Re: thoughts on new Canon compacts?

"Mike Henley" <casioculture@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
I'll be blunt; that's not how it works. What matters is how many shots
you can take on a full charge. With something like the fuji f10 you can
take up to 500 per charged battery. How many shots can you take with a
camera that takes AA batteries and uses 4 of them for a single charge?
It won't be multiples of that; it won't be in the thousands; in my
experience if a camera that uses 4 AA batteries can take over 350 shots
then it's said to have an excellent battery life.

I've heard that the A610 can take over 1000 shots on four AA NiMH
cells. I don't ever need to take anywhere near that many between
battery swaps; if I can take 100-200 on a charge then that's enough
for me. So I'd be happy with a fast camera that uses two AA's instead
of four, and takes fewer shots. Canon may have come to the same
conclusion and used two cells instead of four in the A700, but kept it
as fast as the A610; that's what I started this thread to ask about.
The A610 is definitely much faster than the A510.

In my experience the Nikon 3100 takes more shots on two AA's than the
Canon S100 took on a 1100 mAH lithium ion rectangular pack. That
isn't surprising since the two AA's contain much more total energy,
and the 3100 is newer and probably more energy efficient.

I don't think you've been nice enough in your reply considering the
time I took and considering that your replies above don't suggest
you're talking out of experience.

I'm sorry about the frustration in my response, which you didn't
deserve since you're apparently new here and haven't been through the
thousand rehashings the newsgroup has had on this topic. In
particular there's a guy who works in the lithium ion industry who
turns every mention of NiMH cells into a sales pitch for lithium ion.
So you got some "collateral damage".

Anyway, lithium ion has its advantages but it also has its
disadvantages and it's not for everyone. And yes, I have plenty of
experience with both systems.

Here's how it works in real experience, you can fantacise all you
want about how many shots you can take with your umpteen AA
batteries and your 15-minute charger, but the reality is that I
doubt you'll be shooting more than 500 per day, day after day,

No, I'm not the type to shoot that much. I use AA's in mostly devices
other than digicams, that need charging more frequently. I don't
need to charge my camera batteries that often. That's one reason
why I don't want to deal with yet another charger.

I know what I'm talking about far too well; I have a drawer upstairs
littered with tens and tens of AA batteries and chargers, even those
15min chargers.

I like these hardshell AA cases:

http://www.amondotech.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=587

They hold 12 cells, they're durable and they don't pop open by
accident. I put charged-up cells in them with the positive terminal
facing upward or to the right. I put discharged cells in them facing
downward or to the left, so it's easy to tell which cells need
charging. This has worked quite well for me and I prefer it to having
multiple separate lithium packs bouncing around in my pack.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: thoughts on new Canon compacts?
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