Like other portable consumer electronic devices digital cameras use batteries as their power source. All batteries have one major drawback: they only last for a limited time. In this article we will explain what camera features consume the most energy and how you can squeeze more life time out of your digital camera battery.
There are many types of battery. Your digital camera might be using disposable batteries or maybe it uses rechargeable ones. Rechargeable batteries use a variety of technologies such as nickel cadmium, lithium ion or lithium polymer. Battery technology has advanced in the last years but batteries life time is still considerably short. It is very frustrating to come across a great photo opportunity just to find out that you have run out of batteries.
When it comes to power consumption not all digital camera features are equal. Some of the digital camera greatest features are high energy consumers. By knowing which features consume the most energy you will be able to avoid or minimize using those features save energy and get more life time from your batteries.
The biggest energy consumers in a digital camera are the LCD screen and the motors that move the mechanical components of the camera such as the lenses when focusing or zooming. Digital cameras allow viewing of photos that were just taken on a small LCD screen. Some of them also allow shooting photos using the LCD instead of the traditional viewfinder. An LCD screen consumes relatively a lot of energy. This is the reason why all digital cameras turn off the LCD after a certain amount of time of no usage.
The other big energy consumers are the motors. Digital cameras have motors the move the lenses either to change the zoom or to focus. Motors consume relatively a lot of energy when moving the digital camera optical components. And finally the flash is a big energy consumer too. Shooting photos using the flash consumes more energy that shooting photos without flash.
So what can you do in order to minimize power consumption and get more life time from your batteries?

You can find more information on digital photo printing and photography in general on printrates.com - a site dedicated to digital photo print service Ziv Haparnas is a technology expoert. Mr. Haparnas writes about practical technology and science issues. This article can be reprinted and used as long as the resource box including the backlink is included.