Re: Recharging digital camera batteries

[Jim Thyer <jimth@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]



I think you need to think laterally.  I am sure some form of current/voltage controlled circuit would be needed to charge from a car battery or any other standard cells.  Otherwise you could ruin your camera battery. 

 

I understand your concerns on a long trip, spare camera batteries are nice, but usually expensive.  I always carry one spare, recharge battery in camera and make it the spare.  Then both batteries kept at full charge.

 

I had problems on a recent trip.  First night out went to do the daily recharge of the battery, found I had packed the charger for the old camera.  So investigated, and found I could improve battery life by turning off the rear screen menu display.  Only turned it on if adjustments needed.  Happily at a photographic convention found someone with the same camera, he did a recharge for me, but I still went to the final week of travel with 2 charged batteries, and no charger.  Happily I easily lasted. 

 

So IMPORTANTLY, check which camera functions drain the battery and are not necessary all the time.  Such as screen displays operating continuously, or anti-shake.  Turn off when not needed.

 

To find oout more on batteries and how to look after them, there was a website given on this list some time ago, the Battery University, http://www.batteryuniversity.com/index.htm

 

Worth a look at, and perhaps the original question could be asked of them.

 

Enjoy your trip.

 

Jim Thyer

Well there are some good ideas.  I always carry 3 batteries, but one never knows just how fast one is going to go through them and when one is going to decide to up and quit.  Staying out for as much as a week needing 3 batteries per day would be tough. 

I don't know if the simple light weight 9 volt battery, the type that used to be used in radios before Ipods would work.  Light, may not last that long, but a 9 volt is a couple of bucks.  Best Buy had the batteries for about $40 bucks or so.  Yes I can get them cheaper, but I am not going to get them $2 cheap and if that $2 will charge a $40 buck battery all the better.

The back packs with the solar cells look interesting and could be a solution for a laptop battery, but its also a lot more than I wanted to spend at this point.  I bought two 4 gig CF flash cards at Costco last week for about 35 bucks.  Extra cards for me would make more sense than trying to deal with an image dump till I can get to power for the laptop.

I did see what looked like a grip for the body on KEH that took AA batteries.  The AA might solve the problem if a set of batteries would last as long as a battery pack.  Again that was also a couple of  hundred bucks, but I would at least get the verticle shutter release back.