Can someone help me with my battery issues?

[KerriMc]

Hello

I bought myself a Kodak Easyshare Z1012 IS in October and thought I'd finally found a great camera. Well ... now I almost hate the thing! The main reason being the batteries!!!

To start it came with a Lithium Digital CRV3 battery. I figured it came with that one and then I'd get a rechargeable CRV3. I searched for one, but never have been able to find such a thing in any store around here. So I went to Staples, where I bought the camera, and the fellow there looked it up and said it also took AAs. So I bought rechargeable NimH batteries on his suggestion. Well I take four or five pictures and the battery light comes on as low!! This happens constantly. I'm so frustrated with it all. I can't even get 20 photos! If I leave it off for a day or so it is dead the next time I try to turn it on!

I don't know a lot about cameras and thought I'd be safe with another Easyshare as I had one before and never had a problem. It took rechargeable digital batteries, but I never had them die that quic. I'm thinking maybe it does need the CRV3, but I know I went through that battery fast as well.

Am I just out of luck with this camera? Is there a battery solution to this problem? We go to Florida in a month and I don't want to take this camera because it will be a P.I.T.A!!! I am thinking I need to buy myself a new camera altogether.

Any ideas? Any help is sooooooo appreciated!!!

Thank you so much!
Kerri

 

[JR6ooo4]

Does it stop workingwhen the battery meter says it is low?

If it keeps working, ignore the battery meter. And always carry extras for when it does stop working.

If it stops working when it says it is low (after only a few shots) then it might need to be fixed.

are you sure the rechargeable batteries are charging fully?
Mikeeee

 

[KerriMc]

The battery low indicator stays on for a little bit ... after about five pics are taken.

I assume they are charging fully ... I plug it in and it stays in for awhile until the light turns green to indicate it is charging properly.

I'm at a loss ... what would need to fixed? The camera itself?

Kerri

 

[wenrob]

When you say "for a while" is it at least a couple hours? If you were having problems before the rechargeable I'd say it was your camera. Have you tried putting regular AA's in and seeing how long they last? Test another set of batteries first and if you still have the same problem then it's the camera. If you bought the camera in Oct, you should still have time to return it to the manufacturer as most most warranties are 1yr.

 

[KerriMc]

I just went to the Kodak website and it recommends this battery ... KODAK Li-Ion Rechargeable Battery KLIC-8000 ... I'm going to try and find this somewhere in our tiny city (haha) or I'll head over to the next town to see if this helps. I'm thinking the fellow at Staples didn't really help me much with AA rechargeables (tried other AAs and they didn't work at all). I can go a camera store in the next city and they will hopefully have this particular battery and the rechargealbe for it or if not at least they can help me out a bit.

I do remember when I tried to register my camera that the website was down and I'm thinking I didn't go back and re do it!!! Aaahhhh ... lesson learned there to be sure to register warranties!

Thanks for your help

Kerri

 

[ukcatfan]

It sounds like you have a bad battery charger, a bad cell, or both. I doubt very seriously it is a problem with the camera. If the batteries are actually fully charged and draining that quick, something would have to be using that much energy up. It cannot just go into thin air. About the only thing I can think of is some sort of short in the circuitry which would make the camera so hot you could not touch it.

Just one bad cell among the four will make everything stop once that one cell runs out of energy. You can buy an inexpensive tester at your local Radio Shack to test that. If you do have a bad cell, it will have to be replaced. They can sometimes be bad cells from the factory, but sometimes the charger could be ruining them. This is why it is best to have a charger that charges each cell individually.

 

[boBQuincy]

Is there a setting/menu pick on the camera to let it know what kind of batteries are used? The CRV-3 is 3 Volts but two NiMH cells are only about 2.4 Volts. The NiMH cells will amlost always appear to be low.
Some devices can change the low battery signal setting depending on what batteries are being used to accommodate different chemistries.

 

[seashoreCM]

Different kinds of batteries and also different brands of batteries of the same kind may have different discharge curves. Your camera might not get along with a particular brand and kind of battery. Let's say a battery starts out a 1.5 volts. One battery might hold 1.5 volts for half a day and then quickly drops to 1.1 volts while another battery might holds 1.5 volts for just an hour and drops to 1.4 volts which it can hold for two days. Except your camera considers 1.4 volts to be too low.

When the camera is turned on and after the flash fires, the flash circuits have to recharge. This puts a heavy load on the battery. If the voltage dips far enough during this moment, the camera may put up the low battery signal.

Something worth trying, turn the flash off and only take pictures that don't need flash. See if the battery(ies) seems to last longer.

It is possible that just one of the two or four batteries you need is defective. This adds a lot of permutations to the troubleshooting you would need to do. Instead of doing the trials and errors seeing which combination of four out of five batteries work together best, many folks just dismiss that brand of battery.

 

[manning]

Keep shooting until the camera shuts down. This will determine if it is a battery issue or battery indicator issue.

I have a Sony H5 and the issue with that camera is the battery indicator is not accurate.

Also NiMH type batteries usually have to be charged 3-5 times before they will take a full charge. We were in Disney last month and had this happen with a set of AA. The old batteries would go for what seemed forever. As soon as the new ones were put in they would quit rather quickly. They are now being conditioned.

Aslo there are chargers that will condition these batteries.

 

[My2Girls66]

Have you tried Lithium AA's? They last a really long time. If they don't last I'd send the camera in as it should be under warranty. Even if you didn't send the registation in as long as you have the warranty card that came in the box an the sales slip they should honor it. Give Kodak a call. I had a Nikon film p&s a long time ago that had a similar problem- drained the batteries extremely fast- I sent it to Nikon while under warranty and they fixed it. I don't recall what the problem ended up being.