Nikon D610 battery drain in standby mode?

[Tejpor]

As the title says...

3-year old Nikon D610 body. Firmware freshly installed, everything reset to default. Standby timers were checked, and they are on - no obvious battery drainers, like LiveView turned on, etc. I turned the camera on (but in standby mode) with an AF-S G lens mounted and left overnight.

Power drain was ~19% over 8-10 hours. Is this normal?

The battery is perfect (ie. no noticeable drain) when used in a D7000 body.

Any suggestions?

With kind regards,
Laszlo

[pluton]

On my D800, there is a setting for duration until sleep, or as Nikon calls it "Auto Meter Off Delay".
What is yours set to?
I keep mine set to 1 minute. 

[Tejpor]

Thank you for the comment.

There is no such setting - only the "standby timer" and monitor timers are there instead.

I'm really suprised, how power hungry is the D610 compared to e.g. D7000. I managed to get ~250 shots and with power down 13%. Agreed, with often use of LiveView and image review.

L.

[Erik Lund]

Nikon states for the D610:
An efficient power circuit, the highly energy-efficient EXPEED 3 and other features reduce the power consumption of the D610. It adopts the EN-EL15 Rechargeable Li-ion Battery, which is the same as the D800 series and D7000. It is possible to shoot approx. 900 shots* of still images on one charge of the EN-EL15 Rechargeable Li-ion Battery loaded in the camera body. As power sources, one EN-EL15, EH-5b AC Adapter (with EP-5B Power Connector) and MB-D14 Multi-Power Battery Pack can be used.

So your 250 images for 13% is exceptionally good,,,Why it would use juice while in stand by,,, don't use standby or get a grip

[Tejpor]

I see I was not precise with my sentence - sorry Erik. I wanted to say: power went down TO 13 percent (not by 13 percent).

[Erik Lund]

There is a slight difference 

Well cold/chill does it toll on battery performance, AFS and VR as well and with chimping I'm not overly surprised about EN-EL15,,,

I got a grip with my D810 and the big EN-EL18a - I can shoot a whole day without running out of power.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Is this the previous generation of EN-EL15, the one labelled 'Li-Ion 01' instead of 'Li-Ion 20'? They were involved in a battery recall by Nikon not that long ago. Some cameras interfaced badly with these batteries and one got an early warning of battery depletion. Not always for real, as the same battery moved into another camera model might indicate plenty of remaining capacity.

[Frank Fremerey]

Is the lens VR?

[David H. Hartman]

The D610 has a "c2 Standby timer" which can to set to 4, 6, 10, 30 seconds and 1, 5, 10 30 minutes. I use 10s on my cameras. I believe 6s is the default. This is very likely NOT the problem. I would think Bjørn has it right, that is the old battery model EN-EL15 (Li-Ion 01).

Dave Hartman

[Tejpor]

Thank you all for the replies!

No, the lens was not VR.

I will check the batteries and will try to replicate the results.

[Tejpor]

Finally I managed to test the bodies with batteries. Some good news - the standby power drain issue appears resolved.

First, I tested the Li-ion-01 and also a Li-ion-20 battery. They read the same in both bodies (D7000 and D610) and there was no difference in use. Could it be because the issue is only with the D500 bodies?

Second, standby drain. The odd thing is that after a few battery exchange the drain was no longer noticeable overnight. It was less or equal to one percent. My only guess is that the camera had to charge some internal battery...

Battery drain with LiveView ON is a different issue - when left ON for 30min, D610 drain (~20%) was almost twofold compared to the D7000 (~10%). It remains to be seen how real life shooting compares to the D7000.

[Frank Fremerey]

Maybe the camera was a little bit moist inside? , just enough to cause a litttle flow of current?

[Erik Lund]

A total non issue then That is good!

[Tejpor]

Thank you all. I do not think the camera was moist, but did not look inside.

I hope the real-life battery life will also be good.

[eeo]

Hello,
issue with my d600 seems to be similar. It drains battery to zero within several hours in stanby mode, not used.
I have notices that the camera get slighly warm after several hours of lying in camera bag.
Recently nikon service make firmware update and shutter module due to dust on sensor (which d600 is famous of). I wonder if it could be related to new firmware. Camera did not get wet nor dropped.

(apart of that this camera has a problem with aperture lever electromechanical module; intermittency in operation, which results in not closing to defined aperture and giving overexposed pictures... and autofocus area lock switch - stopped working long time ago. )