Batteries and Chargers for Digital Photography

There is nothing worse than a digital camera with dead batteries. It's good for little beyond being an expensive paperweight.

• The Nikon D80 digital camera uses a single proprietary 7.4-volt lithium ion rechargeable battery pack. Although this can power many hundreds of pictures before it needs to be recharged, a spare battery pack is a prudent investment.
• Both the Sigma EM-140DG ring flash and the Olympus E20 camera use four 1.2-volt AA batteries. Use of rechargeable NiMH (nickel-metal hydride) batteries is recommended. What is wonderful, though, is that when you are in the wilds of rural Canada (or other places without commercial electric power), one can always find ordinary AA batteries, regular carbon-zinc or alkaline types will do, to power your camera and flash, albeit with rather short battery life.

Battery management is an important aspect when doing any sort of time-critical photography. It's simple — always have at least two sets of batteries for each of your devices, one set installed and another freshly charged set for backup.

Regarding chargers, the proprietary Nikon batteries need to be recharged in the provided proprietary charger. Because the Nikon battery is a sealed unit, when one cell fails, the whole battery needs to be replaced.

For NiMH or NiCd AA or AAA batteries, the standard battery chargers with an LED for indicating a charged state, are really not very good choice for photographic equipment, as they tend to do a compromised first-past-the-post charge that is not optimized for each cell. Also, they don't give any indication if one cell (or more) is weaker than the rest.

However, with AA and AAA batteries, it is easy to create matched sets of cells, perhaps using the poorer ones in your LED flashlight and the best ones in your camera and flash. The way to achieve this state of optimal battery performance is by using a suitable battery charger. The unit of choice, currently without peer, is the La Crosse Technologies BC-900 charger, which provides essentially a mini-computerized charger for each of the four cells complete with an LCD display for each cell.

The LaCrosse BC-900 charger accommodates AA or AAA cells. It permits
creation of sets of matched NiMH or NiCd batteries for your cameras
and other similar devices.

The charging current is adjustable over a wide range, and the BC-900 includes a mode which first discharges each battery, and then re-charges each cell until fully charged. It then is possible to read out the power stored in each cell in mAh (milliamp-hours). You may find a single cell that is much weaker than the rest - this weaker cell might be able to be reconditioned by discharging, and re-charging a time or two - but cells do have a finite life.

The improved performance of your camera or flash by having matched sets of batteries is significant, because the weakest cell is the one that will cause your unit to shut down.

The BC-900 is available at some battery specialty shops or from the importer, Thomas Distributing in the USA. Their service is good and their pricing is reasonable.

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Page last modified 1 March 2008
Copyright © 2001-2008 D. Lynn Scott