Z612 Clock Resets on Battery Change

[bayani]

I noticed lately, after 11 months of use, that when I change batteries, I have to reset the clock and date. The amount of time the camera is off batteries is just a few seconds.

Why could this be happening?

Thanks,

Gary

[Alan T]

This is alarming. As there is no mention of a clock&settings-backup battery in the manuals, I assumed it must be a supercapacitor that maintains them while batteries are changed. I have had my Z712 only 6 months to date and have not had this troubleas yet. But I always change very quickly, expecting the settings to be lost, because of the supposed absence of a backup battery.

There have been various mentions of this issue (with other cameras, mostly), and sometimes there turns out to be a hidden Li battery that can indeed be replaced. If anyone knows the answer for the Kodak Z*12 series, please can they tell us!

I maintain myCasio QV-5700, dating from 26Sep2003, ready for instant use with 'Hybrio' batteries.(It has seldom-used features that are absentfrom my newer machines.) If left without batteries for long, it loses its memory. I don't know how long that takes. However, in that time (over 4 years), I have changed its batteries, fairly quickly,many times (to recharge them), without losing the clock & other settings. I do not know of a backup battery in that model. The manual says it will last about 24 hours before losing them.

I infer that that camera has a supercapacitor, because I'd have expected a Li coin cell to have failed by now, and a little supercapacitor to last for ever by digicam standards.If that is also true of your Z612 it must have failed, and might do on my Z712.

Have you tried changing the batteries even more quickly, with a stopwatch running?

I'll post a reference to this thread in Batteries & power supply', and hope that camera electrical experts will respond.

Good luck! Please keep on shooting anyway!

[ac.smith]

Ron Baird has shed some light on the subject last April in this forum:

http://forums.steves-digicams.com/fo...mp;forum_id=18

The summary is that it does have clock retention "cell" (he doesn't specify further) that should hold the clock setting for a "few minutes." I surmise from that small amount of info that the cell is a capacitor and probably not a super-cap in the latest use of that term. My Z612 was a refurb purchased last DEC and it still holds during a battery swap which probably takes me 10 sec.

If I encountered your problem and the camera was still in warranty I'd try to have Kodak fix the problem. If it was out of warranty I'd probably just ignore the clock as I don't really make use of date stamps.

[ac.smith]

I know everyone above has seen the answer over at dpreview but for those that don't normally go there Mike has provided a good explanation: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/re...ssage=25811786

[big_potato]

My 3 Kodak DC:

DC280 (1999)
V550 (2005)
Z1275 (2007)

all show such problem - the clock would be reset whenever the batteries have been pulled out for longer than 1-minute.

I suppose a design problem, e.g. as guessed above, using large cap. instead of backup batteriy.

[bayani]

Thanks to all who responded to my problem.

According to Mike of Kodak, this should not happen.

But in my case, it does even when the battery I am taking out is not fully depleted and the replacement is put in only after a few seconds - less than 10 - as in the last time this happened.
I hope Kodak does not expect us to by a dock just so that the date/time won't reset.
Never happens to my Canon S5 which takes longer to change batteries because it uses 4 AA's rather than 1 cell only as in the Kodak.
Gary

[fngreenhut]

I have two Z612s. It happens with one when the battery is out for even two seconds but not with the other. Kodak says it's a bad capacitor. I've learned to iive with it.

Fred

[Almar]

I read on another forum that the type of capacitor that keeps the clock going when the battery is removed can be somewhat unreliable mainly due to its small size.

The gentleman from Kodak wrote that it would be replaced if the camera is still under warranty, but too costly to replace otherwise.

[bayani]

fngreenhut wrote:

I have two Z612s. It happens with one when the battery is out for even two seconds but not with the other. Kodak says it's a bad capacitor. I've learned to iive with it.

Fred

It's a sad day when we consumers find a defect in something we buy and the manufacturer forces us to "...live with it..." because it is too expensive to correct.

[ac.smith]

bayani wrote:

It's a sad day when we consumers find a defect in something we buy and the manufacturer forces us to "...live with it..." because it is too expensive to correct.

We do that all the time. The rear window defroster in my 16 year old Probe doesn't work and the expense of rewiring through the hinge isn't worth it. I do a work around, I scrape the frost/ice off the back window. If the same had happened on my six year old Santa Fe last year it would have been covered by warranty and I'd have had it fixed, now, out of warranty I'd have to consider the economics.

It's not really an issue with the manufacturer, it's economics for both the manufacturer and the consumer. The price is different for putting a cap on a motherboard on an automated production line versus the hourly wages of a skilled technician to disassemble, repair and reassemble a complex item.

It's also a different economic picture to do that repair on a 14 mo. old $2000 Canon EOS DSLR vs. a 14 mo. old $250 Z612. Kodak could offer a 3 yr. warranty on a Z612 but would the marketplace in general find the Z612 worth the additional $100 it would add to the price?