Good battery life?

Mr.Nice Guy

Hello everyone. I have a Hitachi HDC-651E which looks like this:

http://www.jellydeal.co.uk/prod_store/hitachi-hdc651e-6mp-digital-camera.jpg

I got it last Christmas and never really got round to using it much - the reason being that the battery life is just diabolical. If fresh batteries are placed in then they will end up running out within a few hours of using the camera. I can barely figure out the controls because trying to practise eats up the battery life.

I'm not knowledgeable about cameras at all so I'd like to know is this the norm for a camera or have I just got a really crappy bit of hardware on my hands?

How many hours should a good camera be able to function for? I'd appreciate any advice as I'm keen to go start taking pictures but this thing has me going up the walls.

Ghost Train

I'd never use a digital camera with normal batteries... the camera would have rechargable battery or I'd buy a charger and batteries if the camera uses AA's

Batteries should last for a few hundred shots without flash or maybe a hundred with moderate flash use. But how quickly a carera uses its battery will vary a lot between models. Most modern cameras shouldn't be too bad

Paulw

What you need to get are rechargable NiMH batteries. They should give you a lot more photos per charge than Duracell and such.