Re: Canon Powershot S1 IS Battery life

On Mon, 13 Mar 2006 17:21:20 -0800, SMS wrote:

I would suspect that one (or more) of the AA NiMH cells is bad, or that
the charger isn't charging them fully. Unfortunately most chargers don't
give a good indication of the state of charge of each battery, and you
can't just measure the voltage to know which, if any cell is bad. There
are special battery testers for NiMH, but you'll spend more on one of
them than it's worth.

The actual voltages don't need to be known, but I agree that the
problem is likely to be due to one or two bad cells. I've had good
enough results using cheap $5 battery testers that put a small load
on the AA or AAA cell and you either see the needle swing up into
the green or watch it briefly try to reach the green but quickly and
steadily drop further and further down into the red "BAD" zone.
When testing 4 good NiMH AA cells that can no longer power cameras
or radios, they usually *all* reach the green "GOOD" zone and stay
there. It might take 30 or 60 minutes or longer for the needle to
start dropping down to the "BAD" zone. But when I've had one
defective cell out of the four, the cheap tester easily and
immediately identifies the bad cell and a voltage readout is not
needed. At that point, rather than replace the bad cell, I just use
the three remaining good cells in something (usually a radio) that
uses 3 AA cells where they continue to provide excellent service,
and get another set of 4 new NiMH AA cells.

When one cell goes bad it's most often due to user error,
especially if used in a device that won't automatically turn off
when the first cell is depleted. It's not likely that this will be
a problem with digital cameras, but leaving them in cameras for long
periods between charges (many months) might cause problems with some
cameras. I've used probably more than a dozen brands of NiMH
batteries and other than capacity differences have never found any
to be more prone to failure than any of the other brands. Most
people have no idea how easy it is to mistreat batteries if they're
paid little or no attention. When cared for properly they last a
loooong time.


Just buy four new NiMH batteries and a new charger. Buy either Sanyo
or Panasonic cells. As someone else mentioned, avoid Energizer. Costco
sells Sanyo cells (six 2500mAH AA, two 900 mAH AAA, and a charger
with a battery tester, for $22).

Again, I've had no problems with Energizer NiMH batteries (I still
have two old sets of them that are going strong), but one brand
stands out. I haven't seen any indication that Sony's NiMH AA
batteries perform better than any others, but the construction gives
the impression that they might be slightly superior. Maybe it's an
intentional marketing gimmick. These are 2300 mah cells I bought
over a year ago, newer ones have greater capacity.

.

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