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Question about a6300


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Hi everyone,

 

I'm looking into buying an a6300, I have a question.

 

I have an 11,000mah external battery with a 5V, 2.1A USB output. Will this charge the camera's battery? I understand it only charges when the camera is off?

 

Thanks

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"As long as the power is on, the battery pack will not be charged even if the camera is connected to the AC Adapter." -page 17 of the a6300 manual.

 

Unfortunately you cannot charge the battery while the camera is on. If you connect an external USB charger while the camera is off, it will charge the battery. If you connect while the camera is on, the camera will run power from your USB power source and not the Sony camera battery (except under "certain usage conditions" it may still drain a little bit of battery power according to the manual). This is still great because at 11,000mah your USB charger will last 239,635,091 times longer than a Sony a6300 battery. 

 

 

The a6300 will not work without a "sufficiently charged" battery. So it'll need a battery with at least some charge in it to turn on, even when plugged into a USB power source. Also, if you ever have trouble with the camera charge working via a portable USB device, try switching out micro USB cables. I've had issues with ones in the past to run it off of a portable USB charger, but I know the official Sony cable works. I think it's a rare but if you do have problems, try switching out the micro USB cable. 

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Most likely, they thought the USB charger was charging their camera's battery because they weren't losing battery life, but what was actually happening is the camera wasn't losing battery life because it was running off of the the USB power. 

 

If you have any links to videos I'd really like to see someone charging while in use. Maybe there's a trick that I'm missing. I haven't been able to do this with my a6300. 

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The Sony mirrorless camera’s will not turn on without a battery that has some charge in it (or a dummy battery inserted). You cannot turn on an a6300 or a7 or a7rii without a battery inside of it. 

 

In this video Lok is connecting a USB charger to his a7. So while the camera is on, it is draining the USB charger’s power, not the internal battery (well it is but very slowly). It is not charging the a7’s battery. The a7 will only charge the battery via USB while the camera is off. When it’s on and connected to a USB power source such as a charger, it will just use that as it’s power source.

 

Example: if you put a half charged battery into an a6300, and connect it to a fully charged portable usb charger, after an hour of use the usb charger will be drained but the a6300 battery will remain at half full. If the a6300 was off, though, then the usb charger will have been charging the camera so the usb charger will be drained but the a6300 battery will be full. 

 

Hope that makes sense.

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