Wednesday 12 November 2008

Kent Wedding Photographer - NiMH batteries


I use nickel metal hydride (NiMH) rechargeable batteries for all my kit - they're economical and green. I bought mine from the wonderful 7dayshop (as indeed does Damien Lovegrove, the well-known wedding and portrait photographer, who I saw remove a pack from his camera bag in one of his lighting tutorial DVDs) who sell their own-branded batteries and chargers at very low prices. I purchased 2800 mAh (milli Amp hours which reflects the capacity of the battery - the bigger, the better) batteries and a smart charger which charges quickly, optimises battery life by not overcharging and can detect bad cells. A good tip is to keep your batteries in groups of four. Use them and charge them together, so that they wear out at a similar rate, since problems can arise when combining batteries of differing quality. Bear in mind that NiMH batteries lose their power quite quickly, so remember to recharge all of them before an assignment.

For flash photography they offer another advantage. Since they possess a low internal resistance they are able to transfer their charge to the flash capacitor much more quickly than alkaline batteries, leading to reduced recycling times (up to twice as fast) - the time you have to wait for your flash unit to recharge.

Check out my photography here: wedding photographer Kent

2 comments:

Graham Robinson said...

Just a quick tip about keeping AAs in sets of 4. I use the little net drawstring bags that come with boxes of washing powdwer tablets. It keeps them in sets, you can see through the net and the cloth stops chafing in the bag.

David said...

Hi Graham,

That's a good idea.

I should have mentioned that if you buy from the 7dayshop, a set of 4 batteries comes in a reusable translucent plastic case.

Yours,

David