Quick tip - keep track of your charged/uncharged batteries!
If you are like me, you probably have a *lot* of batteries. Particularly on location with a couple of strobes. You’ve got a bucket full of AAs, and maybe 3 or 4 batteries for your SLR. All well and good up until you start changing batteries in the field. Maybe it’s just me, but once I start swapping batteries, when I get home it they are generally all jumbled up and I have no idea which are still charged, which are dead and which may have been partially used, but still need a “top off”. To solve this I came up with a rather simple solution - when I charge my batteries, as they are charged I put a rubber band around them. This serves two purposes - 1) it keeps each set of AAs together in a nice neat group of 4, but more importantly it “marks” them. Since I obviously have to take the rubber band off before using the battery, at the end of the day, I know that any battery with no band has at least been used, and the ones still banded are fresh. Then I simply charge the loose ones and re-band them. Works with both AAs and SLR batteries, quick and easy.
Tags: batteries, organization, tips and tricks
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June 9th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
I wanted to introduce you to another method for carrying your rechargeable batteries. It is called the Powerpax battery caddy and we have many versions and colors. The great thing for photographers is that the batteries are protected and you can insert them in either direction. Positive side up could mean charged, negative side up is uncharged. Our caddies have been extremely popular amoung photographers and it has actually been our largest market so far. I am not trying to get you to buy them, I just thought you might find this method more useful. I’d be happy to send you a free sample if you’d like. Regards, Shawnta http://www.powerpax.net
June 23rd, 2008 at 10:19 am
I use small plastic cases for my AA batteries if they are charged I put them in all the same way round, and if discharged I put them in alternating +ve -ve. This way it’s easy to tell whether they are charged, the cases keep them together and safe.
I mark my AAs as groups with thick bands drawn on in permanent sharpy marker in binary (call me a geek) so the set can be identified very quickly.
As for the charged state of SLR bats, I have 3, 1 in camera and 2 in the bag, I rarely go through more than 2 on a shoot, so the one at the bottom of the bag is charged, unless something really odd is going on that I’ll remember about. Otherwise all I have to do is remember whether or not I’ve changed and all is good. This is helped however by the fact that my sony A700 has infolithium support, so gives me an exact %age readout of the bat’s capacity if I forget.