No camera made in 2007 or 2008 should have this problem. What brands are they?
Most recent is Sony, another off-brand. DSC-H2. Since it is a 2-AA unit, it eats batts faster than the 4-AA units I had previously. Rechargeables? Forget it. I’ve dumped them all.
You can look for the ancient chargers that didn’t do as good of a job and hope they still work. Look at estate sales or Good Will. none of them worked on completely dead batteries. The original chargers didn’t get anyway near as many recharge cycles as the new chargers, but they did work multiple recharges before the batteries leaked from the overcharging during recharge. I don’t know why you’d want one of the older chargers that don’t work as well. The alkaline designed for recharging work the same as the ones not designed for the charger and have the same output. The rechargeable just are engineered to be leak free during recharges unlike the others that haven’t been. It’s like the difference between 5W30 and 30 weight oil. One was designed to meet more specs than the other.
Then you have something wrong with your camera or your charger. Those cameras are designed to work with NiMH batteries.
I bought an “NRGZone” charger from a local surplus store and was pretty happy with it for a while. My alkalines charged and worked in my camera and flashlights. In fact I went back and got another one for my parents and explained at length the importance of setting the alkaline/NiMH switch properly and how to tell the batteries apart.
The the next time I was over there two alkalines popped and almost got battery acid on the dining room table, and a few days later I noticed that perhaps 1/3 of the batteries I’d recharged were either leaking or bulging.
You might think it’s just that type of charger (especially since it died completely a few weeks later), but I don’t want to end up scraping potassium hydroxide powder out of my electronics. :eek:
Here’s an article about charging ordinary alkaline batteries. It mentions the Buddy-L SuperCharger that was mentioned earlier. It also mentions a newer product called Battery Xtender that’s supposed to work quite well. Here’s a do it yourself guide.
rechargeable batteries have pressure relief vents to handle charging. there are other design features that allow recharging that aren’t in the disposable.
Nothing wrong with the cams, and they do work with NiMH batts. But low voltage ones have very little life left from the start; they expire quicker than alkalines if left unused; they cost much more; have to be recharged, even if not used for a while; and eventually wear out anyway. A poor choice for many reasons.
I’m sold on one time use alkalines, at least for this application.
Now for video camcorders, rechargeable Li-IONs work just fine…
Have you actually compared with the NiMH and alkalines? I’ve found for electronic devices, alkalines are crap compared with NiMH. Without exaggeration, when I shot with my Nikon D200, I used the 6-AA battery adapter (in the vertical grip) instead of the proprietary batteries. On two occasions, I had forgotten to bring my sets of spare batteries and needed to run out and buy AAs. One both occassions, my battery life was about 1/4 of what it was with the NiMH. The D200 with the NiMHs will generally last for about a thousand or so RAW format images. With the alkalines, maybe 200-250 frames before.
Read here for an explanation why.
Alkalines suck for digital cameras. If you’ve actually done real world comparison between powering those cameras with rechargeables and alkalines, I will have to say your results are rather anomalous.
The newer technology low-self-discharge NiMH batteries address most of these issues. I’m using them everywhere, even in thing like Digital clocks, where traditional rechargeable would have been a disaster. I probably save over a hundred dollars a year in battery cost - Alkalines are an expensive rip-off, IMHO.
low self discharge NiMH will last for a longer time unused, nearly as long as alkaline disposables, though the in use time is still short.
guess i had this tab open for a bunch of minutes without refresh because beowulff supplied the same answer.
My needs may be different from yours. I used to use most of my battery stock powering digital cams, but now I have a stable of AA-powered wireless microphones and other video accessories. While newer still cams may tolerate newer batts as you describe, the other gadgets do not seem to.
Here’s a typical scenario. I might not use one gadget for a few weeks, so the self-discharge characteristics of rechargeables are a factor over alkalines. And all the wireless mic transmitters & receivers I have show only 2 bars out of 3 when the voltage gets below 1.45, and aren’t reliable below 1.3. I certainly couldn’t start a video session with anything other than a fully charged, high-voltage battery since I don’t want to run up to a lecturer on camera and tell him his lapel mic needs new batteries!
I tried taking out partially discharged, non-rechargeables, and keeping them in boxes marked 1.5v, 1.4v, new, etc. but that became a holy hassle. I tried to rotate the rechargeables thru a charger so they would never be more than a month from full charge. That meant I was constantly filling/empyting the charger, discarding ones that had reached the end of their useful life, and never knowing just how good one battery would be unless I numbered each and kept a database of how old they were and how many cycles each had been put thru.
Too much work, too much uncertainty, too much cost. Now I buy non-rechargeable alks and they have a shelf life measured in years, so I never worry about that. I know that each and every one of them (in pairs) will power a wireless for at least 2 sessions, and if they have 2 bars out of three to start, they will power one more. The batts stay in the device until no longer usable, then are discarded, which might be days to weeks to months. Cost per session, tolerable, especially when compared to my peace of mind.
I also carry a still cam in my motorcycle everywhere I go for image emergencies, along with a few spare batts. Those batts might sit in the cycle for months. Alks are still very good after a few months; rechargeables might not be. I don’t want the uncertainty just to save a few cents. (And my experience is that it costs MORE to use rechargeables, it’s not a savings.)
So while my still cams might work with rechargeables, I don’t want to keep a variety of types around when one type fits all.
It sounds like it. I always charge all my batteries the night before an assignment. For me, the freshly charged NiMHs last 4-5x longer than their alkaline counterparts. I would lose a fortune on batteries if I relied on alkalines and would have to change them 6-7 times a night, rather than just once. Considering for an assignment I use about 16-24 NiMH AAs, that would translate to about 50-75+ alkaline AAs every weekend over the course of a year. C’est beaucoup dollars in savings for my use. And I still have rechargeables two years old that hold the charge perfectly well.
You are comparing recharged NiMH to uncharged alkaline batteries. You need to compare to recharged NiMH to recharged alkaline or the comparison is garbage for this thread on can you recharge alkaline batteries.
There’s no comparison.
Even the rechargeable Alkalines have lower capacity and duty cycles than NiMHs. Recharging primary batteries (Alkalines that were not designed to be recharged) is going to result in only a fraction of their original capacity, and a good chance of bursting or leaking.
Sorry…my posts are an aside comparing regular alkalines vs. rechargeables, which seemed to be a subthread here (unless I’m reading the thread incorrectly.) My point was that for high-load devices, rechargeables are better than new alkalines. Obviously, my point would be even stronger that rechargeables are better than “recharged” alkalines, but I’m not trying to make that point. I’m just commenting on Musicat’s comparisons of fresh alkaline batteries with rechargable NiMHs, which does not match at all my experience with the two batteries in digital cameras, flash, and other high-load devices.
It has to do with the fact that recharging an Alkialine primary cell is simply a bad idea.
Don’t mind harmonious discord.
Anyway, someone still hasn’t explained to me the core of the matter. If all alkalines are rechargeable and always have been, why has this secret been kept from the world? … Why don’t all batteries have vents or whatnot, and everyone own chargers?
Just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be done.
Primary cells are not designed to be recharged. Forcing reverse current into them will result in some power recovery, but since they are not designed to be used this way, most people find that doing so is generally unsatisfactory. Rechargeables, on the other hand, are designed to be recharged hundreds or thousands of times, and not leak or explode doing so.
This reminds me of the DIY “Projection TVs” that I’ve seen advertised - basically a fresnel lens placed in front of a standard TV. Sure, it can be done - but, why bother?