Archive for the ‘Equipment Review’ Category
Batteries Part 3 – a look at Nickel Metal Hydride Batteries
Kicking off with another macro shot – where’s the point of sharpest focus?
And so back to the batteries.
Nickel metal hydride batteries – (Ni-MH)
Most of my rechargeable cells now are of this kind and they do a great job from the photographic point of view – but they’re not perfect.
Nickel metal hydride batteries – (Ni-MH) have most of the characteristics of nickel cadmium cells, but with a number of improvements.
The main improvements are that they don’t have any toxic metals like cadmium, and they don’t suffer memory effects to the same extent.
This makes them the most widely used type of rechargeable AA and AAA cell today.
They still have one or two of the same difficulties as nickel cadmium cells.
They have the same 1.2 voltage and also a fairly high self-discharge rate. That is after charging, they can lose their energy quite quickly. This is worse in high temperatures.
This is particularly frustrating from the photographic point of view. There’s nothing worse than collecting the batteries you know you charged quite recently only to find they simply don’t have enough power and have to be charged again.
One lesser problem is that they can’t usually be charged quite as many times as Nickel Cadmium cells. Still recharging cells 500 times is still a great bonus in cost and environmental terms.
To summarize:
Against: They
have a nominal cell voltage of 1.2 v
self-discharge, i.e. lose energy after charging.
For: They
no longer use cadmium or other toxic materials
don’t have significant memory problems
are especially suited to high current drain applications like digital cameras and flashguns.
One point to watch out for is that they might need a dedicated charger
Back to Batteries Part 2. A look at Sealed Nickel-Cadmium Cells
Again I’m going to start with a photo and it’s clearly a macro shot. And the reason is that I’m getting ready to respond to a comment sent in by Tony.
I did give him a quick reply to answer his immediate queries but it seems to me that they are of wider interest.
Lots and lots of photographers are interested in macro photography and realize that it’s a rather specialized and sometimes quite difficult area to deal with.
Right then let’s get straight back to the question of batteries.
And this time, let’s look at Nickel Cadmium cells.
Nickel Cadmium cells are still very widely available.
They are eminently usable and they have the most important characteristic from my point of view, that they are rechargeable.
They represent the earliest technology of rechargeable cells that is currently conveniently available and they have a number of plus points.
The best point for me is that they are excellent for certain purposes for example in flashguns, where they will recycle quite quickly.
Other advantages stem from being rechargeable – you can use them many many times saving both money and the environment.
In a way I’m just as excited about Nickel Cadmium cells as I was when they first came out – and as early versions were invented in Sweden in 1899 they’ve been around a long time.
However, they’re not the best choice of battery today.
One obvious problem is that they can suffer from memory effects. That is that every time you recharge them you can’t recharge them fully because they retain the memory of the previous charge.
There are ways around this – for example using chargers which discharge them completely first, but nevertheless it’s a problem to be clear about.
Another problem is that after being charged, they quite quickly lose their charge somewhat so that you can try to use batteries that you charged some time ago and find that a lot of the power has gone.
One final problem inherent in this kind of battery is that the voltage is 1.2 rather than 1.5 which can cause problems with some equipment. If you use 4 cells for example you will have 4.8 rather than 6 volts.
So my advice is that if you live in a part of the world where Nickel Cadmium cells are widely available at a good price and there are no obvious alternatives, then give them a go.
And if you already have cells in good condition, they may go on working. For myself I tend you use them in low priority equipment such as clocks rather than cameras.
The obvious problems is that modern cameras are completely battery dependent and are simply useless bit of metal and plastic junk without batteries.
So to sign off, Nickel Cadmium cells are worth looking at but there are better, more modern alternatives available and we’ll go to them another time.
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Batteries Part 1 – Alkalines
Ok so starting a post on batteries with a photo may seem irrelevant but hey I promised to post some of my favourite pictures as we went along and the point of batteries is that they’re like computer backups – absolutely essential.
It’s when you need them and don’t have them that the going really gets tough.
And these days. If you have no juice, you get no photos.
It’s as simple as that.
Anyhow this picture is in response to a request I got about selection – that is creating new photo-composites by cutting out parts of a photo and using them with other foreground or background objects.
Like most photographers I’ve had several tries at getting this right and there are lots of different approaches.
Still for this picture I used the pen tool and I’m convinced it’s worth the learning curve.
And so to batteries… Yes they may not be sexy but they’re so essential. Even though I use a DSLR and a compact that have special dedicated batteries there’s still a need for AA and AAA size cells.
A quick trawl through by gadget back and studio show at least these:
- 6 AA cells for the battery grip for my Canon 350D – some people like the grip just from the balance point of view but I’ve got pretty small hands so prefer to shoot without. Still I try to make sure it’s ready in case I need it and of course some sort of battery of this size can be obtained almost anywhere
- 4 AA cells for my Canon Speedlite 430EX flashgun
- 2 AAA cells for my radio controlled flash trigger
And that’s just a quick trawl.
So batteries this size are easy enough to find but there’s a bewildering array of non-rechargeable and rechargeable cells around.
Battery technology has changed lot in my time so I’ve been trying to update my knowledge as I go along.
Now I personally don’t use non-rechargeable batteries much and I’ve never tried the current Lithium cells so when I do use a non-rechargeable I’ll choose an Alkaline Cell:
Alkaline cells have some good and bad points:
Good:
- They’re readily available even in quite obscure locations
The have a good shelf life, so they’re usually in good condition and have full power
They deliver the full 1.5 voltage
They’re quite cheap for a one use battery
They don’t need chargers
Bad:
- They don’t always provide the right kind of power – i.e flashgun ready times can be quite long
They don’t last very long in heavy duty conditions
They are very, very expensive if you use them often
And
Most of all for me they are an environmental disaster as they all have to be thrown away somewhere
So, my recommendation is: Only use alkalines if there’s no other choice
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