Digital Camera Batteries

Digital Camera Batteries

Buying batteries for your digital camera can become quite an expense if you don't know what to do to save battery life. Here are some how to tips to get optimal performance from your camera.

How to Save Battery Life

Here are a few of your digital camera's biggest sources of power drain.

LCD Screen:

Using the LCD screen is a big power drain on any digital camera. I know how easy it can be to take your pictures using a bigger viewing area versus looking through that little viewfinder - but - using the viewfinder to take pictures will save battery power.

Even if you do use the viewfinder to take your pictures it's always tempting to go back and review the pictures you've just taken. You want to make sure you got everything in the picture. You want to delete the pictures you don't like and don't want to keep because you might have a little more storage space on the memory card.

Not only will reviewing your pictures drain your batteries faster, you could miss a really great picture opportunity and not even know it because your looking down at the LCD screen.

If you are reviewing and deleting pictures from your memory card because you are concerned about how much storage space is left - then make sure you have another memory card handy for backup.

Using the Flash:

Using the flash on your camera when it isn't necessary will drain power from your batteries.

Quite a few digital camera users keep their cameras set on Auto Mode. It's less messing around with ISO settings, shutter speed, etc. Your letting the camera do the work for you.

If you do use Auto Mode and the flash keeps firing when you don't necessarily want it to, you can override this option. Read your manual on how to turn the flash on/off, it's easy to do. Some point and shoot digital cameras have this option located on the back of the camera while other digital cameras require you to go into the menu to turn it off.

So if your outdoors and don't need to use the flash, knowing how to turn it off will help save the life of your battery.

Using Good Batteries:

Many new digital camera owners don't realize the importance of using good batteries. Some will use regular alkaline batteries because they are less expensive; alkaline batteries should only be used as a last resort.

There are many different battery types and you should know what kind of battery your camera requires. You should also now how to care for the batteries and when to recharge them for best performance.

Depending on the digital camera you own, use a higher capacity rechargeable nickel metal hydride (NiMh) or lithium ion (Li-Ion) battery for longer battery life. Both of these batteries can be recharged before the full life of the battery has been depleted.

Another type of battery is the nickel cadmium (Ni-Cad). These batteries must be completely drained before you can recharge them and must be fully charged before you can use them. So if you are going to use this type of battery, make sure you have backups.

Note worthy items about batteries:

• If you use a camera that requires more than one battery, use the same battery types and don't mix batteries of different strengths as this puts too much of a load on the good battery.
• Batteries do not hold a charge when they are sitting in a drawer or on a shelf, they will eventually start to lose the charge.
• As a rule of thumb, if your batteries are too hot or too cold don't recharge them until they have returned to room temperature. This applies to putting them in your camera too.

In the long run it's worth it to spend a little more on a good quality battery for your digital camera and for you to enjoy using your camera.

Here is a list of other how to tips to get the most out of your batteries:

• If your camera has a power saving mode, use it.
• When your not using your camera turn it off.
• Avoid unnecessary playback. Look at your pictures on the computer.

Needing to buy more batteries or recharging the batteries is something you will have to do - no avoiding it, but knowing how to care for batteries and get the most out of them can be done.