Here’s an idea for a power saving feature that currently no digital camera has:
There should be an option to turn off the screen of the camera until you press the shutter button down half way. At this point you’re ready to take a photo so the screen would turn on to show you the photo you are about to take. If you let go of the shutter button the screen should remain on for about 5 seconds. After you have taken a photo the screen should display your photo for a couple of seconds and then turn off.
Why have this feature? Well it would allow you to take photos perhaps once a minute without worrying about turning the camera off to save battery or turning it on to take the photo. It allows the fastest response time between wanting to take a photo and taking it while allowing minimum power to be consumed when the camera is not being used.
Why doesn’t any camera have this feature? I don’t know. Some cameras have a sleep mode where the screen will turn off after a minute or two but this is too long to make it worthwhile. If you are taking a photo on average once a minute the screen will remain on pretty much all the time. Why have the screen on when you’re not looking at it?
Of course this feature would not be useful all the time. If for example you’re taking lots of photos of people one after the other you’d want the screen on all the time so you can always make sure you get the right shot. However I have found that in my experience the vast majority of the time I decide to take a photo about 1 or 2 seconds before arriving at the point in time I want to take the photo. If my camera is not ready then it will often be too late. If I’m waiting around with my camera ready without seeing a shot I want to take then I’m unnecessarily wasting battery.
Why is battery life so important? Well it’s not that important provided you have the ability to recharge your batteries every day and you’re camera has the ability to last a whole day. But that’s not the point. The question you should be asking is what reason do manufacturers have for not including this feature in their cameras?
Just as a final note, when I last used my camera I noticed it was showing the low battery icon as soon as I started to use it that day. Normally my camera will only allow you to take 5-10 photos when the low battery icon is showing before turning itself off. As I had lots of photos to take I turned the screen off entirely and resorted to using the viewfinder instead. That day I was able to take over 100 photos and I’m sure I could have taken a few more. It just got me thinking just how much power the screen was using and how 90% of the time this power goes to waste.