Help! Digtal Camera Battery problems.?

I have an Olympus IR-300 digital camera and I seem to be having some battery problems. My camera uses a Li-40B or 42B battery but fully charged the battery doesn't seem to to last very long. I'm on vacation and yesterday I went through 3 batteries even tthough I didn't use my camera that much. The first battery (which was in the camera from the previous day and hadn't been used even though it was charged) only lasted an hour and about 20 pictures. The 2nd battery lasted about the same. I've tried everything I can think of to conserve battery power- I tried turning the camera off after each use and I've tried leaving it on and letting it go into power save mode, when I'm taking a lot of pictures. I no longer review pictures until I return home because I've heard that, that consumes the battery as well. One of the batteries is 4 months old and the other less than a year old. Please tell me how I can get more life out of my batteries,

Hello,

I had a similar thing happen to me. My batteries would read full but only last about an hour or two. I tried cleaning them and the charger and it fixed the problem. I think the contacts get dirty over time and just need to be cleaned. I used an emory board and very lightly scraped the contacts on the batteries and the charger. Then I wiped them off and gave it a try. It fixed the problem. Now my batteries last "forever". I hardly ever have to charge them, just like new. If you are thinking about getting new batteries anyway, try this first. What do you have to lose? Just be careful and don't go overboard. Just rub lightly with the emory board and be sure to wipe all the contacts clean with a dry cloth.

Good luck.

Wow, that's a lot of batteries. It almost sounds like there is some kind of short in your camera if it's going through batteries that quickly. Normally you can extend the life of your batteries for your digital camera by using your viewfinder and turning off your LCD screen when taking pictures. Also as you said, don't review your pictures on the LCD but after you've downloaded them to your computer.

I don't know , what more you can do, you seen to be doing every thing to save battery life. Are you using rechargeable batteries, digital cameras do use up batteries fast, I take extra batteries along with me.
You might have your camera checked, it might have a short in it. there is some thing it, that's pulling on the battery power.

Three possibilities here.

One is that your camera is draining the batteries, even when in power save modes.

Another is that you have a batch of bad batteries.

The final possibility is that the charger itself isn't fully charging the batteries or has damaged the batteries in some way.

I would double check your charger to make sure it's functioning properly. If you have a friend or camera store with a similar charger, try those batteries on that charger and see if the life improves. If it does, the problem is your charger.

If it doesn't, it's likely to be the camera and it should be repaired or replaced.

you need to use rechargeables
if they are
they get a new charger