Our modern lives are ruled by batteries. Your cell phone. Your camera. Your camcorder. Your wireless keyboard & mouse. Your wireless Playstation controller. Your laptop. Hell… even your desktop computer has a tiny battery in it to power the CMOS (look it up).
But the arena the batter probably means the most to me is where it comes into play with my cameras. Sure… I love my cell phone and have a hard time imagining life without it, but to be frank: I could relearn to live without it. My cameras area different matter. Photography is what helps keep me sane. It’s my hobby. It’s my thing. Angry Birds and calling for a tow truck are nice, but those things don’t keep me sane. Level. Balanced.
But like all other consumer electronics they require power to work and power is supplied via the lovely, lovely battery. I was just talking about the rise of the dSLR camera (digital Single Lens Reflex) and how it’s ascension is undoubtedly related to the rise of the rechargeable Lithium battery. Modern cameras, both dSLRs as well as the smaller point-n-shoots, require what are really enormous amounts of power to operate.
The battery in those cameras must power the motions of the zoom feature of the lens (or lenses). Charge the sensor. Transfer data from the sensor to the CPU and then to the media card. Light the LCD screen. Provide data into the viewfinder (if the camera has one). There is, to be frank, an awful lot of electrical stuff going on. Fortunately the rechargeable Lithium battery has made it possible for me to shoot my Canon 40D or Rebel XTi well over 1,000 times before needing to recharge. It’s really amazing. But there is a weak link in this chain of power: the AA battery.
Check this out…
Sanyo Eneloop Batteries & Charger
If you’re like me you moved to rechargeable AA batteries years ago. By and large the better quality ones last far longer than standard, non-rechargeable alkaline batteries. And when they’re spent… recharge and reuse. Brilliant. But truth be told I discovered these better rechargeables don’t last as long or recharge as often as I would like considering their cost.
Now I’m not saying they won’t last 6-months in your television’s remote control, but stuffed into a modern dSLR flash/strobe, such as I do, and it’s a different story. Simply leaving a fully charged set in the flash for a month or longer almost guaranteed they would be less than half charged when the day came I needed them to work. I discovered this on more than one occasion. Sure… I could recharge them in advance of use, but I don’t always know when the whim will strike to go out and photograph stuff and when I’ll need that flash unit.
As it was I took to keep a spare set of regular alkaline AA’s in my camera bag just in case the rechargeable ones didn’t make the cut for the day. This policy, while effective, seemed… well… rather silly. But one day, while visiting one of the many photography-related blogs I read, the author spoke of the above pictured batteries and how awesome they were at both holding a charge while not doing anything and for holding up to usage very well.
I confess I had never heard of them before and my personal experiences with Sanyo (all from childhood mind you) were of cheap & crappy consumer electronics. Hardly a ringing endorsement. But I tucked away this bit of information and when, a few weeks later, I stumbled upon them at Costco I elected to pick them up.
I’m so very glad I did.
They are awesome. They work exactly as the author described. Once charged they hold a charge for what seems like forever. I have a set of four currently sitting in my flash unit which were charged about a month ago. They’ve been used twice in that time period and one photo shoot lasted over an hour and included more than 150-shots; all with flash.
I can assure you the rechargeable Energizers I was using previously would have been half-depleted by the end of this first month and would never have lasted for 150+ shots. No way. No how.
And to add insult to injury the Eneloops were no more expensive than the Energizers.
So while I hate for this to sound like a commercial I cannot help it. It’s rare when I come across a product which really blows me away. Consistently. And keep in mind I’ve had these Eneloop batteries for over a year now so this isn’t a glowing review based upon a month’s usage. They have been, as I said, awesome.
