Digital camera batteries- have enough juice for all your shots

Always have more juice. I spent 20 years in the TV news business and my mantra was always have extra batteries ready to go and an extra tape under the back seat in case of emergency. For TV cameras the batteries were always big and heavy rechargeable NiCads. Lithium batteries are the rage nowadays as they are lighter in weight, have no memory problems, and run longer.

Digital means electronic and electronic means that these cameras use power and sometimes lots of it. There are various methods to conserve power on your camera. Turn off the LCD screen when shooting and you will save tons of juice. This is a great feature of these cameras but if you need to save on juice this is the first thing to turn off. Turn off the automatic flash and use natural light if you can.

Digital still cameras can take advantage of Lithium batteries as the cost of them has dropped down into the affordable range in recent times. Your other options are NiCad rechargeable batteries which will run you less than the Litium systems.

Some camera systems use proprietary battery systems. I would recommend not buying into that sort of system. With a proprietary battery system you would need to pay a premium for the spare batteries and then finding new ones is more of a chore should yo need to down the road. My friend who is a professional photographer for the AP made this mistake himself and now regrets it.

Try to buy a camera that uses universal types of batteries such as AA’s. I use a camera that takes AA’s and I have three sets of rechargeable batteries so I can rotate through them and never be caught short. Total cost for three sets of NiCAD batteries is about $30 (about 10% more for Lithium), and they will last you several years if you treat them right. If you just buy regular AA batteries and shoot a lot of images your battery cost might triple that over a like period of time.

You can get a spare battery charger for your kit and have one at home charging up a set of digital camera batteries and another in your camera bag along with you so if you get need to you can give thema fresh charge on the go. Another choice for rechargeable batteries is NiMH in which Ni stands for Nickel, the M stands for Metal, and the H stands for Hydryde thus Nickel Metal Hydryde. For any device that consumes a lot of power -'eats batteries' - NiMH rechargeable batteries are ideal. Just use your "high" power NiMH batteries in place of your alkaline batteries. Some confusion is caused by the 1.2V rating of NiMH batteries compared with the 1.5V rating of alkaline batteries. In fact alkaline batteries only supply 1.5V during the early stages of their discharge and this drops to below 1.2V for most of their life. NiMH batteries actually sustain a higher voltage than alkalines during the bulk of their discharge.

Now I have to tell you in all honesty that there is only one place I go for digital camera batteries or for batteries of any kind at all. Sure you can go down to your local store and buy off the shelf but this site really rocks as far as navigation, selection, service, and delivery. I normally like to offer several options to folks for where to get product but I cannot do that in this area. Batteries.com is simply the best I have found. Price, selection, service, blah blah blah. You get it, you should shop there too.

In addition to my digital camera batteries I recently needed to replace the battery in my laptop computer. Instead of going to the manufacturer's site and spending way too much time searching for it I went instead to digital camera batteries and had it in my shopping cart in no time and it was being shipped to me before I could believe it. Good service, ah what a nice thing to get as a consumer these days. All too rare.