2008 April 08 | johnrochaphoto.net

Ready To Go Batteries – The Best So Far

April 8th, 2008 | Author: johnrocha

Hybrid cells

I think this is going to be my last post on batteries for a while.

As I said, batteries are as boring as backup but batteries are equally essential.

Sometimes, of course, batteries hit the news:

I’ve just read that the United States Administration is banning Nickel Metal Hydride batteries and rechargeable cells on aeroplanes unless they are packed and carried in certain ways as they believe that there is a danger of fire, in particular, from low grade batteries made by companies that perhaps don’t have the highest manufacturing standards.

So that’s something to be concerned about because one of the great joys of digital photography is that you no longer have quite the same problems in going through airports and airport scanners.

The days when you tried to pack your films in lead lined bags, or tried to persuade recalcitrant and overworked airport security staff to let you take your films through in your hand luggage without going through the scanners – those days are gone.

But it seems in these very security conscious times in the travel business, that we now have battery problems.

But back to the batteries themselves as we’re talking about them.

The main problems regarding the types of rechargeable cells that we’ve talked about is that they might have memory problems, sometimes have environmental problems and also that they have a discharge problem: That is that after you charge them they quite quickly lose their power.

Another factor is that if you forget to charge them or wait until the last minute then it’s too late because you can’t immediately charge them even with the quickest chargers.

So, I’m going to come to the last type of cell for the moment which is based on Nickel Metal Hydride technology and is sometimes called a Ready to Use cell.

These types of cells are provided by a few companies and they have the following characteristics.