Battery life for Hero2 and LCD

[mjsylver]

Two questions for everyone. What kind of battery life do you get shooting 1080 P with the LCD running in 75 degree water? Which FOV do you prefer? I like close and wide but don't have lights yet, and I'm not overly crazy about the semi fisheye look.

 

[EVOIXMR]

From the stock batteries I get about an hour shooting with the LCD on.
I just got the " wasabi power" batteries from amazon a few weeks ago and get about an hour and a half out of those.
But they are 1400mah compared to the stock 1100mah batteries.
They work very well.
Amazon has a package deal on the wasabi power batteries with a car and wall charger and 2 batteries for around 30$.
wasabi power battery
I shoot all of my video on R7 with the hero2. With SRP Blurfix , Intova tray and nocturnal slx800 lights.

 

[raftingtigger]

I get about an hour with the LCD on in 50F water. Always in R7. Don't have a problem with the fisheye look except above the water, but that might have to do with typical viz (<30').

 

[OH2OD]

I do not have any diving experience with the LCD Bacpac yet.
Do you set your lcd to go off after 60 seconds or leave it on even if not recording?
Thanks for any information.

 

[EVOIXMR]

I usually just keep recording no matter what , unless I'm down on battery and need to conserve.
You never know when something cool will happen so I don't wanna miss it.
Then I change out the battery on my SI before the next dive.
If you aren't recording then I'd turn it off if you have low battery or something but I just let it run.

 

[aj555]

Using the LCD battery on the whole time I get about an hour. Just have two batteries, and switch them between dives. Or you can just hit the button to turn the LCD off while you aren't filming. I've used narrow, but if it's dark it will have too much digital noise. Wide is good if you are filming a shipwreck. Other than that I would say that medium fov will be your best bet 85% of the time.

 

[Marty Cerven]

I get around 1hr15 full run time with the lcd temperature depending though around and hour at 10c and closer to 1 1/2hrs in tropical 30c water. Newer batteries will hold more charge so if you have batteries that have been used for a very long time with many charge cycles the capacity will reduce over time. I havent noticed a huge drop in the gopro batteries but one of my oldest only has about 75% capacity of my new ones. The other older ones would be around 90% of full capacity.

I keep mine on at all times if using a tray, when not recording I will turn the camera off completly as standby mode uses almost as much battery as it does whilst recording. Generally I let the camera roll the full dive but if nothings happening I just turn it off.

I prefer 1080p wide and get close to things when handheld and 720p60 if using head mounted setup, but i do try the other modes at times too if wanting something a little different. The lcd makes it much easier to use all the modes giving you an idea of how the fov is effecting the best distance from your subject, without changing to the widest mode you will tend to be too far away until you get used to it.

 

[Marty Cerven]

I just did a test at home so would be room temperature about 20c with a full run 1080p30w fresh of the charger LCD bacpac attached at medium brightness level and the run time was 1:28.50 9.38GB file size.

I would like to repeat the test but I cant see me lasting that long in the water here atm with current bay surface temperatures of 11c, maybe I will try in a bucket of cold water outside which should be a similar temperature.

 

[raftingtigger]

Warning! Thread Hijack!

For all of you who just let the camera run. What do you use to edit the massive amount of video later?

 

[Marty Cerven]

To the Hijacker I just use adobe Premiere Pro for most of my editing, In this I can very easily scrub through my raw footage and with 2 clicks select where I want to start (in) and end (out) points, then put this into my timeline. Its pretty simple, I found at first when I used to keep stopping and starting recording most of my clips were a bit too short and didn't leave much room for transitions, this continuous way I record lots of crap but never miss anything interesting that comes out of the blue literally.

You can also cut up your clips using GoPro cineform in a similar way by selecting in and out points for the clip and then add to conversion list. These clips in the conversion list will all be cut to where your in and out points were so just go through the entire file selecting what you want and once done convert. All editing software has this feature as its the most important and first step to editing.

Back on Topic

I finished testing LCD run-time at room temperature with

Standby no bacpac not recording camera on 2h:29m

Camera in Standby mode with LCD screen attached but switched off not recording 2h:24m

No bacpac 1080p30 video recorded 2h:21m.30s

LCD attached but turned off, 1080p30 video recorded 2h:06m.21s

LCD min brightness, 1080p30 video recorded 1h:34m.50s

LCD medium brightness, 1080p30 video recorded 1h28m.50s

LCD max brightness, 1080p30 video recorded 1h:16m.01s

All these were tested shooting 1080p30 wide and my run-times are the total length of the recorded videos. I will do some water tests at some point and see how they compare at lower temperatures.

As I suspected Standby times are not much better then having the camera record, this is why I set camera timeout to 60 seconds. That way it will turn off when not in use or otherwise your better off just recording as its uses nearly the same amount of battery.