Battery power

I don’t recall suffering from this in the good old days of analogue photography, but these days I’m forever charging batteries of one sort or another. The list just keeps getting longer too. For instance, these days I have to do the following prior to every photo-shoot:

• Camera battery – 2 or 3 Canon LP-E6
• Flash batteries – upto 24 AA batteries (3 flash guns with 2 sets of 4 batteries per unit)
• Radio triggers – 6 AA batteries. 12 if its a long shoot and I’ll need two sets
• Portable back-up drives – 8 AA batteries (2 drives with 4 batteries each)
• Spare AA batteries

That little lot adds up to getting on for 40-50 AA batteries. Managing that number of batteries is not without problems.

Battery Management

The batteries I tend to buy usually come in sets of four and as far as is possible I try to keep them in sets, charging and using them all together. This exposes each battery in a set to the same wear rate and usage pattern. With today’s modern NiMH technology this is perhaps less of an issue than with NiCad but its a habit I formed a few years ago and isn’t something I’m going to change now.

To keep them together in sets I label each battery with a three-character code when I remove them from the packet for the first time and before it goes into the charger. This label simply consists of a 2-digit year code followed by a letter. e.g. the first three sets I bought in 2010 had the labels 10A, 10B and 10C. The label is also entered into a battery log along with the manufacturer, capacity and month of purchase.

This may seem like overkill but it allows me to ascertain the age of any battery simply by looking up the code.

Why is this important?

Well – batteries, like media cards are consumable devices. I need to know I can trust my equipment and I don’t want to let a client down by something as simple as a battery failure.

Charging

Charging time as the number of batteries increases rapidly becomes an issue. Fast chargers are a necessity and a few of them too. I reached a point a while back where a single, slow charger just wasn’t up to it anymore. Taking upto 18-hours to charge a set of 4 meant that the first set had lost a reasonable amount of charge by the time the last set had finished. Not good. I now use multiple chargers to speed up the entier process. It also means I’m not left wanting should a charger fail.

In-car charging is also an option whilst in the field. With a good, fast charger it should be possible to charge a set faster than a flash can deplete it.

Storage

Battery storage back at base isn’t really a problem. Storage whilst out on assignment is a different matter. How many times have you opened a pack of new batteries only to confuse them with the old ones? Something to avoid at all costs.

I tend to use a plastic box that business cards are supplied in to hold mine. +ve up means charged, -ve up means depleted.

Weight

Individually, or in a set of 4, weight isn’t really an issue. Multiply this up to say 40-50 and then having to carry them around all day long and it is much more noticeable.

Replacement

I mentioned above that I consider batteries to be consumable. They will wear out in time so I look to replace some of the older ones each year before I can no longer rely on them.

Final thoughts…

If, like me, you tend to charge your batteries up  the night before a shoot, whatever you do, don’t forget to take them with you the following day 😉