While I was out shooting planes (with a camera), I had a pretty good scare. My camera crashed.

Oh Shit

That was pretty much my reaction. It wouldn’t respond to any input, including the power switch. Popping the battery out and back in fixed it. But why did it do that. Is there something wrong with the camera, or my new lens‽

After doing some research and testing, thankfully no. It was the battery. A fair number of forum posts I read about the Sony α7II crashing points to the tiny battery not liking the cold.

Now, I was driving the thing pretty hard. Continuous auto focus, with rapid RAW photos being taken and written to the SD card. It was only 45F out, but I could see that affecting the battery. My GoPro’s battery doesn’t like semi-cold days.

Fixing this looks pretty easy. If I could have a fake battery in the camera, with a cable that came out and connected to a big USB-C battery, that should fix it. I could keep that battery nice and warm in my coat, while using the camera. I was thinking about building one, but you can get them cheap on Amazon. Yay!

Take It Slow

If I don’t drive the camera as fast as I was, it should be fine at those temps. I’ll have to keep this in mind on Wednesday, as I’m going to IAD (Dulles) to get some pics of an A380 with a new lens I got. Should be fun.