Not too put a simple face on this, but in very cold weather, I get about 20 minutes from a single battery, also depending on their age. The double batteries (third party) are better in this regard.
As you know, the Leaf gets a bit funky sometimes when the battery power is low. The simple message of "not enough power" only happens sometimes - other times it can hang up, fixed by a fresh battery and a restart.
I'm sure this isn't your problem, but....
Yes I've noted the funky behavior at low battery. Before e-box exchange it was really bad, but now it is better, only sometimes it gets funky at low batteries. Yair claims that "there is no low battery behavior", ie that it should never be funky, but I've had enough reports of funkiness on low battery so I think it is normal for this back. (I get cold weather failures even with full and warm batteries too though.)
Yesterday I was out shooting in -1C to +1C, it's late winter here which means outdoor temperature is typically around 0C. I got no failures, but a funky thing happened: one picture took a very long time to write to the card, and then the back went silent, ie no beeps after shot picture. This funny thing has happened once for me in +20C indoors too. I've heard one other user talk about this bug, so I think it is "normal", although it never happened on my previous e-box.
So far my best guess of the
true behavior of this product is that:
- It's a bit buggy, funny things can happen especially on low battery, and in rare occassions funny things can happen (like dropped beep sound) with full battery.
- It's a bit different between backs how buggy they are, some are more buggy than others.
- It does not handle cold weather well due to low tolerance in the electronics combined with active cooling.
- As components vary in tolerance it varies between backs how tolerant against cold weather they are, the poor ones get problems in quite mild freezing temperatures, or even within the lower part of the official 0-40C range.
- Worst case for cold weather is using it on a technical camera as the fan then spins full speed all the time, likelihood to work well in cold temperature is best on SLR bodies when the fan is temperature-controlled
If this is true, the back I have now works as a normal Leaf Aptus back, and I should simply not expect more, I just put my bets on the wrong horse. I'm trying to get this nailed down with Leaf, so I can eventually sell this back with good conscious knowing that it's not faulty, it's just not a back suitable for cold weather or those that need absolute reliable operation (ie no funny things happening at all, regardless of battery level etc). If Leaf still continues to say that the back is reliable and handle cold weather well I want them to replace the e-box once more so I get something that works, it's either that or confess that the back really is no better than this.
Phase One web support has kind of already said that it is no better than this (the sometimes funny behavior on low battery and room temp has not yet been confirmed though), but I'd like to have it from a Leaf official since I cannot know for sure if Phase One web support isn't trash-talking Leaf products, as they think their own products are a bit better :-).