Read the manual.

So, on Monday I was spending a few hours watching videos on YouTube about driving Route 66, as prep for driving in the US for 5 weeks. It got me to thinking “We should make a video of our trip”.

Now thanks to iPhones while I remember the last thing I videoed with the camera (a practice guitar session with a Fender guitar through the Fender setting on a modeling amp for YouTube) I can’t remember if it was January 2016 or 2015. But I did remember where the camera and charging cable were kept and fetched them down from the shelf.

As expected the battery was dead. Looking at the camera I could not remember where the charging port was, then I saw a little socket labelled “multi”. “That’s it” I thought.

Opening the cover I saw a small USB port so grabbed a normal to small USB cable (the charging cable is simply a USB to USB connector) and plugged it in. Four hours later the battery was still dead.

Giving the camera another once over I found the battery compartment and pulled the battery. Thinking it was a bad battery I jumped onto my usual electronics store website to see what they cost NZ$80!!!!!!

Googling the battery for sale locally I found it on sale for NZ$14 delivered, and so grabbed the credit card. Then I started to think “I’m not sure how to operate the menus on this thing” so googled the instruction manual.

That’s when I read and rememberd (Doh!) that the charging cable is the short USB cable housed in the hand strap, the same one you use to connect the camera to a computer to download the video.

Two hours later the original battery was charged and the camera was working.

The second battery arrived today so I charged that up too and set in in my travel bag of cables and fittings. At least we won’t run out of battery on the camera during the day. (Storage on the video card is another matter so a spare card is now in the shopping list too).

I’ll just have to show Karen how the camera works so she can video while I drive.

And yes, real me do read instruction manuals.

It's like they say-----------------"When all else fails, please read the instructions!"

Ralph Tremaine

It's always good to plan ahead just for things like this!
Best Regards - Warren

Have a great trip. We drove U.S. 66 from Illinois to Oklahoma in 1997 in a 1936 Plymouth. We stayed at the mom & pop motels & ate at the old diners that were still open. Great fun.