Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Cameras, Lenses and Shooting gear => Topic started by: francois on June 06, 2005, 07:30:18 am
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What the heck does a battery in an SLR do? And how do I tell when it needs to be replaced?
It provides power to the camera systems like auto-focus, meter, lcd displays, shutter etc...
You need to replace it when it doesn't hold the charge anymore...
Without a charged battery, your camera is just a dead piece of plastic/magnesium/glass/rubber!
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To add to Francois' answer, it depends a lot on how 'old' your camera is. A new digital camera sans battery is basically a paperweight. In contrast, my old Minolta SRT-101 was all 'manual', except for the match-needle light meter. With a handheld meter, I could have used the camera w/o battery with no problem. Another example, the Hasselblad 501CM and 503CW are fully manual (except for the prism viewfinder, which has it's own battery), and so they don't need batteries at all.
Mike.
Mike,
I was thinking in terms of digital cameras
I forgot that not so long ago we could use cameras without any external power source.
Francois
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Sorry, I should have guessed from your question that you were not using using a dslr! :cool:
Francois
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Bort
Go to the following web site
http://www.pentax.com/docstore/index.cfm?show=6 (http://www.pentax.com/docstore/index.cfm?show=6)
and scroll down to the slr section and find the asahi k1000 line
click on that line to download the operating manual for your camera in PDF format. This took me about four minutes on my very sloooow dial up internet connection. When you have downloaded it read page 21 and there find everything about the battery.
I assume you lost or never had the manual so here is a free way to get the manual to answer any other question on your camera.
I can't overemphasize the value of the google web search engine to find all kinds of stuff of this nature.
By the way the PDF reader is also free and available for download from many web sites and also bundled with many computers and computer applications. Just find one with the google search engine.
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I've taken and passed photography classes but it's been 10-15 years and age has caught up with me. I don't remember a lot of things about photography and the classes I took but I'm venturing back into it. So please excuse this question for it's stupidity and newbie stature.
What the heck does a battery in an SLR do? And how do I tell when it needs to be replaced?
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To add to Francois' answer, it depends a lot on how 'old' your camera is. A new digital camera sans battery is basically a paperweight. In contrast, my old Minolta SRT-101 was all 'manual', except for the match-needle light meter. With a handheld meter, I could have used the camera w/o battery with no problem. Another example, the Hasselblad 501CM and 503CW are fully manual (except for the prism viewfinder, which has it's own battery), and so they don't need batteries at all.
Mike.
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There's nothing digital about this camera. It's a pentax asahi k1000. All manual. From what I've seen with digital camera's there's not much you can do with them to match the quality you get out of manual SLR. I'm still lost as to what a watch battery is doing in it. I've had the thing for probably 18 years and have only replaced that battery once. And I forget why.
It doesn't seem to change much if I take the battery out that I've seen. I *think* it has to do with the light meter you see when looking into it to focus on your subject. But I'm not sure anymore. Old age sucks.
The last pics I took with it didn't come out too well.
Thanks for the replies!
Edit: Ahhh!! I see, it is that light meter thing isn't it? Thanks a ton!
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I'm still lost as to what a watch battery is doing in it. I've had the thing for probably 18 years and have only replaced that battery once. And I forget why.
Yep, the watch battery powers the TTL meter.
Paul
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Thankyou very much! Yes, I have misplaced the manual. That is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!
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WAYYYYY back when I had only "regular" cameras, I would change the batteries on my birthday. That way I always remembered whether I had changed them or not. Now, I can't remember whether I had charged the batteries for my digital cameras or not. :p