Charge your batteries before every photo session

Please charge your batteries before every photo session. That is my public service announcement for you.

I share this sentiment because someone I was helping out made the mistake of not charging a battery recently.

At least twice a week I attend traditional karate training at a local dojo. The karate school happens to also be my photography client. In fact, they were a client way before I joined the school, maybe five years or so!

Recently there was a 2nd-degree black belt test at the school, where two students were testing for their second stripe. At our school, that’s a huge deal. Getting your black belt is hard enough, but testing for the second stripe is like running a marathon after doing the regular test. At a test like this, all the patriarchs of the school try to come, attend, and judge the student whether they have passed or failed.

Needless to say, I was really sad I could not make it to the test because I had a pre-booked family vacation that week.

Since I could not make it, what I wound up doing was setting up my Mevo camera, perfectly level on a tripod, ready to record the entire test.

When fully charged, and a clean memory card, the Mevo can record up to three hours at 4K (in super wide too, so you capture the entire room). At the class I attended before going away I showed my instructor how to operate the camera. He then tested it out in class that night.

What I mistakingly forgot to tell him was to charge the camera again before the test.

So what happened was this …

My instructor did not charge the camera beforehand, and then accidentally forgot to start recording when the test began. So when he rushed to get the camera recording, he also accidentally forgot to plug it into the wall. Which meant that the camera was on battery mode. But with a battery already low, it went into a power-saving recording mode, which only captures audio.

The end result was nearly two hours of a still image and a lot of audio.

Sadly, the test was not recorded well.

Again, I share this with a reminder to please charge your batteries before every photo session. The last thing you need is for power to go out, or for something to fail and you are not able to make the photos you need to make.