D200 current consumption question

Hi all,

on my next travel I would like to explore taking some star trails and I was

wondering how long the internal battery of my D200 will support this.

 

The set-up will be to do a series of 30-sec exposures and stitch them together

later at home. Is there is any experience how long the battery will support this

to run, 1 hour, 5 hours, the whole night?

 

The concern is that I probably will be sleeping without noting that the battery

dies. Not worth to mention: I will be far from mains power supply at that moment.

 

Any ideas? Thanx to all!

Not the right tool for the job.

 

You want a cheap manual film camera for this. The batteries will run out, there might be amp

noise... etc...

If you are taking only 30-second exposures anyway, why not just take along extra batteries? Or am I missing something?

Of course it's the right tool for the job. Digitally stitched star trails have so many advantages over the film ones that you'll wonder how you got by without them.

 

A D2X can go over three hours, not at all sure about a D22. Definitely turn off image review, that sucks down power unnecessarily on star trails. I did mine with long exposure noise reduction turned off, and every half hour or so shot a "dark frame" for subtraction. I'll have to dig out a stack, I think I was also using 10 second exposures, instead of 30.

John, you're missing where he expects to fall asleep during the night. ;)

Hahaha! Yeah, I guess so...Actually, I guess I am not clear on this camera's ability to take a series of 30 second exposures while the operator is asleep. Can it do that? I realize I am revealing my ignorance here. ;-)

 

j.

You can probably do it via the time lapse menu, and if you mount the MBD200 you can use two batteries, the camera automatically switches to the second when the first is empty. Got to try these star trails myself sooner or later. Good luck, Marco

Some remarks to add to the confusion ;-) :

 

The camera for sure is the right tool simply because I have no other one, now I finally went digital ;-)

 

I expect a couple of hundred digital pics to be put together to one single star trail. I simply will put the camera in serial mode "CH" and clamp the cable release. Voilࠩt will take pics one after the other until it dies, me sleeping alongside. Changing the battery will cause a short break while the stars continue to run away, negligible if done quickly. However, in oder to set the alarm clock to the right time, I still wonder how long it will run...

 

Thank you all for the hints! Switching off the image review sounds like a good idea. MBD200 might help, for a price however worth to stay awake and watch the batteries...

 

Any other suggestions?

You'll get around 90 minutes per battery, give or take. If you have the MB-D200, you'll be that much better off. This is if you just let that shutter stay open.

 

If you shoot in time lapse mode, you can just let the camera go, far easier. Just allow 1-2 seconds in between each frame for the camera to save to the CF card.

So, I tried it for the sake op progress. I set the camera to manual mode, 30sec exposure, jpeg fine, switched the image preview off, put it in "Ch" mode and clamped the cable release. It took about an hour until it stopped, some 110 pics. The battery was not fully full however, but I 'd say 95% full.

One hour means no point to fall asleep, I will be able to double/triple it by just changing the battery on the fly. As a side note, I found that jpegs with mostly black sky do not take a lot of memory...

Michael writes [As a side note, I found that jpegs with mostly black sky do not take a lot of

memory...] True, but they are also EXTREMELY susceptible to noise! Watch that!