Could anyone who owns a Canon ZR-60 camcorder tell me how long the battery should last?

Could someone who owns a Canon ZR-60 (or ZR-65) camcorder please tell
me how much record time you get from the fully charged BP-508 battery
that came with it?

The manual says the max recording time using the viewfinder is 100
minutes and the typical recording time is 55 minutes for the BP-508.
Are people really getting only an hour of record time using the
viewfinder until the camcorder shuts off, or is the manual inaccurate?

I didn't do any zooms or start/stops, and the battery ran out shortly
after I filled up a 60 minute tape letting it sit using the
viewfinder. I'd like to know if my battery is defective or if this is
normal.

 

Tom wrote:

Sounds like from the manual and your test it's working as it should. They do
make a bigger battery. I have a ZR40 and got a spare battery so I wouldn't
have to sweat it. You -are- talking about using it with the flip out
finder? That does waste a bunch of the battery shooting it that way and
makes for shakey footage.

BTW a hour of video in a BUNCH of video!

 

Typically a battery will yield the highest amount of recording time
according to the demands the user places on it. The 100 minutes you mention
may be fairly accurate when using the viewfinder as apposed to the LCD
screen, but there are other considerations which pretain to all camcorder
battery life. The 100 minutes using the viewfinder may only be an accurate
time if the user does not use the zoom funtion very much, or even not at
all. Anytime you begin to zoom in and out your are using more and more of
the battery, which in turn cuts down on overall time the battery power will
last.

If you get a battery with a greater amount of minutes with each charge up,
then the usage of the zoom and LCD will not have as great a bearing on the
amount of recording time to tape. There is nothing wrong with your battery,
you just did not know what to expect or why to expect it. But then again how
could you? They don't exactly always make these points crystal clear for the
user.

--
Larry Johnson
Digital Video Solutions
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The BP-508 is the lowest-rated battery Canon supplies with camcorders in the
US-it's basically a throwaway. It's so low (700 mAh) that Canon doesn't even
bother selling it separately.

Do yourself a favor and get one of the beefier battery packs.

 

Thanks for the reply. For the test I performed where I got about 60
minutes of record time and around 5 minutes of playback time, I only
used the viewfinder for recording (not the flip-out LCD) and I did not
start/stop or zoom. I simply set the camera down after charging the
battery to full on a window sill, started record, came back 59 minutes
later, hit stop, switched to Tape mode, rewound the tape to the
beginning, hit play, and at that point I flipped open the viewfinder
(to activate the speaker). In under 5 minutes of play the battery went
out.

I also asked a camera salesman at Best Buy (not that they know that
much) and he said I should've gotten at least another 20-30 minutes
doing what I did. However, it's a lot of trouble to exchange the
camcorder just to get a different battery around Christmas time, and I
doubt Canon would consider this grounds to exchange my battery.

The only reason I asked the question is my Canon ZR60 box was sold as
brand new by Walmart, but it had clearly been previously opened by
someone judging by a torn wrapper on the manual, a few fingerprints on
the camera and battery, and the battery has a little dent on it. I
doubt Canon sends it out this way. So I was trying to gauge if my 65
minutes was about par, or if everyone was getting a lot more time and
I should try to exchange the battery because it had been abused before
I got it.

Judging by the few replies I got, mine may be a little short, but this
short record time could still be normal for this battery (meaning it
might not have been abused).