[Venturi]

Wondering if anyone has done or seen any testing on no-load battery life in the K10D.

I'm planning a little experiment for tomorrow morning to try and capture some bird activity remotely. Going to set up the camera w/ grip on a tripod all ready to snap shots of the bird bath with me about 30ft away using the wireless remote.

I've got everything worked out and tested the remote at distance and all looks good but wondering how long I can expect the batteries to last with auto-shutoff disabled and the camera in mostly "standby" mode.

Thanks

[Aegon]

Do you still have time to do another experiment today? Just set the camera up in standby and see how long it lasts. Recharge the batteries overnight.

My gut feeling is that it will last a long time.

[AndrewG NY]

Also note that if drive mode is set for 'Remote', the remote light will remain blinking while the camera is powered up. I believe after some amount of time the camera will power down--I don't know whether or not in this case the remote can still 'wake' the camera. You may wish to verify this before going to the effort to set up outside.

I suspect that the wired remote may be able to 'wake' the camera--you can get 2.5mm extension cords relatively easily. I'm also guessing that during the daytime 30' may be iffy for the IR remote.

[hinckc]

Hi Venturi,

I had the desire to the identical thing, but with my bird feeder. If my experience is any indication, you're lucky to get 6-10 feet out of the IR remote under sunlit conditions. I even tried training my "learning" remote control to the pentax signal, and it bought me about 6 more feet. For this part, I'd recommend getting a wireless RF (radio frequency) shutter release, which can range in price from US$25-US$200 dollars. I liked my cactus (brand?) trigger (about US$35) until I lost my transmitter... But the cactus trigger is definately cheaply made, though it did perform as advertised...
Adorama also brands/sells one that's about US$100 dollars, I may try this one, too.

As far as "standby" battery duration, I don't know if it's the same test, but I tried to do a time-lapse of a tent setup once using Remote Assistant to fire shots, 1 every 10 minutes. Granted, I hadn't just topped off the battery, but I didn't get more than about 9 shots. (90 min worth). I don't know if being "tethered" to the PC helped or hurt, but I would have expected it to last a lot longer. To overcome this one, I got the AC adapter for the K10D.

One last possibility, is to use "trap focus", where the camera fires the shutter when something moves in front of it that is in-focus. There are limits to this, too, search on trap focus to find more info, but this may be your easiest option. If you already have a locking cable release, you won't need to be there at all! Hopefully the squirells won't run off with your camera!


-Chris

[Venturi]

Thanks for the replies! Bleh, looks like battery life is the lessor of issues... I took Aegon's idea and did a pre-test which is/was working swimingly (battery is still going strong after 95 clicks on the feeder) but as I discovered and AndrewG mentioned the dang remote turns itself off after 5 min (grrrr). Range for the remote definitely diminishes a bit in sunlight, especially if you're not off to one side a little bit.

Ah well, I may go ahead and set up in the morning and just do the 4:58sec click to keep the remote active. Not a huge deal, just looking for inspiration where I can find it since we're pretty tied down with a newborn and I can't just hop in the car and go hunting photo ops.

[ftpaddict]

You could try making yourself a REALLY long cable release.

I've made one for myself, and it didn't cost much or take too much technical knowledge to do it.