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D200 Battery discharge recharge method

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Edward Chatlos said:
Not sure but I get about 300-400 with each battery I have, I have 3
of them. Now sometimes I only get 150 or so but that is with
viewing the shots, using the internal flash and fooling with the
menus a LOT.
Click to expand...
Also keep in mind that the batteries will dicharge even if not in the camera. If you wait too long after recharging, the battery will also discharge.

Because of that, someone who does not shoot a lot will never get the maximum rated capacity.

--
JC
 
Read a couple of pieces on not fully discharging an EL_EN3e, so I pull mine at 10-20%.

Also Lithium batteries have a much bettter shelf life than say NIMH batteries. With my Coolpix 995, which I hardly use, batteries work 3-4months after charging, not full charge, but not like a NIMH which would be useless.

Unless you have a job where you will shoot a lot of pics immeadiately on your schedule, I'd rather use the camera taking pictures. I'm still not totally used to the digital price per picture, but I would find it very hard to shoot over a thousand pics in a day.

Tom
 
Robert Strom said:
Why questions, not answers to a simple question?
Which was: is there a better method to drain a EN-ELe battery than
to shoot 500 pictures of a wall, thus (implied) shortening the
camera shutter's life, in order to prime a new battery through a
few charge cycles?
Click to expand...
You get all those questions because it is not obvious why you must get maximum capacity from day one.

You could short the terminals through a resistor. Or a small lightbulb. Or an LED.

Either way, to avoid discharging the battery too deeply, you want to monitor the voltage across the battery terminals so you can terminate the discharge rate when sufficiently discharged.

Or ... you can simply use the battery in the camera until the camera refuses to continue because the battery is discharged.

I find that using the battery right after recharge gives me maximum life because they will lose their charge the minute charging stops. The battery will get discharged also if you just leave it alone, although not as fast as you might want :-)

While you do achieve that goal by firing the shutter repeatedly, you also add wear&tear to your camera. I would balance that against the cost of a new battery, but then I may not have the same requirements that you are facing.
Anyways, good luck and long live your batteries :-)
--
JC
 
Good idea, thanks

robert
Jaq said:
Robert,

What I did was put in a CF card that a whole lot of pictures on it
and use the slideshow feature (set for the longest interval). It
took maybe 2-3 cycles before my battery ran down. I thought this
was a better method than shooting and using the shutter
unnecessarily.

Hope this helps...

Jacques
Click to expand...
--
http://www.streamlinestudio.com
 
SOLOMON BARKET said:
I HAVE A VISUAL DISABILITY THIS IS WHY I USE CAPS. SORRY.
Click to expand...
so how do you read all the other posts???

can you read mine, it seems you can because you replied to it. can you read this post that has NO CAPS, until now.
 
Robert Strom said:
The whole reason I posted this thread was to find out a better
method of draining the battery than wearing out the camera shutter,
so I take some offense to your first snide reply to my question.
Click to expand...
The camera stays active in any number of ways, usually because it thinks it has to stay active with the remote device. Simplest way: plug the camera into a PictBridge printer until the battery is discharged. Secondary way: use Capture Control connected to the camera. Tertiary way: set the LCD monitor so it is never off and then put something on the LCD.
Robert Strom said:
However, a full discharge/charge will reset the digital circuit of
a 'smart' battery to improve the state-of-charge estimation"
Click to expand...
Basically correct. The issue has always been (even back in film days with alkaline batteries) the camera's recognition of the state of the battery. With alkaline, the problem was predicting the voltage demise curve correctly (alkalines constantly lose a bit of voltage as they're used). With lithiums we have the opposite problem, as they tend to keep their voltage constant almost up to the point of failure. The smart battery initiative is an attempt to better predict the failure point.

That said, what I still don't completely understand is how a full discharge/charge cycle impacts this. The EN-EL3e is charged by a "stupid" charger, not a smart charger, so I'm not 100% sure how that is resetting anything in the smarts of the battery (brute force?). But testing seems to show that you can get a bit more out of these batteries by running a couple of full discharges early in their use.

One other note that people seem to be glossing over (even reading my ebook!): the internal clock battery gets charged and recharged by the EN-EL3e. Thus, there is a penalty built into the system. If you're a casual or intermittent user, you can be bit by that penalty. Let's say you use your camera two weekends a month and you take your battery out of the camera after using it (it goes on the charger and not immediately back into the camera after charge). The clock battery discharges (slowly, but it discharges). Now you put your EN-EL3e back into the camera. The clock battery immediately starts recharging from the EN-EL3e, sucking a bit of capacity off the EN-EL3e (the amount varies with the state of the clock battery discharge). It's not a huge amount, but it's enough to make a measurable difference in the number of images you can shoot.

If, on the other hand, you always keep an EN-EL3e in the camera that has charge in it, the clock battery trickle charges, having less influence on battery performance when you shoot with a full EN-EL3e. But that, too, is a problem for casual users: you really don't want to risk running your EN-EL3e down in the camera when you're not using it. Lithium batteries should be "stored" with neither a full nor empty charge. Thus, if you leave an EN-EL3e that's mostly empty in the camera and don't use the camera for two months, the clock battery and the viewfinder overlay grid will conspire to suck all the juice out of the EN-EL3e, forcing a really "deep discharge." That puts a strain on the battery it may not recover from.

--
Thom Hogan
author, Nikon Field Guide & Nikon Flash Guide
editor, Nikon DSLR Report
author, Complete Guides: D50, D70, D100, D200, D1 series, D2h, D2x, S2 Pro
http://www.bythom.com
 
Everything I have ever read about Li-Ion batteries tells me to leave them charged as much as possible and avoid deep discharges. This is also the opinion of several of my engineering colleagues. Below is a excerpt that I found very quickly on the web as an example. Based on this it looks like we should keep the batteries on float charge in the refrigerator to keep them at peak capacity for the longest time.

"A unique drawback of the Li-ion battery is that its life span is dependent upon aging from time of manufacturing (shelf life) regardless of whether it was charged, and not just on the number of charge/discharge cycles. This drawback is not widely publicized.

At a 100% charge level, a typical Li-ion laptop battery that's full most of the time at 25 degrees Celsius, will irreversibly lose approximately 20% capacity per year. This capacity loss begins from the time it was manufactured, and occurs even when the battery is unused. Different storage temperatures produce different loss results: 6% loss at 0 °C, 20% at 25 °C, and 35% at 40 °C. When stored at 40% charge level, these figures are reduced to 2%, 4%, 15% at 0, 25 and 40 degrees Celsius respectively.

If the battery is used and fully depleted to 0 %, this is called a "deep discharge" cycle, and this decreases its capacity. Approximately 100 deep discharge cycles leave the battery with about 75% to 85% capacity. When used in laptop computers or cellular phones, this rate of deterioration means that after three to five years the battery will have capacities that are too low to be usable."

--
Jerry Faircloth
http://www.pbase.com/nikonsrme
 
THEN DECREASE YOUR SCREEN RESOLUTION, OR GO DOWNLOAD INTERNET EXPLORER 7 WHICH LETS YOU MAGNIFY WEB PAGES! THEN TURN OFF YOUR CAPS KEY.

-thanks
 
There is always something to learn, un-learn, or forget.

I was wondering what kind of internal battery the camera had. Now I know it is a leach.

So, if the supplied charger is just some dumb charger, what is a smart charger that will take these batteries?

I still like using AA's. I say put AA's in the body and make the person who wants lot's of power and weight buy the battery grip!

Robert
--
http://www.streamlinestudio.com
 
How veerrry interesting. Planned obsolescence down to the last ion...

But I have also heard that their is a built in circuit that prevents the battery from discharging completly. I am not sure if all Li-ion batts have this circuit or if it is all just a bunch of conjure.

You sound like you know what you are talking about, so I will ad your info to my growing knowledge base of Li-ion batteries.

robert
--
http://www.streamlinestudio.com
 
A battery pack using AA NIMH batteries isn't a complete answer because NIMH batteries discharge 1% every day, just sitting there. You have to watch NIMH batteries very closely. Though costly, lithium AAs offer more power.
--
D100, 18-200 VR,
Coolpix 8800, Nikon 1.7 Tele and .8 Wide Angle, Nikon 5T & 6T, SB600
 
Thom Hogan said:
Thom Hogan said:
However, a full discharge/charge will reset the digital circuit of
a 'smart' battery to improve the state-of-charge estimation"
Click to expand...
Basically correct. The issue has always been (even back in film
days with alkaline batteries) the camera's recognition of the state
of the battery. With alkaline, the problem was predicting the
voltage demise curve correctly (alkalines constantly lose a bit of
voltage as they're used). With lithiums we have the opposite
problem, as they tend to keep their voltage constant almost up to
the point of failure. The smart battery initiative is an attempt to
better predict the failure point.

That said, what I still don't completely understand is how a full
discharge/charge cycle impacts this. The EN-EL3e is charged by a
"stupid" charger, not a smart charger, so I'm not 100% sure how
that is resetting anything in the smarts of the battery (brute
force?). But testing seems to show that you can get a bit more out
of these batteries by running a couple of full discharges early in
their use.
Click to expand...
Thom. Do you perhaps know what the charger for the D2X battery does during its calibration function? Does it take the battery through a charge/discharge cycle?

--
Brian
Fine Art Print sales of the Isle of Skye at:
http://www.eyeofskye.co.uk/
Pbase gallery Pictures from Isle of Skye
http://www.pbase.com/xrdbear
 
Thom Hogan said:
Lithium batteries should be "stored" with
neither a full nor empty charge. Thus, if you leave an EN-EL3e
that's mostly empty in the camera and don't use the camera for two
months, the clock battery and the viewfinder overlay grid will
conspire to suck all the juice out of the EN-EL3e, forcing a really
"deep discharge." That puts a strain on the battery it may not
recover from.
Click to expand...
Just going from memory here, but I think that the EN-EL3e instructions indicate that the battery should be stored in a discharged state.

Anyone have the documentation handy?

Thom, do you know something differentor can you explain why Nikon would recommend this?
 
J_W_D said:
Thom Hogan said:
Lithium batteries should be "stored" with
neither a full nor empty charge. Thus, if you leave an EN-EL3e
that's mostly empty in the camera and don't use the camera for two
months, the clock battery and the viewfinder overlay grid will
conspire to suck all the juice out of the EN-EL3e, forcing a really
"deep discharge." That puts a strain on the battery it may not
recover from.
Click to expand...
Just going from memory here, but I think that the EN-EL3e
instructions indicate that the battery should be stored in a
discharged state.

Anyone have the documentation handy?

Thom, do you know something differentor can you explain why Nikon
would recommend this?
Click to expand...
It says:

"If the battery will not be used for some time, insert the it in the camera and run it flat before removing it for storage"

To me that is an "empty" charge, though you are correct that leaving it in the camera is the long term equivalent of shorting the terminals - leading to a battery which will no longer hold a charge.
 
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