Batter up!

Well... in this case "power up" or "re-power" might better describe the situation as in "new batteries!"

I'm quite the fan of buying 3rd party "knock off" batteries from China. Canon thinks their batteries are made of gold (and priced accordingly :) and I can buy knock off batteries all day long from eBay for a fraction of the price than Canon OEM batteries, as in $5 or $6 each compared to perhaps as much as five times that for Canon batteries.

I last re-powered the "fleet" in 2010 and most of those batteries are still running strong, but I decided it was time to re-power as a few are starting to show signs of age, so I sent off orders for three different types of batteries from the ones shown, which power my little pocket cameras, all the way up to my larger dSLR batteries.

Look carefully at the labels I have placed on my new batteries. The IMPORTANT piece of information is the mAh number, which stands for milli amp hours. The higher the number, the more reserve power you have! Most OEM batteries will be about 1/2 the number of the third party batteries, and I have yet to damage a camera using these 3rd party batteries.

Incidentally, the same holds true for automobile batteries, although the term is usually referred to as cold cranking amps. I always buy the largest (truck / SUV) battery that will fit in the battery tray in my sedan.

PS - Some of you have asked if I'm still around? Yes, I'm still shooting, but I think I finally experienced blip "burn out" at the tail end of 2013. Perhaps re-powering the fleet will give me some new energy :)