My Canon EOS 5 is disappointing

film_man said:

I always find it funny when people complain about battery costs. A £3-4 battery (that's what a 2CR5 costs at most) will last you 20 rolls of film yet it costs less than 1 roll of film and that's just the film purchase price, I'm not even going to dev/scan/print costs.

As for weight...last time I checked a 2CR5 is a bit shorter and fatter than a roll of film and a lot smaller/lighter than 4 or 8 AAs, let alone some power drive booster needed to use those AAs.

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Just to clarify, the 8 AA batteries I use are specifically for —

• around 6-8 hours of bulb exposure for star trails; often, not once or twice a year;
• occasionally letting rip at 10fps ( that is exciting: a roll gone in 3.4 seconds... )
• Much better cold weather performance than 2CR5; and
• the EOS1N doesn't necessarily need the power drive booster: it is optional (it does improve handling). Take it off and ... fit a 2CR5, which it will use very miserly.

flavio81 said:

... but the diodes themselves get wronged and thus, from now on, they will drain current all the time. Thus battery life goes totally down.

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You mean the diodes changed direction of pass-trough?
Never heard of such (but I do not know much about electronics either).

From memory when I was a camera tech at Canon we found you would get 40-60 rolls of 36 EXP from a battery with minimal (3-4 shots per roll) of flash use.

If you are getting less you have a faulty camera that has a problem somewhere.

Put it on the shelf and get another one....

Thought of the day. I guess when they were making film cameras, even compact ones, they would make sure that you get at least 10+ rolls on a battery. We have a little digi Canon IXUSwhatever and the battery lasts at best 200 shots, ie the equivalent of under 6 rolls, which is also stated in the manual and therefore considered acceptable performance. Which is a bit of a paradox since you do shoot a lot more with a digi...oh well...I guess people have learned to charge their phone every day vs every week that the old ones used to last.

Good day.

AgX said:

You mean the diodes changed direction of pass-trough?
Never heard of such (but I do not know much about electronics either).

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Can't remember if they were zener diodes or a particular kind of component that "fried" once you connected the batteries in the wrong direction, protecting the rest of the circuitry. But when you put the battery again in the correct direction, the circuitry worked OK, but said component, being "fried", was drawing a current that trashed the battery life.

Have you thought of buying an EOS 30 or 33 ?
It would be a nice improvement over the EOS 300 and not that much worse than an EOS 5. (Of course the EOS 3 or 1N are in another league).
They're quite cheap also.

Nehalem501 said:

Have you thought of buying an EOS 30 or 33 ?
It would be a nice improvement over the EOS 300 and not that much worse than an EOS 5. (Of course the EOS 3 or 1N are in another league).
They're quite cheap also.

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I'm assessing my options. I will look out on Ebay and see what comes up. I will give the EoS 5 another try of course, but that will be its last. Its either the battery or a fault. I love (analogue) photography so I will keep on going.