Camera battery

[Mike.P]

I use a grip on my K-5 and have a lithium battery in each. I have it set in the menu so the camera uses the grip battery first and then will swap over as it runs down.

Normally I don't get that far though and after going out shooting will come back and put the grip battery on charge even if it is only showing it is partly depleted.

Will this shorten the battery life?

Thanks.

 

[Oggy]

Hi Fred

Memory effect was more applicable to older batteries. Saying that it can do no harm to completely cycle a battery once in a while.

I have the same setup as you on my gripped K20 and I change the batteries around every few months.

 

[mipevo6]

Hi Fred

Memory effect was more applicable to older batteries. Saying that it can do no harm to completely cycle a battery once in a while.

I have the same setup as you on my gripped K20 and I change the batteries around every few months.

You should NOT cycle lithium batteries...They typically come back from a deep discharge with 20% less capacity...

They have a certain number of charges in them so keeping them topped up won't hurt..

have a look at
here

generally good advice.. Not sure you need to do the cycles it mentions at the start...

 

[Oggy]

Maybe I should have been more specific and said run down to minimum working charge then recharge.

I have had a look at the link and I know it must be true because it says so on the internet, but---

Charge Lithium-Ion batteries fully (preferable overnight) before beginning to use the battery

- Most modern chargers are of a type called "delta peak". They monitor the battery and once they deem it to be charged using algorithms which monitor voltage and current, they shut off. Leaving them overnight is simply wasting electricity.

Clean the battery contacts on the Lithium-Ion battery and the device with alcohol and a cotton swab if the contacts become dirty

- a clean dry tissue would be as good and less flammable. The important point is to use something non-conductive. To those who understand electricity this is obvious. To those who do not, a piece of wire wool might seem a good idea.

Charge Lithium-Ion batteries regularly

- how regularly?

Avoid regularly running Lithium-Ion batteries too low

- once again meaningless. How low is too low? Most modern batteries will have a protection mechanism built in to shut them down before they get to a point where they may go unstable, and most equipment designed to use them have a mechanism which will shut the equipment down well before it gets to the point where the battery's protection kicks in.

The main point which the article misses is the nature of Lithium and what it can do if it gets seriously upset. It is a highly reactive metal - it will probably catch fire when put in water for example. Some of these batteries also contain a flammable electrolyte. They are carefully designed to make it less likely that these problems do not become an issue, but there is no such thing as foolproof.

 

[Nuffles]

I always cycle both my Camera batteries and my laptop battery. By cycle I mean use them until they shut off, then charge them fully. Doing this with my laptop means that it retains two hours of it's original three and a half hour battery, two and a half years after I originally bought it. That's bearing in mind that I flatten the battery once, if not twice or three times every single day If you leave a laptop permanently plugged into the mains you obliterate the battery and you'll have less than half an hour's life within a year.

Lithium batteries need cycling much, much less than NiMh batteries, and even less than NiCads again, but they still need it even if only once in a while to stretch their legs. With NiCad batteries you had to cycle them every single time otherwise they'd simply run flat in a few minutes, no matter the overall condition of the battery.

I'll charge a non-flat camera battery if I want to make sure it's fully charged before something important but 90% of the time I simply charge the flat one while the other one is in the camera.