I just bought a new Nikon D500 DSLR with F2.8-4 16-80mm lens package. The battery that comes with the package with its first initial 1st charge drains very fast. Some details about this problem.
(1) I bought this package brand new from a shop that is authorized dealer with Nikon locally at Singapore as listed in Nikon's dealers website. I checked the package and did some simple testing with the package in the shop. The observation is the battery was low in power so the shop assistant had to use other battery in their shop to power the camera up.
(2) The EN-EL15 battery (black) comes with -20 coding so its not the older battery that have problem its quick draining and power level reading.
(3) I did several reading on the Nikon D500 user manual (PDF) and from the various sources online about applications that drain D500 battery power, so i set the following in cam so that minimal power is being used. Enabled airplane mode, set LCD brightness to -2, set timers for LCD time out, review etc to the shortest timing, using AF-S with no continous focusing, disablee auto face detection, set the correct order of power usage (camera battery first), and set MB-D17 grip battery type to 'Ni-mh'.
(4) I took only 15 raw+jpeg fine files and the battery drained about 10% during a short 30 minutes photowalk near my home. I am using the 16-80 VR (with VR 'off') and the 50mm F1.8G lens.
(5) I left the unit with battery in the cam body overnight (1 night) with switch 'off' and the power is okay. I remembered it read 55% the night before and in the morning it still reads 55%.
(6) I left the unit with a 50mm F1.8G lens attached and powered 'on' for about 3 hours and the percentage stays the same before and after the 3 hour duration just like test in point #5.
(7) I did a test to simulate how i will use this cam. It shall be used for event shoots when the cam will be on, i will move around a place and have the cam doing many cycles of autofocusing via the viewfinder. I will need to be taking about 400 photos in an event that may last for the span of 6 hours. I observe that battery drains about 40% when i have the cam with lens attached on in just one hour doing the above action. Worse i only took 15 raw photos not 400, that could drain or even kill the battery power!
(8) I read that Lithium-ion battery for DSLR may take a few charging cycles to reach its full power capacity so i am hoping to hear some comments about validity on this one.
Any inpouts on my problem welcomed as i need this cam to have the power to last for my event shoots. They are all paid work. Further information is i ordered a Meike MB-D500 grip and a Nikon MB-D17 grip. They are on the way so i will need to run further tests so that the batteries (both AA and EN-EL15) will run smoothly and function properly with the grip on this time. Hope it will still not have quick battery drain in normal usage again.