Portable rechargable battery?

[lupado]

Is there such a thing? I know you can attach a rechargeable battery unit (forget the name) to the bottom of the camera, but I don't want to mess with that. Is there something you can plug into the S2 and clip to your belt, etc? These rechargeable batteries are not working for me. It seems they die after 5-10 RAW shots. I bought the Sunpak. What a waste.

[Swampy]

Tom loves this little Quantum thing. Read about it on this thread:

http://theswampbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1826

[HulaMike]

Originally posted by lupado
It seems they die after 5-10 RAW shots. I bought the Sunpak. What a waste.

5-10 RAW and they die? You should be getting 300-400 on a set of 2200 NiMH's. Have you conditioned your bats? New batteries need conditioning before use and every so often after that. MAHA had th best batts and charger last time I compared products. 8 rechargeables and a conditioning charger for under $50. Also came with an adapter for car charging.

[lupado]

conditioned? Call me ignorant, but.... huh? How do I do this? Obviously I haven't conditioned them. :)

[HulaMike]

A charger that conditions batts has two buttons. One for normal charging, a second to condition them. All conditioning does is slowly drain the batteries before recharging again. Helps keep them from developing a short charge memory. Better chargers also run cooler. Excessive heat in charging kills batteries. A quick test: If your batteries are hot to the touch right after charging, throw that charger away and get a good one. Fresh charged batts should only feel slightly warm.

[Wichita Wayne]

NiMH batteries do not have a short term memory that needs conditioned. Some conditioning chargers would use high voltage in reverse polarity to zap the memory so that recharge time was shorter. When I used NiCads I use to just leave them in a flash head that was turned on and they would discharge overnight, and then I would charge them the next day. Mike is right about the hot charger. If it is hot then you are putting too much current to the batteries and they will fry.

With NiMH batteries you should get many hundreds of pictures before they go dead. Check your charger and see if it is operating properly. You should also try some new NiMH batteries and see if they act the same. I can shoot a 600 - 800 picture wedding with 8 NiMH batteries, and most of my batteries are old 1600s.

[KPRussell]

Abuddy of mine and I both shot a wedding last weekend and he's using the Quantum 2x2 and loves it also. We each shot over 700 shots, I changed flash batts 4 times on my SB80, could have got away with 3, just being safe though. On his SB800 the batt pack moved 1 bar down out of 5 bars on the battery meter.

Recycle time is nothing with it.

I'm getting one.

[lupado]

Sheesh.. the Quantum pack is $500 - hmm... My batteries are very hot to the touch after charging. They are Sunpak 2200mah. I'm going to take a look at the MAHA batteries/charger. Thanks all.

[jknights]

There is also the Digital Camera Battery.
See here. http://www.digitalcamerabattery.com/

[Tom Nolle]

I know I said it in the thread Swampy mentions, but I have to say again that I've come to love the Quantum 2x2, price or no. Not only can I get literally thousands of shots, it works to minus 40 so the battery never freezes up in extreme cold. I used this in Churchill in November when the wind chill was -65 at one point, driving the Sigma 500mm HSM lens, and the whole thing worked like a charm. I could shoot a whole day in very cold conditions and just move down a single level on the charge indicator. I routinely shot two days on one charge and still had reserve.

Tom