Battery Conservation Tips
Are you always running out of battery power just before you take that perfect picture with your digital camera? Here are some
tips to conserve your batteries when you are out “snapping away”.
1) Turn off your digital camera when not in use. If you are in a situation where you must snap pictures quickly, this may not
apply as turning digital cameras on and off take a few seconds, and may cause you to miss a picture-taking opportunity.
However, if you are taking a leisurely stroll and can afford a couple of seconds before snapping a still subject, by all
means, conserve your digital camera’s energy!
2) Many digital cameras have a regular viewfinder and an LCD viewfinder. While the digital LCD viewfinder has its benefits,
it can drain battery power. Turn it off when applicable and use your regular viewfinder for taking pictures.
3) Don’t stop after taking every photo and look at the picture in your digital camera’s playback mode. Granted, you sometimes
need to look at photos immediately after shooting them in order to make sure your exposure is correct, the lighting is ok,
etc., but doing this does use up your digital camera’s battery power.
4) If you are using MicroDrive media, be forewarned that these miniature hard drives may take up quite more power than
Compact Flash cards.
Taking care of you new battery pack
Normally, a new battery pack comes in a very low charge condition and must be fully charged before use. Refer to the user
manual of your portable electronic equipment for charging instructions. A new battery pack needs to be fully charged and
fully discharged or “cycled” as much as five times to condition them into performing at full capacity. Your equipment may
report a fully charge condition in as short as 10 to 15 minutes when the new battery pack is being charged for the first
time. This is a normal phenomenon especially for Nickel Cadmium (Ni-Cd) and Nickel Metal Hydride (Ni-MH) chemistries. When
this happens, remove the battery pack and let it cool
down for about fifteen minutes then repeat the charging procedure. “Conditioning” (fully discharging and then fully charging)
is necessary so as to maintain the optimum performance of a battery pack, and is recommended at least once a month
particularly for Ni-Cd and Ni-MH batteries. Failure to do so could result in reduced charge capacity and can significantly
shorten the battery packs useful life. Lithium Ion batteries do not require conditioning. It is normal for a battery pack to
get warm when charging and during use. However, if the battery pack gets excessive hot, here may be a problem with the
portable electronic equipments charging circuit and should therefore be checked by a qualified technician. Rechargeable
batteries undergo self-discharging when left unused for long periods of time. This is normal particularly in the case of Ni-
MH and Li-ion chemistries. For best results, always store a battery pack fully charged. It should be removed from the
equipment and kept in a cool, dry and clean place. The amount of runtime a battery pack produces depends on the power
requirements of components in your electronic equipment.
Don’t let under-charged batteries keep you from taking great photos.
If you infrequently use your digital camera, you may think that you after you use your digital camera, recharge your NiMH
batteries, wait a few weeks or months, then use your digital camera again, that your batteries will be charged and you’ll be
ready to snap photos, right?
Oops… Do that and you’ll be stuck with a non-functioning digital camera or one that just blinks a picture showing a dead
battery.
Rechargeable batteries don’t stay charged forever. They tend to lose a little bit of their power every day. If you charge
your batteries and frequently use your digital camera, you will probably never notice this loss of power. However, after a
couple of weeks, the power loss may be noticeable, and after a couple of months or longer of non-use, those once ready-to-go
batteries may have lost enough power to make them unusable.
Don’t get caught in this trap. Always charge your http://www.camera-battery.org
Watch the video related to Camera Flash
This is a short video about starting with off camera flash. For techniques on the use of off camera flash please visit David Hobby’s blog @ strobist.blogspot.com Please excuse my coughs and sniffles I had a little cold.
Help answer the question about Camera Flash
What kind of umberellas do I need for off-camera flash photography?I would like to start off camera flash photography and I am not sure what umbrellas I need to buy. I have 3 flashes, Canon 580EX II, and two Nikon SB-28s. I am using ebay triggers to trigger the flash and need to use umbrellas to soften the light from flashes. Do I need to get the same umbrella for all three flashes? Do you use different umbrellas for each flash?
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When rechargeables were nickel cadmium batteries, it was crucial that they be recharged only after they're dead. That now is no longer an issue especially with nickel metal hydride (NIMH) and with lithium ion batteries.
You can top up lithium ion batteries, you can also run them to almost dead before rechargnig, either way you can't hurt them. What's also nice is that lithium ion doesn't lose charge the way the NIMH batteries do, so once you've charged them they tend to hold their charge for quite some time and a lot longer than the others.
How long it takes to charge them up depends on the capacity of the battery and the chargnig rate. So it's impossible to tell you how long yours will take, your owner's manual should be able to tell you that. Usually though charging them varies from and hour to three hours with most brands and capacities.
You should charge them initialy when you get them but there is no special time needed, just charge them according to the instructions provided.
Yes it is wise to recharge a battery before it's completely dead. But you don't need to worry about that. Once your camera says it can no longer work with the battery, that's dead enough to recharge. I'd not go beyond that point because you may in that case damage the battery. Rechargnig before it's "dead" doesn't hurt it at all and is something you may want to do anyway. If you're going out to take a lot of pictures it's always a good idea to top up the battery before you go.
I hope this helps a little.