I do a lot of strobist work out on location and really enjoy it. One thing that is a real bind is battery management and how to pack them in your kit bag so you know which ones are which when it comes to using them. This quick tip explains how I go about it.
The image above is, for me, part of the solution. I simply use an old, plastic business card box with dividers made from some of the old cards. It’ll comfortably hold 24 AA batterie, enough for 2 spare sets with 3 speedlites or 3 spare sets with 2 speedlites. This is more than enough for me as I’ve never depleted more than two sets per flash gun and only then because I was in a dark nighclub.
The dividers keep them together in their sets of 4 and depending on which way up I put them I can immediately tell if they’re charged (positive end up) or depleted (negative end up). They’re only used in my speedlites so its really easy to maintain the grouping – they’re either in the box, in the speedlite or in the charger but just in case I do also number them as I mentioned in this post on Battery Management I wrote a while back.
There are commercial solutions to keep batteries together but I like this quick tip. It’ a nil cost solution made from something I already had lying around the house.
[…] have a couple of questions about how I did the battey shot in this post so thought I’d post the lighting setup in the form of the sketch above. It is very simple and […]