*ist DS NiMH battery performance and camera terminal

[HF Cheung]

I have my DS for almost a month now but have not have a chance to take it out for long photo shoot. However, so far the NiMH battery performance has been disappointing. Yet, I see a lot of people are happily clicking away great pictures.

I could put in a set of newly charged battery in and the battery would go dead after twenty or thirty test pictures. The battery would also die after leaving in the camera for two days. I use the 2100mA Engerizer NiMH which according the test at another web site should be the top brand.

Looking at the battery terminals in the camera. The negative terminals on the battery compartment door have a hole in the middle of the terminal. Could it be the terminal not having good contact with the batteries?

Alternatively, may be other brands of NiMH are better?

Would appreciate any tips that you might have. I hesitate to take the camera out shooting pictures for fear of the battery will die.

 

[RiceHigh]

The "half-depleted" battery warning will show up within the first 100 shots but it will last much longer than what the full battery status lasts. I can generally got around 300 pics with either one set of newly charged Panasonic or Sony 2000/2100 mAh NiMHs. Any you're right about the high self discharge of the NiMH and it's the property of this type of batteries.

I haven't used my NiMH since I have got my rechargeable CR-V3s which drives the AF (motor) faster and can hold battery power longer when left alone. The number of shots for each charge is more or less the same as my 2000mAh+ batteries (my RCR-V3 is rated at 1100mAh only)

--
Best Regards,

RiceHigh - Pentax AF SLR/System User since 1988 (My Equipment are listed in Profile)

 

[Douglas Film]

Something is not right. Nimh batteries should give you many more pictures than thirty and should not discharge so quickly in the camera. How many shot do you get with Li-ion disposable batteries?

I have my DS for almost a month now but have not have a chance to
take it out for long photo shoot. However, so far the NiMH battery
performance has been disappointing. Yet, I see a lot of people are
happily clicking away great pictures.

I could put in a set of newly charged battery in and the battery
would go dead after twenty or thirty test pictures. The battery
would also die after leaving in the camera for two days. I use the
2100mA Engerizer NiMH which according the test at another web site
should be the top brand.

Looking at the battery terminals in the camera. The negative
terminals on the battery compartment door have a hole in the middle
of the terminal. Could it be the terminal not having good contact
with the batteries?

Alternatively, may be other brands of NiMH are better?

Would appreciate any tips that you might have. I hesitate to take
the camera out shooting pictures for fear of the battery will die.

 

[JensR]

Hi HF!

I have my DS for two weeks, still running with the first set of 2000 Panasonic AAs, many hundred shots, some exposure in the seconds with NoiseReduction, only a few flash pictures, only manual focus lenses, many sequence shots (which seem to drain the batteries quite a bit).

So, far, I have been impressed. But as I use manual focus lenses all the time, my results might by atypical.

Alternatively, may be other brands of NiMH are better?

Maybe, maybe your AAs are old or -often the case- your charger is not good. What happens if you put the AAs your DS does not like into some other digital camera?

Would appreciate any tips that you might have. I hesitate to take
the camera out shooting pictures for fear of the battery will die.

I know that feeling, when I was shooting with the battery eater #1, my Dimage 7.

Good luck
Jens

 

[HF Cheung]

Which brand and where did you get your rechargable RCRV3?

I considered changing to RCRV3 but lack of brand name choices and the inconvenience of having to charge one set of battery sequentially is holding me back.

I haven't used my NiMH since I have got my rechargeable CR-V3s
which drives the AF (motor) faster and can hold battery power
longer when left alone. The number of shots for each charge is more
or less the same as my 2000mAh+ batteries (my RCR-V3 is rated at
1100mAh only)

 

[iamphil]

Maybe one of the batteries is defective... or isn't being properly charged by the charger.

I have my DS for almost a month now but have not have a chance to
take it out for long photo shoot. However, so far the NiMH battery
performance has been disappointing. Yet, I see a lot of people are
happily clicking away great pictures.

I could put in a set of newly charged battery in and the battery
would go dead after twenty or thirty test pictures. The battery
would also die after leaving in the camera for two days. I use the
2100mA Engerizer NiMH which according the test at another web site
should be the top brand.

Looking at the battery terminals in the camera. The negative
terminals on the battery compartment door have a hole in the middle
of the terminal. Could it be the terminal not having good contact
with the batteries?

Alternatively, may be other brands of NiMH are better?

Would appreciate any tips that you might have. I hesitate to take
the camera out shooting pictures for fear of the battery will die.

 

[Joele]

Faulty batteries??? Faulty Charger??? Not fully Charged???

I am just guessing, I use Inca 2500mAh NIMH, it is a fairly cheap brand, and they work for a good few hundred shots on each charge!!

I have my DS for almost a month now but have not have a chance to
take it out for long photo shoot. However, so far the NiMH battery
performance has been disappointing. Yet, I see a lot of people are
happily clicking away great pictures.

I could put in a set of newly charged battery in and the battery
would go dead after twenty or thirty test pictures. The battery
would also die after leaving in the camera for two days. I use the
2100mA Engerizer NiMH which according the test at another web site
should be the top brand.

Looking at the battery terminals in the camera. The negative
terminals on the battery compartment door have a hole in the middle
of the terminal. Could it be the terminal not having good contact
with the batteries?

Alternatively, may be other brands of NiMH are better?

Would appreciate any tips that you might have. I hesitate to take
the camera out shooting pictures for fear of the battery will die.

--
------------
Joel - *ist DS

 

[HF Cheung]

Haven't tried the Li-ion ones yet.

How many shot do you get with Li-ion disposable batteries?

 

[HF Cheung]

Hi

I read someone also experienced better performance when not using auto focus which is quite logical.

I don't have another digital camera that uses four batteries. My Xt uses proprietary Li-ion. I use the also highly rated MH-C204F charger too.

So, far, I have been impressed. But as I use manual focus lenses
all the time, my results might by atypical.

Maybe, maybe your AAs are old or -often the case- your charger is
not good. What happens if you put the AAs your DS does not like
into some other digital camera?

 

[Lance B]

Haven't tried the Li-ion ones yet.

Didn't you get some in the package with the DS?

How many shot do you get with Li-ion disposable batteries?

--
Lance B

 

[HF Cheung]

Yeh, but hate to open it... always keep OEM accessories in mint condition should I want to sell.

 

[VRoberts]

I have my DS for almost a month now but have not have a chance to
take it out for long photo shoot. However, so far the NiMH battery
performance has been disappointing. Yet, I see a lot of people are
happily clicking away great pictures.

I could put in a set of newly charged battery in and the battery
would go dead after twenty or thirty test pictures. The battery
would also die after leaving in the camera for two days. I use the
2100mA Engerizer NiMH which according the test at another web site
should be the top brand.

Looking at the battery terminals in the camera. The negative
terminals on the battery compartment door have a hole in the middle
of the terminal. Could it be the terminal not having good contact
with the batteries?

Alternatively, may be other brands of NiMH are better?

Would appreciate any tips that you might have. I hesitate to take
the camera out shooting pictures for fear of the battery will die.

Something certainly seem wrong. I just received ny Ds a couple of days ago, but have taken about 50 pictures, played with the menus a lot (which uses the display screen) and spent more than the nornal amount if time looking at the pictures on the bulit-in display, and my 2400 mah NiMH batteries are still showing full.

How did you charge the batteries? Did you use a charger designed for NiMH batteries and one designed for the high battery capacity you are using?

Vic Roberts

 

[HF Cheung]

I bought my C204F charger around the same time frame as the batteries so it is for that battery capacity. It was highly rated for the completeness of charge.

How did you charge the batteries? Did you use a charger designed
for NiMH batteries and one designed for the high battery capacity
you are using?

Vic Roberts

 

[Lance B]

I'm talking about CR-V3 lithium batteries. You should have received 2 of them in with the DS when you bought it. Try them in your camera and see how long they last.
--
Lance B

 

[RiceHigh]

Which brand and where did you get your rechargable RCRV3?

I considered changing to RCRV3 but lack of brand name choices and
the inconvenience of having to charge one set of battery
sequentially is holding me back.

It's some kind of OEM product labelled powersmart, do a websearch for "powersmart" and "RCR-V3" and you ll find a picture and the specs of it.

I think any brand of RCR-V3 which has the "safety circuit to prevent overvoltage" would be just fine.

--
Best Regards,

RiceHigh - Pentax AF SLR/System User since 1988 (My Equipment are listed in Profile)

 

[RyanSteele]

If the NiMH rechargeables are new, it can often take a few cycles of charge/discharge for them to work properly. I've noticed this with my new batteries, then few charge cycles later, its all fine.

Could still be faulty battery/charger/whatever, I doubt its the camera itself.

 

[Bhagyesh Chaubey]

It's the combination of charger and batteries... If the batteries are for example 2100mA then you need a similar/higher capacity charger.

It could be the "Memory effect". Memory Effect is a temporal voltage depletion caused by charging and discharging a battery without the battery being fully Discharged. Sony has came up with a new charger which refreshes the memory effect by fully discharging the battery before charging it.
http://www.boredguru.com/shop/page_us_B0001MQUQA_0_0.html

I bought my DS a month back and still using CR-V3 came with the kit. Took a couple of hundred shots mostly with out flash and so far no issues. And Bought the above charger and 8 Sony NIMH 2100mA batteries which I am using with my canon A70. No issues with batteries there as well.

I have my DS for almost a month now but have not have a chance to
take it out for long photo shoot. However, so far the NiMH battery
performance has been disappointing. Yet, I see a lot of people are
happily clicking away great pictures.

I could put in a set of newly charged battery in and the battery
would go dead after twenty or thirty test pictures. The battery
would also die after leaving in the camera for two days. I use the
2100mA Engerizer NiMH which according the test at another web site
should be the top brand.

Looking at the battery terminals in the camera. The negative
terminals on the battery compartment door have a hole in the middle
of the terminal. Could it be the terminal not having good contact
with the batteries?

Alternatively, may be other brands of NiMH are better?

Would appreciate any tips that you might have. I hesitate to take
the camera out shooting pictures for fear of the battery will die.

 

[Robist]

When I bought my DS I purchased a set of Ansmann 2400 mhz batteries, which I used besides an older set of Ansmann 2200. Annsmann is a brand that is quite popular over here in Europe.

With both sets I had a problem, especially in continuous shooting drive mode. Even when the batteries were fully charged, the camera stopped and anounced 'battery depleted' after three of four shots. When I started the camera up again it showed that the batteries were fully charged. I thought that my camera was defective, but that proved not to be the case.

Recently I bought a set of GP 2300 (!) MHZ HIMH batteries. No problem anymore.

I guess that Annsmann-batteries are just not capable of delivering the required power in a short time. The same may be true of other brands.

Best wishes,
Robert

Alternatively, may be other brands of NiMH are better?

 

[SilvioIDS]

Same problem here... I think that my charger is "too cheap", I didn't buy it with batteries, think I'm going to get another one... More serious.

 

[psmith]

I did a test with a set of GP 2300 nimh batteries.

I took 1000 photos, no flash, review turned off but moving the camera from side to side to force the autofocus to come into play with each photo.
At this point I lost interest and stopped the test.

With another set of 2300 nimh batteries (Uniross) I got less than 100 photos. I allways put my batteries in a torch to fully discharge them before recharging. This time two of the batteries were discharged in less than 10 minutes while the other two were only discharged hours later.

So one (or two) of the batteries had quickly lost their charge and these were new batteries.

What I found was that one can get dud batteries and just one dud in four is enough to make you think you are getting poor battery life.

Some notes.

It might not be a good idea to deep discharge the batteries as I have been doing. Some references warn not to discharge below 0.8V. I am going to use a diode to prevent discharge below 0.6V and see how that works.

I use a good quality charger that stops charging on reaching a voltage plateau. I use an external timer as a safety device so that the batteries cannot be seriously overcharged. The same external time switches on the charger an hour later to give a 30 minute top charge.

I noticed a curious thing during my test. After about 500 or so photos the battery indicator showed half full. I switched off the camera, paused and switched on again. Now the indicator showed full. I took several more photos and the same thing happened. So I repeated the process and continued. In this way I was able to continue until I had 1000 photos.

In fact this has become a feature of my normal photography. About halfway though the battery life this process will start.

With both sets I had a problem, especially in continuous shooting
drive mode. Even when the batteries were fully charged, the camera
stopped and anounced 'battery depleted' after three of four shots.
When I started the camera up again it showed that the batteries
were fully charged. I thought that my camera was defective, but
that proved not to be the case.

Recently I bought a set of GP 2300 (!) MHZ HIMH batteries. No
problem anymore.

I guess that Annsmann-batteries are just not capable of delivering
the required power in a short time. The same may be true of other
brands.

Best wishes,
Robert

Alternatively, may be other brands of NiMH are better?