Canon d10 battery problem

[coleli]

I have the Canon d10 and all of a sudden(within the last few weeks) all of my batteries don't seem to hold their charge. The charger says it is ready, but each battery only gives me about an hour, where it used to be 3 hrs per battery. I am thinking it might be the charger. Do these fail after a couple years? Or is the batteries because I sometimes leave them on the charger too long?

Plus I have been using my EF 75-300mm IS and when I try to focus on a moving object(my son playing soccer) and hold down the focus a little, after taking the picture the camera says ERR and will not work untill I take the lense off and put it back on again. ???
Anyone every had this problem???

Thanks in ahead for ANY help!

[JSPhoto]

Could be a couple problems here, or just one.

Batteries: they degrade performance wise over time. Unfortunately the 10D battery charger doesn't give you a "refresh" mode which complete;y drains the battery and then gives it a slower than normal charge and is supposed to earse the memory that certain types of batteries have. Leaving batteries on too long on some chargers can damage them.

However, your lens or body may be the cause of the battery drain as well! I went through this 2 years ago. It turned out there was some moisture between the lens contacts that was draining the batteries. We found that out accidently after the camera and lens sat for a week in a dry enviroment and it's been fine ever since.

Try taking your camera to a repair shop and having the lens and body contacts cleaned, this can sometimes give you the error message. You can do it yourself with an eraser (NOT a no 2 pensil eraser) but you risk getting eraser junk in the contacts.

Hope that helps,

JS