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Camera Batteries


relaxinghobby
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Hi

 

Does any one have experience of ordering replacement camera batteries from on-line shops. I need a LI 10b ( small rectangular black cuboid thing with three contacts ) for my

Olympus Stylus 300 ( 3.2 mega pixies ), don't laugh it was hot stuff in it's day.

 

Jessops want £25 for the battery, but made by Energiser, they would not part exchange for the old one.

I've seem an actual Olympus battery for £8 on the net and all other prices in between.

 

So where is the best place to got?

 

In the meantime I am using another ancient piece of kit, a 3 year old Motorola phone which can just about get up to 100k picture file size and has a fish eye lens.

e.g

post-6220-064153100 1288071841_thumb.jpg

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  • RMweb Gold

For most of my major photographic purchases I have used Warehouse Express in Norfolk for several years. Their prices are competitive and the service I've received has always been good. I've no idea whether they'll stock your battery. Have a look at www.warehouseexpress.com

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Guest baldrick25

I use 7dayshop , and can recomend their batteries for my Canon..

 

http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/default.php?cPath=777

 

Not only for batteries, I've bought memory , film ( how quaint), camera cases, tripods, filters and a whole load more that has been entirely satisfactory, as is their service.

 

For a battery direct click, ( there may be others on the site of different brands), £3.99 incl post..

 

http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=&products_id=74427

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I use 7dayshop , and can recomend their batteries for my Canon..

 

 

Seconded.

 

Aside from "specialist" batteries, 7dayshop also tend to have good deals on AA and AAA lithium batteries, as well as the host of other accessories mentioned.

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What they all said!

Fully recommend 7dayshop.com, both me and dad use them regularly for electronics and computer bits.

As well as eBay, give Amazon a quick once over too. Canon will ching you £70 for a replacement battery at RRP for my camera. I haven't paid more than a tenner for a non OEM compatible, and although they tend not to be as long lasting like Dave said, 2 of my collection actually do better than the Canon one!

HTH

 

jo

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  • RMweb Gold

eBay is also your friend.

 

Generic batteries tend to not be as long lasting as OEM but they are often substantially cheaper (one at £7.00 inc free P&P at the moment for example)

 

Agreed, however SWMBO insisted on a "proper" spare Panasonic battery for her TZ-6 for her birthday - cost 30 odd quid from Amazon, but hey, what else was I buying her?

 

She'd rather have it last as long as the one supplied with the camera and know it won't let her down.

 

It's your call I guess

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  • RMweb Gold

Agreed, however SWMBO insisted on a "proper" spare Panasonic battery for her TZ-6 for her birthday - cost 30 odd quid from Amazon, but hey, what else was I buying her?

 

She'd rather have it last as long as the one supplied with the camera and know it won't let her down.

 

It's your call I guess

 

 

Unless the camera has a battery status indicator (which is known to be accurate !) there is no logic to that ;) - as Jo says generics often last far longer than OEMs

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi Guys

 

Thanks for the help my with old Olympus digital camera, it is now back in action.

 

High Street battery prices where from £18 to £27 pounds, I got one from the 7dayshop website purchasing facility for £4 including postage but this just showed that it was the charger

that was not operating properly although it did flash it's green 'charged' light cheekily at times making me think it was the battery not the charger at fault.

 

So another look around the shops and I could easily have spent up to £40 on a charger.

Back at the 7dayshop web I bought one for £9 including an adaptor plate to suit my particular format of battery ( Lo-ion 10b ) and postage.

 

Delivery took about 4 days and after that short wait I found it merrily charged up both my old and new batteries.

 

So a fix for £13, thanks again RMweb guys.

 

To put the price into perspective I revived my old film camera whilst I was waiting & deciding what to do, and on that the two motor wind-on batteries

( CR2 x two ) cost £12 from Boots. Plus the price of the film and processing.

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  • 8 years later...

I wanted to keep a spare camera in the car. I won't carry a cellphone (left over attitude from work), though with the quality of the cameras in the newest phones, I'm weakening. So I went back to the collection of 'replaced' cameras  - doesn't everyone have those? The one I thought of using had a swollen battery. Easy enough to get out, but wouldn't charge and so needed replaced. I thought that would be easy and cheap enough to do. Wrong!

 

A Canon replacement is C$78. Too much for just a spare, low-use camera. There are many third-party replacements, costing much less. However, reading reviews of those, there are all sorts of cautions. The most extreme are warnings about batteries exploding. I wouldn't think they would be any worse at that than originals - manufacturers wouldn't still be in business if that was a real risk. 

 

My real concern is about the camera not accepting a new battery or refusing to talk to it. There's a chip in the battery that the camera software communicates with. Camera companies can apparently update the software to ignore other manufacturers' batteries.

 

What are other peoples' experience of third-party replacement batteries?

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  • RMweb Gold

As for camera batteries; I had a Energizer brand spare battery for my Nikon D60 DSLR camera, unfortunately it stopped charging after a couple of years. When I sold the camera, 6 years after I bought it, the original Nikon battery was still working. It might just have been a one off "bad" battery but since then I've stuck to the camera manufactures batteries and had no problems, well apart from me forgetting to charge them a couple of times!  

 

As for phones; My relatively inexpensive Motorola Moto G5 Plus takes decent snapshots. Just give your number to people you actually want to call you and even then you don't need to answer their calls, you're not legally required to have it next to you at all times :rolleyes:

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Just be glad you're not trying to resucitate an old film camera that uses 625 button cells (containing Mercury) for the light meter.  Modern alkaline button cells of similar size are incompatible for various reasons and although there are solutions, you get to the point where you think that a hand-held selenium light meter is good enough...

 

As for 3rd party batteries to go in digital cameras, I've (touch wood) had no problems with the couple I got as backups for the Canon one which came with my G11. These are unbranded ones bought online and still going strong after nearly 8 years!

Edited by Hroth
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  • RMweb Gold

I have a Nikon D5300 (vintage 2014) and have fitted it with a Neewer battery grip (search on that nice Mr Bezos's website). This gives me constant access to two rather than one battery and, although not scientifically proven, I seem to need to charge my photography batteries less frequently. The downside is that such a device increases the depth of the camera below the lens centre which would be a problem if I was taking macro shots of my model railway. My one experience of non-Nikon batteries was less than satisfactory, I have now reverted to OEM ones. OTOH, my i-Phone will take such photos from a very low angle but lacks the pivoting screen of my DSLR. I believe Samsung's folding screen phone was launched before it was fully tested and has been (at least temporarily) withdrawn.

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My experience with non-OEM batteris suggested that they were not as good as the OEM. I have a Sony actionCAM (like a go-pro) and the Sony battery will run for about an hour and a half, but the copies will only do about 45 minutes.

 

Jon

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  • RMweb Gold

Cameras are expensive, and the more they cost the less sense it makes to use batteries that do not complement their performance. For a day out where you don't really take that many shots, cheapies may suffice, but for a holiday where you really use the camera, the OEM part is a must. 

 

As the big two (Canon and Nikon) finally switch to making mirrorless full-frame cameras, it is pleasing to note that - at Nikon at least - battery compatibility is being maintained, and if I were to make the switch I have a couple of EN-EL15s which will fit. Of course mirrorless cameras use more power, having an EVF instead of a mirror, so using the best battery makes even more sense. 

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  • RMweb Gold

I always carry a spare battery, if you habitually use live view on the back screen, or do in-camera editing, it can run them down surprisingly quickly.

 

My second batteries, for both my Nikon DSLR and my Lumix LX100 are from Hahnel. Not the cheapest option, but usually around half the price of OEM.

 

The one for the Nikon is now 7 years old and the Panasonic approaching two. I haven't noticed any difference or deterioration in performance or charging characteristics compared to the OEM batteries.

 

John

Edited by Dunsignalling
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If you can get an original battery go for it - it is quite hard to get hold of original batteries for a lot of stuff now. There is no way to guarantee an aftermarket battery will be any good, but I have found that Duracell ones tend to be OK from the Duracell outlet.

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Thanks to everyone who answered my question. Given that it will be only for 'occasional' use, I think I'll go for a third-party battery.

Edited by pH
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  • RMweb Gold

Have you considered a 2nd hand battery from a second hand vendor like mpb.com (who operate in uk and USA). My last Nikon battery from them was around £12 and looks and charges like a new one.

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  • 1 month later...

Having recently returned from the point and shoot wilderness and acquired a DSLR - Canon EOS T7i / 800D..

It is obvious that 1 battery won't do..

And after much investigation have opted to get hold of a third party battery or two., Asperx LP-E17

They seem to only come in pairs with a charger in tow.. but its a USB charger rather than the AC charger that Canon supplies..

And according to someone on some far-flung YouTube video, last well and don't evoke Canons battery nanny..

Also, the charger will, apparently, charge up Canons original offering.

Anyways..

I'll soon find out the veracity of any of this and report back, that is if anyone is still interested..

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you could get a phone with a reasonable camera, and not install a sim. a cheap charger in the car will keep it charged, when needed. Genuine Canon info lithium batteries communicate with the charger and the camera, and have fairly extensive protection built in - cheap knockoffs do not. Maybe a camera that will take AA cells, say

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  • RMweb Gold
45 minutes ago, Bill said:

Having recently returned from the point and shoot wilderness and acquired a DSLR - Canon EOS T7i / 800D..

It is obvious that 1 battery won't do..

And after much investigation have opted to get hold of a third party battery or two., Asperx LP-E17

They seem to only come in pairs with a charger in tow.. but its a USB charger rather than the AC charger that Canon supplies..

And according to someone on some far-flung YouTube video, last well and don't evoke Canons battery nanny..

Also, the charger will, apparently, charge up Canons original offering.

Anyways..

I'll soon find out the veracity of any of this and report back, that is if anyone is still interested..

Any after-market charger needs to emulate the charge of the OE supplier, otherwise their product may produce a voltage that doesn't suit the camera. So I would be inclined to use whichever charger is more convenient on the day. A USB one is great for in-car charging, obviously. 

 

One of the problems we face when, as amateurs, we buy a second or subsequent battery, is that of keeping them charged. Even if I have a high-use day I seldom drain a battery. Last weekend I took over a thousand pics - not difficult at 10 FPS - and the battery was about half-empty. But now I am unlikely to see that sort of snapping for quite some time, so recharging it and keeping the spare charged are essential. Yet we know with new batteries that they need to discharge and recharge a couple of times to realise their true capacity. A conundrum. 

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