A Quick Fix For A Longer GoPro Battery Life

You love to have your photos online and your videos edited before uploading to social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Periscope, and Snapchat. You have your Smartphone ready at all times, you also have an action camera for adventures with your travel buddies.

You are always on the lookout for possible scenes to film, waiting for that special moment to capture a memory forever. You grab for your selfie stick, pose and then started filming, when all of a sudden you see the tell-tale ‘blink' (like a doomsday countdown) of a dying battery. Now, that’s a beast of a way to ruin your day!

You don't want a low battery to put a halt to your social life, giving you sorrowful minutes of missed opportunity to upload your next trending video or perhaps your viral selfie photo with a celebrity. So what do you have to do to extend the battery life of your action cameras such as GoPro, SJCAM, or Ace-Cam 4K Ultra HD Action Camera?

Experts suggested studying the settings of your action camera.

WHAT TO DO

You can start by setting up one button mode. With one push of the button, you will automatically start filming. When done with the filming, press the power button at least 5 seconds to make sure that it is turned off, or else, it will stay on and will eventually drain the battery (this is pretty standard for most action cameras).

Refer to your action camera’s user’s manual on how to turn off auto-exposure features (like Protune on GoPro) and how to set white balance to auto. This setting will yield longer battery life as the camera will not need to adjust to different conditions such as lighting, contrast, brightness and the like.

Your action camera, when turned on, may default to have blinking lights. You have the option to turn it off. For GoPro, you can turn off the light by referring to the settings. Press Set, then push the “On” button 8 times, and finally, change BLO to BLF.

You may be hesitant to turn off the blinked red lights as it will give you a cue whenever you will start recording or when you stop filming. If you are familiar enough with your camera though, you will develop an acute sense of when this happens anyway though, so it may just be wasting valuable battery juice. It is up to you if you're comfortable enough to do this. There are also some cameras that have beeps to determine if the camera is off, on standby or on.

If you forget to turn off your camera when not in use, then turn on the “Auto Power off Setting”.

For GoPro users go to your settings mode and push the “On” button 13 times until you see the word “Off” and select your desired time among 60, 120, or 300 seconds. The camera will automatically shut off when not being used for the designated time period.

And for those of you who have still a budget left (after buying your camera, accessories, maybe a drone too?) you can buy extra batteries and independent chargers so you can charge spare batteries while you are using one. Or charge multiple batteries at the same time.

There are also some new accessories that 'Share' battery power. For example, if you have a Hero 3+ or 4, you can use the Feiyu Tech G4S electronic gimbal that plugs into your camera to give it power while it is being used. This significantly extends the life of your camera.

Look for more of these smart sharing devices in the future that will share battery power and ensure you don't lose that perfect shot or video capture because of something so mundane as a dead battery!