Top Tips for Getting to Know Your Batteries
I reckon that the way you can tell a professional photographer from an enthusiast is the way they organise their batteries. (Ok I kid). But I did get an email from a photographer a few weeks ago that turned into a conversation about batteries. How do you organise them so that whilst on a assignment you know which are needing recharged? and which are fully charged?
I am common sense kinda guy and here is my little system for knowing which batteries are duds and which are alive and kicking. If you check out the picture below you will see 2 sets of 4 batteries. The set on the right have 2 batteries with positive facing up and 2 batteries with negative facing up or positive facing down, take your pick! These are the “good to go” set because usually when you put batteries into any speedlight, lets say the Nikon SB900 for example. The batteries are already in a configuration of 2 up and 2 down. Ah! you see where I am coming from now. Makes sense!
© Stuart Little 2009
The other set on the left of the picture are the ones that are needing recharged and as you can see, they are all positive up. This is because these are now ready to be placed into a charger and are configured as such. I told you this was common sense stuff.
The other thing is location. Fully charged batteries are kept in a pocket in my flash bag on one side and then once used they are moved to another pocket on the other side of the bag. This is just a little fail safe so that nothing gets mixed up. But even if the batteries are put in the same place then you know just by looking which ones are which.
I currently have around 24 sets of 4 batteries and I keep my batteries in sets of 2, 3, 4 and also groups of 8. These are used for different things depending on what I need them for and they are all NiMh 2600 and memory free. Why? Well they are low voltage, recycle faster for flash use and also charge quicker. All the batteries are grouped together and never mixed. So all the 2′s get charged as 2′s and all the 4′s as a little unit of 4′s.
I never mix sets up if it can be helped and I even know of some photographers who reference their batteries by a start date. If a set is started on 01/01/10 then that is written on the side of each battery in the group with a Sharpie marker pen and they are kept together. If more than one set is used then write 01/01/10A to each of the batteries. That way if they are split you know who their buddy is and you can reunite them.
Why do this? Well it prolongs the life of a little AA battery if you use and charge them in groups. So they get the same charge and discharge life. Simple as that!
Once final bit of advice about NiMh batteries. They lose their charge just by hanging around doing nothing. Some say… Roughly 10% power loss per week! Dunno if that is true or not, but its a good rule of thumb. So only charge the sets you need for an assignment the day before you are going to use them.
David Hobby AKA Strobist has some interesting posts on batteries and where to get them over at Strobist.com. You should check it out. >
Hi Stuart,
The only problem I can see with your “ready for use” configuration is that, because of the reversed polarities, should the batteries come into contact with anything metal they could short out whereas your “ready for charging” configuration wouldn’t.
Personal choice but I don’t use rechargeable in flash units, they always seemed to let me down because they never appear to give the full voltage and consequently slow down recycling time. I much prefer to put in a fresh set of duracells in the strobe units and the compact battery packs and your good to go for hours.
Some long time back there were some little 35mm film pockets given away one of the photographic periodicals. They had a belt loop, velcro flap to secure the content and held two 35mm cassettes, ideal for ten AA batteries, four for the strobe and six in the compact battery pack.
Happy New Year to you and yours.
David
[...] Continued here: Top Tips for Getting to Know Your Batteries – Little Photoshop [...]
If you go to 7dayshop.com they have a little case that holds 4a batteries. They do different coloured boxes, this is easy, one colour ready to go, one to put dud’s in. Very good and reasonable.
Happy New Year to both of you. I have those little cases but when your in a run and gun situation this tip works really well.
Hi Stu
A very prosperous New Year to you and yours.
There are a couple of wrinkles it handy to know about NiMh batteries, the most important one is to get a charger which charges each cell separately, those that charge in pairs are almost certainly going to leave one of the pair undercharged, result your cells will never give you their best.
Second is, for flash buy eneloop batteries (or equivalent), as you probably know they don’t self discharge at anything like the rate of NiMh (at the negligable cost of a little capacity), but they can supply much higher currents so your speedlights will recycle quite a bit quicker.
Keeping sets of cells only works with any advantage when you group cells with the same internal resistance together,if your charger charges each cell separately then it really makes no never mind which cells are used as a pack provided they are the same type of NiMh cell.
Did you realise you have two different types of NiMh batteries in the ‘requiring recharge’ set on the left? Not all NiMh cells are made the same, the cell with the holes in the top is a rapid charge/discharge cell, the holes are there to enable the cell to vent if overcharged or over discharged, the others are standard ones, they will have a different charge/discharge curve.
The latest battery on the horizon is NiZn (Nickle Zinc)they offer all the advantages of eneloop, but with much higher capacities, the real bonus is they can supply really large currents, your strobes recycling time will halve!! Unfortunately initially they won’t be cheap and you will need a special charger for them.
Cheers ChrisJ
Hi Chris,
Happy New Year!
In Reply:
Got Several.
Got some of them too.
Kinda new that but old habits die hard.
The ones in the image are actually knackered and only there as an example.
I am testing a set of NiZn’s at the moment and yes they are very fast and cooler too when charging!
Gotta remember Chris 99% of people reading this blog treat a battery as a battery and don’t really have the time to care too much about current etc… They would usually just swap out a set.
Cheers
Stu
who would have thought battery configurations could be so interesting!!
Happy New Year to all
Happy New Year Sandy.
Well this is interesting, Happy New Year one and all, who would have thought an AA would provoke so much discussion!!
Personally use 7dayshop’s 2800′s supplied in a transparent case and would strongly advise anyone never to store any batteries otherwise. Not a bit a wonder they go down and it can be dangerous.
As the case is transparent I use a post-it note to record the date charged.
More important photographic wise, how did you produce the image as the depth of field is quite good?
Ron
Lol, Ron! it was a very crude snap shot on my little Canon G9 in Macro mode.
I long ago moved from the 2800′s to Sanyo Eneloops and never looked back – now I have 10 sets of 4 of them, all numbers in groups. They dont overheat as much, and they hold their charge whilst not in use!
This little storage trick is so obvious – I will use it now! Its often a pain fiddling with batteries and this gives back a few seconds at the critical moment.