A6000 Will not go into power saving when not in use.

[Cueball999]

My Sony a6000 should go into power save after 1 minute. I had taken around 30 images, and the battery had 50% left. I have found out that it does not go into power save, thus draining the battery. The reason why is the view finder. As you all know, it has a sensor. This will tell the camera when you are looking at the EVF, so it switches off the monitor and turns on the EVF and vice versa.

When the camera is not in use, it should switch to power save to conserve battery. I hang my camera around my neck, thus it slightly bounces of me as I walk around. Triggering the sensor by the EVF, so the camera thinks you are using the view finder.

Because off this, the camera will not go to sleep. I would have thought, if you did not press the shutter button down for 1 minute regardless of the EVF, then this would tell the camera that it is not in use, so it will power save. It seems the power save is based on this little sensor by the EVF. This to me is an extremely poor design. Why would you have the power save tied into this sensor, when it is continually being triggered by just walking around.. 

This is why my battery drains so fast.

Does anyone else have this issue, with the camera not power saving when you are not using it, and just walking around with the camera hung from your neck?

I spoke to Sony, they told me to just simply flick the camera off, and then on again when I want to take a shot (talk about wearing the switch down). Then what's the point of having power saving!

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Mick_D]

Hi @Cueball999, welcome to the Community 

As you probably know, the eye sensor on your a6000 works by detecting changes in the ambient light falling on a tiny window next to the EVF. For many applications it works just fine, but it's fair to say you should switch the camera off if you're walking around with it on a strap and you want to conserve battery life. 

It's also fair to say the sensor is a little over-sensitive and feedback from some 'strap carry' users in this situation is that you either switch the EVF off in settings or modify the sensor itself with a small piece of Light Dims tape. This should cover only the top half of the sensor window and will dramatically reduce the number of false activations you get while the EVF is on 'Auto', without compromising normal activation in use.

Not the most elegant fix, but this is the sort of feedback that helps future models improve...

Cheers
Mick

[Cueball999]

Hi @Mick_D,

Thanks for your reply. I do find this quite a flawed system for power save. I would have thought Sony would have it linked to the shutter button. So if the shutter hasn't been pressed for 10secs or 1 minute etc, then this would tell the system that the camera is not in use, and power save mode will kick in. Having to turn the power switch off everytime is a bit of an inconvenience. It's a great little camera, but this is really putting me off using the camera. 

I wonder if all mirorless cameras are like this, or maybe it's just Sony? This has been my "Go To" camera since I've had, but I've started to go back to using my Nikon D7100 again, because of this. 

The Light Dims tape sounds interesting, I'll have to give that a try, hopefully that might sort the issue out. Thanks for the advice 🙂