C, and particularly above 40°C).

See, for example: BU-808: How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries

It would be good if, when charging batteries on the camera, a menu popped up, giving a choice of termination voltage. Say: 3.9V (optimum battery life), 4.0V (about 70%), 4.1V (about 85%), 4.2V (conventional full charge).
(Those are per-cell voltages).
 
It’s likely (I would hope) the internal circuitry would cut the coin cell supply to the clock before it reached a critically low voltage. Similar design has been used in computer motherboards for decades to supply BIOS chips power for the internal clock. To kill a motherboard cell it generally would have to be left without any external power for months or years.

From the example spec sheet the deeper discharge can lower cycle life from 1,000 to 300. Quite significant, but I would guess to hit deep discharge it would have to be stored for a long time without the main battery, months, possibly longer? but even if storing a camera for 1 month at a time caused the coin cell a deeper discharge, you’d probably still need 10+ years to reach end of life.
 
Back
Top