Camera shutting off with 1/2 battery left

J

jp93015

New member
Just got my DVX100A about a week ago and on my 2nd full day of shooting this happened twice. Basically the camera operated on battery power until the battery was indicated about 1/2 drained, then the camera abruptly shut off in mid-shoot. In both cases the camera was shooting a long take (upwards of 30 minutes) with LCD and viewfinder operating and phantom power going to one XLR, so I suppose there was higher than normal drain. In the first case it was the 2800 battery (Panasonic brand) and in the next it was the battery that came with the camera. There was no warning - the camera just went to black and the transport stopped. In both cases replacing the battery with a charged one brought it back up. I switched to AC power and shot the rest of the day without incident.

Anyone experienced this? Do the batteries need to settle in or something? If so wouldn't the camera have indicated the drain?

Thanks for any help.
 
Re: Camera shutting off with 1/2 battery left

Maybe your problem is with the standby mode. By default the camera shuts down after a while when nothing is touched. You can change this somewhere in the menu.
 
Re: Camera shutting off with 1/2 battery left

"hienben" sounds right on this. If I remember correctly, its in the operations menu. When the tape deck is not recording anything, the camera will either go into "standby" or "poweroff". So it is either in the operations menu or the recording menu where you can find this and switch it from "poweroff" to "standby"
 
Re: Camera shutting off with 1/2 battery left

It sounds like he was actually recording when it powered down, so I don't think it's a standby issue.
 
Re: Camera shutting off with 1/2 battery left

It's not the standby mode - I have that set already and as noted above, the camera is shutting down during operation. Sounds like it may need to go in to Panasonic?
 
Re: Camera shutting off with 1/2 battery left

do you have the 100 or the 100a? because the first few 100s had a problem with updating the battery meter.. basically it would only "check" the level of the battery after you powered up.. and whatever state it would be in it would show that till you turned the camera off, or, unfortunately the battery would just die.
 
Update and further question

Update and further question

Well, I've now gone through about 4 cycles with each battery and the camera is still shutting down mid-shot/play with 1/2 battery indicated. I corresponded with the Panasonic Tech Support folks and after a few condescending instructions on how to charge a battery they said I should take it in for service :-0

Any leads on the best warranty service in Southern California?
 
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