Best Choice For Digital Camera Rechargeable Batteries
By: John Dow
Submitted: 2010-02-25 17:49:18 | Word Count: 706
Digital Camera rechargeable batteries take a tremendous beating. Due to the nature of digital cameras, they require a good amount of voltage and also need the battery to maintain a good charge for long periods of inactivity. Many of the current digital cameras have a flash and can take short movies. Both of these features are great but can drain a battery twice as quick as normal photo shooting.
Most people are familiar with the basic rechargeable battery but the key to finding a good one for your digital camera is to look at what material the battery is made out of, how quickly it will charge, and how long the charge will last both in using and sitting on the shelf or in the digital camera.
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One of the things I look at before I purchase any digital camera I buy is to make sure it has a common battery size. The reason is that no matter how well you plan a photo shoot, things happen and you may have to resort to good old alkaline batteries in a pinch. My first choice is a set of rechargeable batteries but you never know and it s a very good thing to be able find a fresh set of batteries.
There are a couple of important factors to consider on which rechargeable battery is the best. First is the amount of voltage, the next is how long the battery will perform, next comes the time it takes to recharge, and the last is the shelf life of the charge (how long the battery will hold the charge in storage).
Here s a list of typical rechargeable batteries and their voltage output:
Ni Cad rechargeable batteries 1.2 volts
Ni MH rechargeable batteries – 1.2 and 1.5
Ni ZN rechargeable batteries 1.6 volts
Standard alkalines are 1.5 volts
There also is a rating that gives a reference to the amount of stored energy capacity called mAh, which stands for milli Amp hour. These ratings generally run from 750 mAh to 2100 mAh, the higher the number the greater the amount of energy storage capacity (higher the number the better).
The Ni Cad and Ni MH are the most popular and almost every major brand of battery has multiple versions available. The latest technology is the Ni ZN which has superior storage capacity and a long shelf life. Most types of rechargeable batteries can be recharged many times but what they don t mention is that the amount of charge drops off considerably after x amount of rechages.
And therein lies the real factor to consider. Let s say when you get your new batteries you can take about 100 photos before they go south. As the number of recharges increase, the number of photos decrease. Some may only last 25 30 recharges before they start loosing the ability to fully charge. Cost wise that s still a good savings since a normal AA alkaline battery costs about $1.15 and the comparable rechargeable is $2.50 to $5.00 depending on the mAh numbers.
The newer Ni ZN cost about $5 each and claim to take over 500 recharges before suffering any loss of charging capacity. But they also kick out more voltage so as an example your flash recycles in half the time of normal alkaline batteries. And if you get 100 shots out of a set of alkaline, you should get at least 175 shots out of the Ni ZN set of the same size. Plus the storage life of the N ZN is better than any of the other choices.
Faster recycling of a flash can be a big deal since it s really a pain when shooting photos indoors and needing to wait up to 2 minutes for your flash to be at full strength again. Or if you are shooting a series of short one minute videos, running out of juice in the middle is not a good thing.
So based on the above pricing and abilities, if you can recharge the highest price batteries up to 500 times, they are far cheaper to use in the long run. And if they hold up anywhere near the claim of 500 charges, well, you can do the math. It s a no brainer, the Ni ZN offer both more voltage, better shelf life, and more charges per battery.
