Is it OK to recharge my camera batteries before.....

[CharleneP]

a shoot even if they are not dead? i dont want to ruin them.

[ceremus]

It's better to run them down as much as you can before recharging them, and it's certainly bad practice to keep them topped up to 100% all of the time, but you generally won't hurt them by charging them when needed.

[CharleneP]

Originally Posted by ceremus

It's better to run them down as much as you can before recharging them, and it's certainly bad practice to keep them topped up to 100% all of the time, but you generally won't hurt them by charging them when needed.

thanks. I have noticed even when I have bars on the battery icon that i start to get busy signal on my camera.

[Izzy]

Originally Posted by CharleneP

thanks. I have noticed even when I have bars on the battery icon that i start to get busy signal on my camera.

The busy is you shooting the buffer full not a battery issue. Lith-ions have no charge memory like the older Ni-Cad batteries. The run all the way down is a Ni-Cad practice because those bats were junk and had a rather nasty charge memory.

I always charge up stuff no matter where it is if I have a substantial shoot the next day. I have been doing this for about a year (with my dslrs) and have had zero battery issues. *shrug*

The closest thing to kill a bat I have had is losing about 5 minutes of battery run time out of my old Sony F828. And that was on a generic battery. 4 years after having it happen the battery is still going strong.

[CharleneP]

Originally Posted by Izzy

The busy is you shooting the buffer full not a battery issue. Lith-ions have no charge memory like the older Ni-Cad batteries. The run all the way down is a Ni-Cad practice because those bats were junk and had a rather nasty charge memory.

I always charge up stuff no matter where it is if I have a substantial shoot the next day. I have been doing this for about a year (with my dslrs) and have had zero battery issues. *shrug*

The closest thing to kill a bat I have had is losing about 5 minutes of battery run time out of my old Sony F828. And that was on a generic battery. 4 years after having it happen the battery is still going strong.

OK so what cause the busy issue? I am losing cute pics because the camera is "thinking".
My last shoot I started out fine with one child but on the next i kept getting the busy thing.
I have a Canon Rebel EOS XS barely a year old.

[Niresangwa]

Originally Posted by CharleneP

OK so what cause the busy issue? I am losing cute pics because the camera is "thinking".
My last shoot I started out fine with one child but on the next i kept getting the busy thing.
I have a Canon Rebel EOS XS barely a year old.

The camera isn't necessarily 'thinking', there are a few things that could be causing this, not least the speed of your memory card. Some cards are faster than others in how quickly they can be written to and read from - generally the cheaper they are, the lower their class, the slower they are.

Also, changes you have elected to apply to your images in camera such as applying sharpening, contrast, saturation (or heaven forbid in-camera black and white) causes a back-up, because the camera has to tak the raw data from the sensor and create the jpeg with your added changes.

Other aspects such as in-camera noise reduction, and also features that preserve highlights or shadows can also slow things down.

As stated by Izzy, if your buffer (the virtual room the camera uses to process and write the file) is full, you'll have to wait.

So in short, try not to do much to the image in camera, try not to spray in continuous mode, and buy high quality memory cards.

[Izzy]

Originally Posted by CharleneP

OK so what cause the busy issue? I am losing cute pics because the camera is "thinking".
My last shoot I started out fine with one child but on the next i kept getting the busy thing.
I have a Canon Rebel EOS XS barely a year old.

The XS has a notoriously small buffer. It holds about 3-4 images at best when shooting RAW. Shooting jpeg it goes to about 4-5 maybe 6 images. I am not sure why they list burst rate on these cameras.

Have you switched to shooting RAW recently?

PLUS what is posted above -

[CharleneP]

Originally Posted by Izzy

The XS has a notoriously small buffer. It holds about 3-4 images at best when shooting RAW. Shooting jpeg it goes to about 4-5 maybe 6 images. I am not sure why they list burst rate on these cameras.

Have you switched to shooting RAW recently?

PLUS what is posted above -

I only shoot in jpg on my new one. I did buy another camera body that is the same thing but a tad older, so i dont have to change my lenses and it makes me shoot raw and jpg at the same time which I do not like.
I appreciate everyone's responses. I just looked and one has a Sony 8gig card and the other has a 2 gig so it looks like i need an upgrade..also I dont do anything special to the photos in the camera.

I basically shoot my kids and friends...so it's worked for me up until now, but I had someone ask me to do her daughter's volleyball senior night and i want to get it right.

[Niresangwa]

Originally Posted by CharleneP

I only shoot in jpg on my new one. I did buy another camera body that is the same thing but a tad older, so i dont have to change my lenses and it makes me shoot raw and jpg at the same time which I do not like.
I appreciate everyone's responses. I just looked and one has a Sony 8gig card and the other has a 2 gig so it looks like i need an upgrade..also I dont do anything special to the photos in the camera.

I basically shoot my kids and friends...so it's worked for me up until now, but I had someone ask me to do her daughter's volleyball senior night and i want to get it right.

I may be mistaken, but I don't think any cameras force you to shoot only in JPG+RAW. If you're in this setting, well, it explains why the camera is taking so long to write and release. There will be a menu option to select either, or, or both. Crack your manual and find out where it is, then turn it off.

[CharleneP]

Originally Posted by Niresangwa

I may be mistaken, but I don't think any cameras force you to shoot only in JPG+RAW. If you're in this setting, well, it explains why the camera is taking so long to write and release. There will be a menu option to select either, or, or both. Crack your manual and find out where it is, then turn it off.

I know where to go. It has raw/jpg then raw only then m and so on, so i'll go down to the M. you've been very helpful.